Ah, the ol’ bait-and-switch. Who could’ve seen that coming? Oh, only … everyone.

I predicted last week that Hamas would string out the hostage releases long enough to exhaust Israel’s diplomatic support for finishing the war. Today, the exhaustion point has been tested, according to the Wall Street Journal. The brokers of the hostage-prisoner swap and operational ‘pause’ in the war Hamas started with Israel now want to use it to stop Israel from finishing it:

The chief brokers of the Israel-Hamas hostage-prisoner exchange are pushing the two sides for a long-term cease-fire that would prolong the truce in Gaza beyond the current two-day extension and start talks that would end the war altogether, said Egyptian and Qatari officials.

A long-term cease-fire would likely require Israel and Hamas to make hard-to-swallow concessions, such as trading Israeli soldiers for potentially thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, the officials said. And it would require Israel to hold back on an offensive in southern Gaza intended to capture the strip and kill Hamas’s top leadership, the officials said. Hamas could also have to accept demilitarization, they added.

Ahem. Does anyone think for a moment that Hamas would ever demilitarize? The Gazans were not supposed to militarize in the first place after the Israelis withdrew in 2005. Egypt joined with Israel in a containment strategy in 2007 to prevent Hamas from importing arms. How well did that work out over the last sixteen years? Almost two decades of missile fire on Israeli population centers attest to the willingness of Hamas to “demilitarize” under any potential terms.

The offer of “thousands of Palestinian prisoners” would vault Israel right back to the status quo ante, too. It would be a concession that would revitalize Hamas’ hostaging strategy and return it to somewhere closer to the 1:1000 ratio of the Gilad Shalit trade. That alone would make Hamas victorious in this war, along with the laughable idea that Israel would have to pretend that Hamas demilitarized until the next 10/7 massacre.

This is precisely what we and others warned would happen in any sort of open-ended truce. It’s why Israel should have refused to deal on any basis other than all hostages traded for aid, or at worst, a like number of Palestinian prisoners. The deal for which Joe Biden took credit last week was practically designed to force an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza over a long series of ‘truces’ for a bunch of empty promises by Hamas to behave itself.

Besides … what makes anyone think Hamas has given up on its charter and the genocide of Jews in Israel?

Hamas Official Ghazi Hamad: We Will Repeat the October 7 Attack Time and Again Until Israel Is Annihilated.

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Honestly, Hamas can’t even abide by the terms of an operational ‘pause’:

Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip were targeted by three explosive devices in two separate incidents on Tuesday afternoon in violation of the ceasefire agreements between Israel and Hamas, according to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.

Additionally, shots were fired at Israeli forces in one of the incidents. Several soldiers were lightly wounded in the attacks and IDF soldiers responded by firing at the sources of gunfire. The IDF has stayed within the agreed-upon lines of the ceasefire, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stressed.

Hamas certainly wants to keep the pause of Israeli operations going for a while longer. Earlier today, CBS News reported that Hamas has now proposed more hostage releases to delay the IDF offensive. This time they’ll trade men and IDF soldiers, but on what terms? The Hamas official speaking to CBS didn’t make that clear:

Around 170 people remain captive in Gaza, according to Israel, but not all are held by Hamas. U.S. officials have said they’re continuing to work for further extensions in the truce, and that they’ll keep pushing the negotiations until everybody is released.

A Hamas official told CBS News on Tuesday that the group — long designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and many other nations — was looking to negotiate another extension of the pause in fighting during which it would release not just women and children, as it has done daily since Friday, but also male hostages and abducted Israeli soldiers. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office declined to comment Tuesday on any negotiations for a new deal with Hamas.

It’s yet more of the same nonsense, with the US efforts basically boosting Hamas’ hostage-taking and human-shield strategies. The end of this effort is the complete delegitimization of Israeli self-defense and right to answer cassus belli from terrorists who hide behind the skirts of their women. It’s an utter disgrace, especially since Biden and his team have done next to nothing to get American hostages out of the clutches of Hamas terrorists.

Speaking of which, guess who’s coming back to Israel — and why?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will return later this week to Israel and the West Bank as the US hopes to find a way to extend a temporary ceasefire in Gaza and get more of the hostages held there released, the State Department said Monday. …

Meeting officials in Israel and the West Bank, Blinken will “discuss Israel’s right to defend itself consistent with international humanitarian law, as well as continued efforts to secure the release of remaining hostages, protect civilian life during Israel’s operations in Gaza, and accelerate humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

Where is Blinken on Hamas’ duty to protect civilian life and abide by ‘international humanitarian law’? Hamas started a war by massacring civilian men, women, and children, conducting grotesque acts of murder, rape, and kidnapping, and then using Gazans as human shields to blame Israel for the loss of life in the war Hamas started. Blinken instead intends to lecture Israel on the rules of war — while Hamas holds nine Americans hostage and after they murdered more than two dozen other Americans. (I discussed that issue in my earlier post with an eye on the Biden administration’s strange priorities, too.)

Blinken’s visit pretty much proves who the “brokers” are that want to force Israel to let Hamas escape and rebuild. Disgrace is not a strong enough word for these moral cowards.