With Trump’s backing, Hamas’s defeat is now possible

For the last year and a half, it has been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who have claimed that Hamas couldn’t be defeated were right—but only because the rules of engagement of the war that the terrorists launched on Oct. 7, 2023, were set up to ensure that it survived. Those rules may now be about to change. Or at least they will if the Jewish state takes advantage of two factors that could alter the balance of power between the Jewish state and the genocidal terrorists it seeks to destroy.

The change in power in Washington and the shocking exploitation of the ceasefire deal on the part of Hamas that so outraged the Israeli public has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an opportunity to reset that agreement in a way that could either free all the hostages or lead to Hamas’s demise. The question is: Does he have sufficient support from his own people to do it?

That’s the context for the announcement this past weekend that Israel was halting the entry of humanitarian goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip until Hamas agrees to the framework for a second-phase deal along the lines proposed by the Trump administration. The goal is to set up a negotiation that would achieve at least one of Israel’s two main war goals: freeing all of the remaining hostages taken by the Palestinians on Oct. 7 and eradicating Hamas. (Read More)