One good way to tell if your effort to eliminate your enemy's leadership is going well is if you blow up their new defacto prime minister before his people have had a chance to learn that the old prime minister had been blown up, too.
True story.
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Hamas PM Ismail Barhoum was killed in an Israeli Air Force (IAF) airstrike just five days after his predecessor (pre-deceasor?) Issam al-Da’alis was — you guessed it! — killed in an IAF airstrike. With an almost coy dryness, the Journal headline read, "Israel Is Killing Hamas Leaders in Quick Succession."
"Israel has killed at least another four senior political figures in a week of strikes, including the deputy ministers of justice and interior, as well as the head of Hamas’s internal security agency," the paper noted. It almost doesn't need to be said that Israeli intelligence — not to mention IAF targeting — has been spot-on.
Honestly, Hamas should have just let the hostages go and ended this 18-month-old war already — but where's the opportunity to murder more Jews in that? When the bad guys decide that martyrdom and murder are preferable to peace, you give them as much of the former as you can while preventing as much of the latter.
Meanwhile, the Gazan propaganda wing continues with its shopworn "We're the real victims!" schtick.
— Adam Mossoff (@AdamMossoff) March 23, 2025
Don't fall for the schtick. Times of Israel reported yesterday that Hamas published "a propaganda video showing a sign of life from Israeli hostages Elkana Bohbot and Yosef-Haim Ohana, who were both kidnapped from the Nova festival on October 7 [2023] and are still being held in Gaza. "Hamas has previously issued similar videos of hostages it is holding, in what Israel says is deplorable psychological warfare."
If at the local level, the Israeli military and intelligence services are performing well, the international scene still falls under "It's complicated." At a meeting Sunday in Cairo, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas said, "Hamas should have no future role in the governance of the Gaza Strip." That's all well and good but Kallas also repeated the usual EU demands for restraint on Israel's part that would make rooting Hamas out of Gaza virtually impossible.
"Tomorrow I will be in Israel to express concerns about the resumption of hostilities in the Gaza Strip," Kallas said, adding that "the EU is clear that Hamas must release all hostages, Israel must allow humanitarian aid to reach Gaza, and negotiations must resume."
Well, which is it? Does Hamas have a role in Gaza or is the EU going to give up the moral preening long enough for Israel to do what needs to be done?
Israel's first partner in Cold Peace, Egypt, remains as stubborn as ever. Cairo still refuses to take in 500,000-700,000 displaced Gaza Arabs, despite President Donald Trump's offer to build them "much better housing" than they had in Gaza. Now the White House might be brandishing a stick to go with the carrot. Egyptian sources told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed this weekend that continued refusal "could mean redirecting economic aid meant for Egypt to other countries."
Egypt currently receives about $1.5 billion annually in U.S. aid. Cairo's refusal highlights the historical undesirability of allowing large numbers of Gaza or West Bank Arabs into your country. West Bank and Gaza "refugees" attempted to murder King Hussein of Jordan in 1970 and managed to permanently wreck Lebanon.
So you can't really blame Cairo for not wanting to take in half the population of Gaza. But with the Strip in ruins — and bound to get worse before it gets better — it's a bit like Last Call. They don't have to go to Egypt but they can't stay here.
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