Everyone else: Yeah, sure.

According to the Qataris, Hamas has agreed in principle to a temporary cessation in fighting to exchange all of the remaining hostages on a 1:3 ratio of Palestinian prisoners. Despite explicitly and publicly rejecting this formula just days ago, supposedly the Hamas negotiators today offered their “initial approval.”

Not even the Palestinians are really buying it, though:

The Palestinian official said the Paris text envisions a first phase lasting 40 days, during which fighting would cease while Hamas freed remaining civilians from among more than 100 hostages it is still holding. Further phases would see the release of Israeli soldiers and the handover of the bodies of dead hostages.

“I expect that Hamas will not reject the paper, but it might not give a decisive agreement either,” said the Palestinian official speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Instead, I expect them to send a positive response and reaffirm their demands: for the agreement to be signed, it must ensure Israel will commit to ending the war in Gaza and pull out from the enclave completely.”

Let’s think this through a moment. Would the terrorists that raped and massacred Israelis by the hundreds, kidnapped 240 of them, and then created cruel hostage videos to taunt their enemies use the negotiating process this cynically?

Yes, that’s a rhetorical question.

Hamas could decide to muddy the waters around Israel’s diplomacy and almost-certainly-upcoming elections by actually agreeing to these terms. They did agree to a similar swap in late November in a “pause” that lasted less than ten days but did free roughly half the hostages. Hamas then violated the terms of the pause and began launching rocket attacks as a means of maintaining its hostage-based leverage.

The problem with this deal is that it would eliminate that leverage going forward and allow Israel to proceed with the military conquest of Hamas, which defense minister Yoav Gallant pledged to accomplish again today regardless of the exchanges. Gallant declared victory in Khan Younis over Hamas earlier today:

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced on Thursday night that Hamas forces in Khan Yunis have been officially defeated.

He said that after additional gains by the IDF in Khan Yunis, 10,000 Hamas fighters have been killed and 10,000 wounded, up from around 9,000 killed and around 8,000 wounded around a week and a half ago. …

Gallant’s statement that the IDF has completed taking apart Hamas’s remaining battalions in Khan Yunis, including in the western part of the terror group’s southern Gaza capital, would also seem to be a week or a couple of weeks ahead of IDF statements.

Whether or not Khan Younis is all but wrapped up, Gallant told IDF troops on the front line, Rafah is next regardless:

“Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade boasted that it would stand against the IDF, it is being dismantled, and I am telling you here, we are completing the mission in Khan Younis and we will also reach Rafah and eliminate everyone there who is a terrorist who is trying to harm us,” says Gallant to troops of the IDF’s 98th Division, during a visit to Khan Younis today. …

Gallant tells the troops that their actions, both above ground and underground in Khan Younis, “brings the return of the hostages closer, because Hamas only understands power.”

The Israelis will not withdraw from Gaza as long as Hamas remains a threat. Hamas will not return the hostages until Israel agrees to let them stay. Even if they do offer ‘initial approval,’ and even if they get to the stage where a handful of hostages get exchanged, Hamas will find ways to hold onto enough of them to keep as leverage. They have no other choice, except to surrender or flee into exile while Israel installs a military government and Saudi-led occupation in Gaza.

Gallant’s right in this regard. Hamas only understands power, expressed through their terrorism. They cannot be negotiated into rational political ends, a point proven on October 7 after 17 years of treating them as a governing partner.

Which is, of course, the reason that Joe Biden wants to reward Hamas and the Gazans for October 7 with sovereign-state status. Thomas Friedman claimed yesterday that his White House contacts say that Biden will do just that as part of a new “Biden Doctrine” for the Middle East, despite the lack of any evidence that the Palestinians will settle for a two-state solution. Hamas’ spokesmen have explicitly rejected it, in fact, and have repeatedly declared that its war will only end with the destruction of Israel. They mean “from the river to the sea” literally, and will only accept a one-state solution, under their despotic and genocidal rule.

David Harsanyi is appropriately aghast at the upcoming effort to reward terrorism:

Indeed, any ”independent” Palestinian territory is going to be a terror state. History is remarkably clear on this point. Even the PLO, propped up by Western aid and Israeli security in the “West Bank,” hasn’t been able to hold a real election in over a decade because Islamists would inevitably take control.

If Israel can’t stop weapons from infiltrating Gaza now, what does the situation look like when it is dealing with an “independent” state? What does it look like when Iran becomes a nuclear power? What does it look like when the Islamic Jihad — or whatever group pops up to take its place — begins lobbing rockets at civilians? Israel will be compelled to act. Next time, it would be invading a territory recognized as a sovereign state by the U.S. …

One of the most preposterous positions of Western foreign policy experts states that if Palestinians only had a state, there would be peace in the Middle East. There is no evidence for this. When Jordan and Egypt controlled the “West Bank” and Gaza Strip, Palestinians still attacked Jews.

At this point, why not wait until Israel dismantles what’s left of Hamas first?

Update: As predicted …

A senior Palestinian source tells Lebanese news outlet Al-Mayadeen that Qatar jumped the gun in appearing to announce that Hamas had given initial approval to a ceasefire proposal.

The statement “was rushed and is incorrect,” the source says, claiming that Hamas’s leadership has yet to schedule meetings in Cairo to discuss the proposal with Egyptian mediators.

A similar quote is carried by AFP from a source close to Hamas: “There is no agreement on the framework of the agreement yet — the factions have important observations — and the Qatari statement is rushed and not true.”