Hamas is blackmailing the West into submission

Hamas has its sights trained on the West – Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

It is a cardinal rule when dealing with Islamist terrorists to make it clear that only their total and unequivocal capitulation will bring hostilities to an end. Anything less gives them the impression that they may yet turn a situation, no matter how bleak, to their advantage.

It is a policy that has worked extremely effectively in dealing with the likes of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda movement in the wake of the September 11 attacks in 2001, and against the jihadi extremists of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in the following decade, whose dreams of establishing their own caliphate perished amid the rubble of their Raqqa fiefdom.

The Hamas fanatics responsible for carrying out the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history on October 7 look set to suffer a similar fate – so long, that is, as the Israel Defence Forces are allowed to continue with their punishing offensive to wipe the movement off the face of the earth, which is the Israeli government’s declared aim.

With the Gaza conflict entering its fifth month, the Israeli forces are close to achieving their ultimate goal. The latest intelligence estimates suggest that Hamas has lost 75 per cent of its terrorist battalions, with the remainder taking refuge among Gaza’s civilian population.

US President Joe Biden’s announcement earlier this week that he fully expects a 40-day ceasefire to be implemented in Gaza by next week therefore risks not only undermining the effectiveness of Israel’s final push to destroy Hamas’s extensive terrorist network. It also threatens to encourage the Hamas masterminds responsible for the October 7 attacks to think that they might yet find a way to survive the Israeli onslaught, an attitude that is reflected in the organisation’s decision to distance itself from Biden’s latest ceasefire offering.

According to details of the deal that have been widely leaked to the US media, Hamas would set free the 130 or so remaining Israeli hostages in return for Israel releasing about 1,500 Palestinian prisoners, many of them convicted terrorists.

Such a deal, were it to be implemented, would demonstrably be to Hamas’s advantage. Apart from giving it time to regroup after weeks of enduring Israel’s offensive, it could claim that the October 7 attacks were justified because they resulted in the release of Palestinian prisoners.

Comments by senior Hamas officials, therefore, that they are not inclined to accept the hostages-for-prisoners trade are indicative that, far from conceding defeat, the movement still believes that it can ultimately survive the Gaza conflict, an outcome that could have profound implications for the region’s future stability.

Hamas’s uncompromising position, with officials claiming that the outline ceasefire agreement “does not fulfil our demands”, has undoubtedly been encouraged by Biden’s naive assumption that, simply by announcing a ceasefire was imminent, Hamas would be compelled to accept the deal.

In fact, the opposite is the case. Biden’s suggestion that a deal could be in place by the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in two weeks’ time simply signalled to Hamas that the US president, for his own political reasons, was more desperate for a ceasefire than the Islamist terrorists.

The result is that Hamas now finds itself in the bizarre situation in which it feels it can blackmail the US as well as Israel into acceding to its outrageous demands.

Hamas’s belief that it can dictate its own ceasefire terms derives from its view that Biden is negotiating from a position of weakness, not strength. This is because, thanks to mounting criticism of the White House’s handling of the Gaza crisis by the far-Left and the Arab-American community, Biden is increasingly concerned that it could have a negative impact on his prospects of winning re-election in November’s presidential poll.

This was clearly the case in this week’s Democratic primary poll in Michigan where, despite winning a comfortable majority, Biden still encountered a strong protest vote over Washington’s continued support for Israel in the Gaza conflict.

Nor are such protests confined to the US. Anti-Israel protests have become the norm throughout Europe, especially in Britain, where the Gaza issue has degenerated into a highly divisive political issue.

It is remarkable that those campaigning in support of Hamas fail to grasp the full extent of the movement’s total commitment to resorting to acts of extreme violence to achieve its ends.

The Palestinian convicts whose release Hamas is demanding from Israeli prisons in return for a ceasefire, for example, are not political prisoners of conscience like Russian activist Alexei Navalny, who was jailed, and subsequently died, because of his non-violent campaign to oust Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Many of them are calculating killers similar to those who carried out the October 7 attacks, who think nothing of murdering innocent women and children.

If Biden’s ceasefire deal results in their release, then Hamas will truly believe it has triumphed over adversity.

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