Call it a victory lap. Call it gloating. Call it a great stand-up performance. Whatever one wants to think or say about President Trump’s performance at the Knesset following the release of the live Israeli hostages, it was one for the history books, with roaring laughter and applause again and again throughout the speech.
President Trump has good reason to be exuding overconfidence. He truly accomplished the impossible, with a little bit of help from hundreds of thousands of brave Israeli soldiers. The 20 remaining hostages are back home in Israel. Very few people thought that this would occur, even after the agreement was publicized. Plain and simple, Hamas cannot be trusted to do anything but attempt to kill Jews. What changed so suddenly?
Why did Hamas give in? It comes down to IDF military pressure combined with massive American diplomatic pressure. Due to President Trump’s keen understanding of how to leverage all of America’s power, he created a situation for America to offer Hamas a deal they could not refuse. Witkoff being a nice guy had little to do with it. It was all about pressure. If anything, Mr. Witkoff’s ability to pressure in a nice way was a factor.
Hamas did not just have the IDF closing in on the little bit of Gaza that Hamas still controlled. Hamas had their leadership in Qatar and Iran feeling the heat from Egypt, Turkey and whomever else President Trump decided to use to squeeze the screws on Hamas.
The Hamas leadership in Qatar was left with two options. Be destroyed completely – in Gaza and in Qatar – or give in and live to see another day. It turns out that Israel’s seeming failure in their strike at Qatar may have actually been very successful at delivering a most powerful message in a very clear fashion. The message was “We will hunt you down wherever you are.” America needs Qatar investment. But Qatar needs to be under the American umbrella one hundred times more than America needs Qatar. Donald Trump understands leverage and communicated this very clearly to the Hamas leaders in Qatar. He knows how to talk about freezing bank accounts and international investments, and Qatar
Donald Trump is turning out to be one of the most succesful and effective Presidents on the world stage despite entering the Oval Office with little more foreign policy experience than most international businessmen. It is far more natural to be politically incorrect when you haven’t spent most of your career as a politician. What a breath of fresh air.