Gee, didn't Israel end all hope of negotiation with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh? I was assured by all of the bien pensants of the media and the elite Left that Benjamin Netanyahu had deliberately torpedoed talks for hostage exchanges with the hit in Tehran, as well as other killings of Hamas, Hezbollah, and IRGC commanders.

Looks like Yahya Sinwar took an entirely different meaning from Netanyahu's message. According to CNN, the new leader of Hamas may want to survive this war for a bit longer than his current predicament would allow:

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar wants a ceasefire deal — at least, that’s the message Egyptian and Qatari mediators have conveyed to Israeli officials in recent days ahead of a critical summit later this week, an Israeli source familiar with the matter said.

Whether the Israeli prime minister wants one remains shrouded in uncertainty.

Netanyahu would love to get a deal done, but on his terms, not Hamas'. A deal that frees live hostages would certainly strengthen his political position at home, even if it did anger his coalition partners. It might even force Benny Gantz to rejoin a national-unity government to back him up, a move that Gantz is no doubt considering as his political stock has cratered since leaving it a few months ago. 

Nevertheless, CNN goes on at length about Netanyahu being the obstacle to peace. Their report barely mentions Hamas' role in extending the conflict and frustrating the negotiations, let alone starting the war with its massive atrocities on October 7. Unfortunately, that mirrors the approach taken by Joe Biden and much of the West. And that's one reason why Israel hit Haniyeh when and where it did -- to reset the stakes to its advantage.

While the rest of the world clucked its tongue at the strike on the supposed "moderate" Haniyeh, Israel meant that as a message to counter the West's pusillanimity in dealing with terrorists. The reason that Hamas had refused to make a rational deal was because they felt they could wait it out and let the West do its dirty work on Israel for them.  And Haniyeh was a large part of that strategy, changing terms and positions to allow the US and the EU to pressure Netanyahu into more concessions and to allow Hamas to rebuild itself into an existential threat in yet another cease-fire that Hamas would ignore.

Killing Haniyeh outraged the West. But it apparently told Sinwar something else -- that time was running out and the Israelis weren't playing by the old rules. 

Sinwar isn't the only one getting that message either. Iran has threatened a massive retaliatory attack, but Israel has made it clear that any such action would mean total war and that the gloves would come off against the fragile regime in Tehran. That may be why Sinwar is suddenly interested in completing a deal, too -- the Iranians may be leaning on him to give them an excuse to forego the retaliation. The Jewish commemoration of Tisha B'av starts tonight, which is when intel agencies expected Iran to conduct its attack. Sinwar's signaling of openness to a deal will give Iran a pretext to either postpone or seriously dial down the scale of the retaliation to keep pressure on Netanyahu to stay engaged in the talks. 

It just may be that Netanyahu knows what he's doing. It's been long apparent that Biden and his team don't.