I think Trump was counting on Bibi clearing out Hamas in the wake of the attack on Iran, when questions and objections would be swept aside. It felt like the Trump-Bibi team missed a beat at that point, and have not yet recovered.

Here in Israel:

We don’t have a Constitution, but a patchwork of socialist-era institutions still funded by the kind of corrupt log-rolling that Musk’s DOGE uncovered.

A majority of the population still has not yet been radicalized enough to disbelieve the media or disobey the Establishment – they still feel constrained to conform to what “everybody” knows…. this is changing, but the Leftist Big Brother still wields cultural authority waaaay beyond their electoral performance.

I think the Trump administration just assumed that, because Bibi is charismatic, he could lead the media cycle and deliver headlines like Trump.

But the same crazy Lefties who used their media position to politicize the hostages and make them a central, divisive issue of the war – while deflecting attention from the failure of Osla and its feckless generals – are just waiting to politicize the “genocide” of Hamas and turn it into another Sabra/Shatila – an artificial Vietnam-type “failure” created by hostile media.

It seems to me like DJT and Bibi are now regrouping… this does not seem like a planned waiting period in an overarching strategy. I hope I’m wrong…. maybe they have a plan. Maybe they are running down the clock to thin out the population in Gaza (there are steady streams of refugees slipping into Egypt and other havens).

I doubt such can truly work in the West, because of the left. But material support can be shut off.

If Trump is able to limit material support for Hamas the fact that Hamas doesn’t want peace can be managed. Terror and fighting won’t end but if events go against Hamas every time they act out progress can be made.

A hostage has a name. A face. A family.
The soldiers who will die for what was given up have none of those yet. And will be part of thesethingshappen.

I addressed those issues in this recent post.

People tend to ignore that Hamas has governed Gaza in a coalition government, and has fought the war as a coalition. It may be the kind of coalition we saw in totalitarian one party state systems like the “coalition parties” in North Korea, where they exist as basically sock puppets of the dominant one, but they exist (and generally moreso). Balestinian Islamic Jihad claims to represent a purer interpretation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza and the Levant. And of course there are those darlings of the foreign left the “Democratic Front for the Liberation of Balestine”/DFLB/DFLP and the “People’s Front for the Liberation of Balestine”/PFLB/PFLP, as well as a host of lesser mostly Fatah schisms like the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. All of these groups have engaged in terrorism, mass murder, mass rape, kidnapping, and other crimes against humanity and the rules of war, and many of them were part of Hamas’s coalition rule in Gaza after its purge of Fatah. Moreover Hamas has used their semi independent nature and identity as a means of plausible deniability by giving them custody of hostages so it can claim it did not know the location or status of them all (and at times that might even have been true) and as backdoors to restart things. They should be viewed as just as guilty of this as Hamas and just as necessary to be destroyed for justice and peace, because if overlooked in favor of just fixating on Hamas they will spawn again.

This is leaving aside the significant atrocities of “civilians” which while ginned up by Hamas and its allies and planned by them cannot entirely exonerate the participants or society at large, even if I am inclined to be somewhat more lenient or slow to judge given the intentional level of control and terror Hamas etc Al did.

Dishonorable mention should go to the likes of Fatah, Egypt, and others which while not directly allied with or fighting alongside or under Hamas have played a sick double game almost as much as Qatar and so of simultaneously condemning Hamas etc Al and apologizing for it while condemning Israel.

Hamas is the prime culprit of this atrocity and this front of the war, with perhaps main dispute being over the level of premeditation by Iran. But we should not let the other participants off any more than an accounting of the Holocaust should overlook the involvement of say Vichy, the Ustasha, the Arrow Cross, and so on, or those of the Cold War should ignore the Khmer Rouge, North Korea, Castro’s Cuba, and so on.

Unless this is confronted and the ideologies behind this and the groups championing them be identified and destroyed, this will be kicking the can further. That doesn’t mean it should not be done, just that it will not be sufficient.

Israel has to quit mucking around with their cut-throat internal politics and get serious about “never such innocence again” or the cycle WILL start again.

I know Paul was using the West and East German examples without regard to the cardinal directions, but Israel would be safer if the “East German” Hamas-niks were on the WEST side of the strip. It’s an awfully narrow space for that to work out, even if some of the clans opt to be the “West Germans” (per Lee Also’s observation).

I would think ousting Hamas completely, per Art Deco’s recommendation, is the only viable option for an “everlasting peace” (harsh but true).

Neo is right that we don’t know what all of Trump’s back-room deals in the region entail, but we do know that he does NOT respond favorably to people who spurn his peace deals.

And a macabre question: Trump said “Hamas is going to have to start returning the bodies of the deceased hostages,” which is a highly-valued objective of Israel and the affected families.
I know that ordinarily Jews do not embalm bodies, but bury them as soon as possible after death (and many additional traditional rituals as well). Do Muslims embalm bodies, and did Hamas embalm the dead hostages?
Given that no one seems to have been “in charge” of the entire group, dead and alive (or at least Hamas wants us to think that), what condition have the bodies been in when returned?

I was interested to see that the traditions are quite similar for both religions, perhaps there is a connection because of the necessities of desert living in earlier eras.

https://www.funeralbasics.org/jewish-funeral-customs/
https://blogs.mittarv.com/muslim-funeral-traditions-etiquette/

The bodies have always been returned in coffins, and forensic identification has concluded twice that the alleged person was not the one in the coffin. TOI says that Hamas claims they are having to dig bodies out of rubble (Israel’s fault of course!), so I’m assuming most of the remains are not, shall we say, intact.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-believes-hamas-could-return-most-deceased-hostages-argues-it-is-breaching-deal/

This is Secretary Rubio’s latest statement, it’s blunt to say the least.
I think he has been a really good fit for this office; I was iffy about him as President, although still preferable to ANY Democrat and a lot of Republicans.

https://nypost.com/2025/10/25/world-news/rubio-vows-to-return-bodies-of-all-dead-hostages-as-israeli-officials-hope-hamas-returns-two-more-on-sunday-we-will-not-rest/
“team from Egypt entered the Gaza Strip to sift through the rubble to help locate their remains.

Rubio was in Jerusalem to meet with families of dual US-Israeli citizens Itay Chen, 19, and Omer Neutra, 21 — slain hostages whose bodies are still located somewhere inside the Palestinian enclave.”

One of the more craven responses by Biden Inc in 2023 was their desultory actions about retrieving American citizens, even back when most of them were still alive.

This is a more extensive report on Rubio’s visit to Israel.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/rubio-at-gaza-ceasefire-hq-israel-has-met-its-commitments-hamas-must-disarm/

More on the peace deal itself, the progress so far, and the setbacks and roadblocks ahead.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-weighs-which-sides-red-line-to-cross-as-it-seeks-to-implement-gaza-deals-2nd-phase/