Call this A Tale of Two Territories, albeit with a slightly different opening line. "It was the worst of decisions, it was the slightly-less-worst of decisions," this version would commence.
While Hamas again demonstrates the worst of decision-making, the Palestinian Authority appears to have at least stumbled onto a clue about the changed environment since the October 7 massacres. And since the last American election, too. The Hamas Hokey Pokey returned today, with the terror group balking at the next hostage swap over supposed violations by Israel, only after the previous release demonstrated how badly the hostages have been treated:
Palestinian militant group Hamas announced on Monday it would indefinitely postpone the next hostage-prisoner exchange under a fragile truce agreement with Israel, accusing it of failing to comply with its terms.
"The release of the prisoners (Israeli hostages), which was scheduled for next Saturday, February 15, 2025, will be postponed until further notice, pending the occupation's compliance and retroactive fulfilment of the past weeks' obligations," Abu Ubaida, spokesman for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said in a statement. ...
"These include delaying the return of displaced people to northern Gaza, targeting them with shelling and gunfire across various areas of the (Gaza) Strip, and failing to allow the entry of humanitarian aid in all its forms as agreed upon," it added, asserting Hamas had "fulfilled all its obligations".
Of course, this move was easily predictable -- and widely predicted. Hamas routinely does this in order to force more concessions out of Israel, relying on Western pressure on the latter for the success of its Hamas Hokey Pokey strategy. Hamas is running out of live hostages to trade now, and thus has little leverage left with which to bargain for its survival. Israel's determination to destroy Hamas as an effective fighting force made a renege on the deal am absolute certainty at some point.
This time, however, the Hamas Hokey Pokey is not likely to be effective. They have not read the room very well in this entire conflict, but the US is not playing by the old rules any longer. Joe Biden may have kept trying to float a two-state solution, but Donald Trump has now explicitly and forcefully rejected it. He wants all of the Gazans out of Gaza, Hamas or no, and made that clear again over the weekend -- at least rhetorically:
"We'll build beautiful communities for the 1.9 million people. We'll build beautiful communities, safe communities — could be five, six, could be two, but we'll build safe communities a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is," Trump said in the interview, a portion of which aired before the Super Bowl on Sunday. More clips from the interview will air Monday night.
Trump continued, "In the meantime, I would own this — think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land."
Asked if Palestinians would have the right to return to the land, Trump said, "No, they wouldn’t because they’re going to have much better housing, much better."
That message isn't for Hamas as much as it is for Gazans. The US will no longer oppose a mass relocation if the Gazans choose to pursue war over peaceful co-existence, because there is no other path to peace in Gaza. If they want to hold onto what they have, Trump is warning them, then they'd better start making better decisions -- and cough up the Hamas terrorists that refuse peace altogether.
Is mass relocation practical? Of course not. No other nation wants the Palestinians, and for very good reasons related to their survival instincts. By broaching this as a policy, however, Trump is signaling that the US will support a total-war approach from Israel that will force Gazans to truly pay for the policies they choose and support. Trump just freed up the transfer of large-scale munitions to Israel that Biden had blocked, with the clear anticipation that Israel will put them to use very soon.
In this sense, it is a mistake to take Trump literally, and a vastly bigger mistake to not take him seriously, as my friend Salena Zito put it nine years ago. Especially when Israel's response is to put the IDF at DEFCON 1.1 or so:
Defense Minister Israel Katz responds to Hamas’s announcement on postponing the release of Israeli hostages until further notice, saying it is an “outright violation of the ceasefire.”
“I instructed the IDF to prepare at the highest level of alert for any possible scenario in Gaza and to protect the [border] communities. We will not return to the reality of October 7,” he adds.
Benjamin Netanyahu will call a war cabinet meeting in the next several hours to determine the response to this latest stanza of the Hamas Hokey Pokey. With Joe Biden out of the way and Donald Trump advocating for urban renewal via bunker-busters, it won't take much for Netanyahu to decide that Israel has gotten everything out of this latest cease-fire that it can reasonably get. He showed up unexpectedly at the Knesset today to warn that his critics have gotten the war wrong all along, which gives a pretty good indication what direction Bibi will go:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the opposition of wanting to surrender to Hamas in the early stages of the war during a speech given to the Knesset plenum on Monday.
Netanyahu canceled his testimony to the trial against him in order to give the speech, which was reportedly unplanned.
Addressing the opposition, Netanyahu said, "Most of you supported ending the war at a very early stage. What would have happened to us if I had surrendered to you? What situation would we have been in?"
He told the Knesset that he and US President Donald Trump saw "eye to eye" on issues relating to Israel's war goals, including defeating Hamas and returning the hostages.
Hamas may not be reading the writing on the wall, but the Palestinian Authority may suddenly have grown literate enough to do so. After years of pressure went nowhere, Trump's sudden push for mass relocation has prompted Mahmoud Abbas to stop subsidizing suicidal terrorism:
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has signed a decree canceling legislation that provided payments to Palestinian security prisoners based on the length of their sentence and to the families of terrorists killed while carrying out an attacks, a Palestinian official confirms to The Times of Israel.
The decree states that those families and all others requiring welfare assistance will be eligible for stipends based solely on financial need, the Palestinian official says, confirming a report on the Walla news site.
To be fair, the Biden administration had nearly succeeded in getting Abbas to cut off the revenue stream, but Abbas reportedly wanted to offer it to Trump as a sweetener for later negotiations. Instead, the PA got caught flat-footed by Trump's hardline positions on Palestinians, and now may see this as a necessary concession for survival:
During the transition, top PA officials briefed their counterparts in the incoming Trump administration regarding their plan, two sources familiar told The Times of Israel earlier today.
However, those sources believed that the announcement had been put on the back burner following Trump’s declaration last week that he plans to take over Gaza. The Gaza proposal sent shockwaves throughout the Arab world, which is now in the midst of a full-throttled campaign to oppose the Trump idea.
Abbas and the rest of the Arab nations aren't taking Trump literally, but they are taking him seriously. The US has spent decades on a deal that Palestinian leadership in both forms insist on rejecting in favor of the "river to the sea" annihilation of Israel. They have refused to move off that position, secure in the knowledge that the West would not countenance an annihilation policy as its response. Trump just changed the terms, drastically and radically, and the Palestinians now have to factor in the same annihilation that they have demanded for the last 80 years as a risk to themselves.
That won't change positions overnight, but in Gaza, the consequences may come almost as soon. The world is tired of dancing to the Hamas Hokey Pokey, and Gazans had better take it as seriously as possible.
