Dealing with the devil
Why is any negotiation with Qatar taking place at all?
By Melanie Phillips
JNS
Jan 16, 2025
There was one immediate and very public effect of the hostage deal that was prematurely reported to have been agreed between Israel and Hamas. No sooner had this news filtered through on Wednesday than thousands of jubilant Arabs poured onto the streets of Gaza brandishing weapons, uniforms and insignia, and chanting that they had won the war.
These men were demonstrably well-fed, well-clothed and equipped with smartphones.
So much for the libel—the ludicrous calumny that has been amplified from Gaza throughout the length and breadth of the West—that Israel has been conducting a genocide against the Palestinian Arabs. As was bitterly observed by some of those watching the euphoria in Gaza, this must be the first genocide in history where the victims have emerged to declare victory.
Those Arabs were ecstatic because they believed that the deal would enable them to now, finally, destroy Israel and the Jews. “Jews remember Khaybar, where Muhammad massacred the Jews,” they chanted, a reference to the seventh-century onslaught by Islam’s founder that remains the Muslim battle cry to slaughter the Jews today.
And in the Qatari capital Doha, the Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya responded to the deal by expressing pride in the Oct. 7 pogrom, which he pledged to repeat.
As soon as Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani announced that a deal had been reached between Israel and Hamas, both those who have been demonstrating on Israeli streets to “bring the hostages home now” and those who want the war to continue until Hamas is destroyed jumped to the conclusion that the war in Gaza was over.
With reports swirling that the deal involved a staged release of hostages in exchange for a far larger number of Arab terrorists to be released from Israeli prisons, as well as a staged withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from Gaza, there was panic in some Israeli quarters. There were fears that Israel was being forced to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory and would continue to face a genocidal enemy that would be enabled to regroup, rule Gaza again, and repeat its slaughter of Jews.
And there was distraught disbelief that President-elect Donald Trump—upon whom so many were relying to enable Israel to defend itself against genocide—could have betrayed the Jewish state by forcing Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to accept the disastrous terms promoted by the Biden administration.
Other voices, however, counseled that such despair was unrealistic and inappropriate. Hamas had been decimated, Hezbollah in Lebanon was finished, and Iran was weaker. Crucially, Israel had given no undertakings to end the war in Gaza and would return to destroy Hamas as it had always promised. Everything rested on the belief that Trump would support Israel as it did so. And the ultimate goal was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program for which his support was essential.
The deeper question, however, is why any negotiation was taking place at all—and why Qatar, the sponsor, patron and protector of Hamas, was still being used as an honest broker.
As Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said: “The only ‘deal’ should be unconditional surrender by Hamas, which is already nearly destroyed, and return of ALL hostages. … Here’s the ‘deal’ to offer Hamas and its patron, Iran: You have five days to release ALL the hostages or we ‘unleash hell.’”
That seemed to be precisely what Trump had publicly threatened—that unless Hamas released the hostages by the date of his inauguration, Jan. 20, “all hell would break out in the Middle East.”
It was famously said of Trump that people should “take him seriously but not literally.” Israel’s desperate defenders made the mistake of taking his “all hell” threat literally. They thought that Trump meant precisely what Cotton said should happen—that unless Hamas handed over all the hostages unconditionally, there would be condign consequences.
Hamas, however, took Trump seriously, but not literally, and understood him correctly to mean he would unleash hell unless they agreed to a deal. Which they did—even though they then tried to resile from it.
Of course, the release of any of the hostages is to be welcomed. Their terrible fate is uppermost in every Israeli mind. Everyone desperately wants them to be returned, but not if the price to be paid is the certainty of yet more Jewish hostages being taken and more murderous attacks.
Taking the Israeli hostages was an evil masterstroke by Hamas. However, America is largely responsible for abandoning them to their fate and allowing Hamas to continue to deploy these innocents as an infernal weapon of blackmail and extortion.
The “hell” of which both Trump and Cotton have spoken should have been threatened on Oct. 8, 2023, against Hamas’s sponsor and protector, Qatar. If the Biden administration had told Qatar that unless the hostages were released within five days the United States would end every arrangement with it on which the Gulf state depends, the hostages would have been freed.
Not only did the Biden administration not do this, but it has continued to this day to treat Qatar as a legitimate interlocutor—while undermining Israel’s desperate attempt to defend itself.
The United States threatened and blackmailed Israel into admitting into Gaza aid supplies most of which were stolen by Hamas, enabling it to make millions of dollars to reinforce its own genocidal war machine. The Bidenites repeatedly instructed Israel to reduce attacks on Iran or its proxies, forcing it to fight its war of survival with its hands tied behind its back in a way that America wouldn’t have dreamed of behaving had it been targeted itself in this way for annihilation.
In part, the Bidenites’ attitude toward Israel—in many respects a continuation of former President Barack Obama’s profound animus against the Jewish state—has been driven by malice. But it’s also infused with the belief that Israel can never win its battle against the Palestinian Arabs and therefore must compromise with them.
That, in turn, is rooted in the liberal belief that all conflict is soluble through negotiation and compromise. But when the conflict is between those committed to genocide and their intended victims—as is the case between the Iran/Palestinian Arab axis and Israel’s Jews—any compromise by Israel is tantamount to offering its throat to be slit.
Trump doesn’t subscribe to this liberal delusion. And his commitment to Israel is genuine and deep. However, Trump is famously transactional. He appears to believe that all conflict is soluble through a deal—provided that he, the supreme practitioner of “the art of the deal,” is directing it.
And so, alarmingly, he has apparently reached out to Iran to begin negotiations over its nuclear program and other nefarious activities. But any negotiation with people who have a non-negotiable agenda strengthens them and weakens their victims.
Trump doesn’t want a war on his watch. He has virtually promised the American people that he will bring an end to war. But sometimes an enemy arises with whom any agreement is a deal with the devil.
If Netanyahu is seen to have been forced to agree to Israel’s defeat in Gaza, he will be finished. As for Trump, the fear is that his transactionalism will mean he ends up playing the same role as the Biden administration in empowering evil.
We can only hold our breath.
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