Hamas Does Not Want a Ceasefire. They Want a Wider War.

We’ve just passed the first anniversary of the October 7, 2023, massacre of Jews in Israel, including women and children, by the cowardly terrorists of Hamas. Massacre does not fully describe what happened because there was rape, mutilation, and kidnapping alongside the actual killing. It was the worst one-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

Bizarrely, the reaction in much of the U.S. and around the world (including the United Nations General Assembly) has been support for Hamas and condemnation of Israel’s legitimate right of self-defense by attacking Gaza and rooting out the Hamas fighters and killing or capturing as many as possible. This Israel-Gaza war has since spread to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, Palestinians on the West Bank and attacks from Iran.

The common denominator is these new war fronts is Iran and its support of the terrorists. In turn, that support is the result of Biden-Harris policies of easing sanctions on Iran that allow it to earn billions of dollars in exports of oil and refined products.

Throughout this expanding war, we have heard continual pleas by the Biden White House for a ceasefire. There are two problems with this call for a ceasefire.

The first is that the White House has no clout. No one cares what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris think. The foreign policy team of Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan is even weaker than Biden and even less respected. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will do what he has to do to defend Israel. The U.S. is not a player because of leadership weakness and because Kamala has to play up to Arab-Americans concentrated in Detroit in order to enhance her chances of winning Michigan in the upcoming presidential election.

The other reason there won’t be a ceasefire is even more pertinent. Hamas does not want one. 

This article describes how the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is an extremist whose goal is not to end the fighting but to expand it. Sinwar wants to drive the entire Middle East into flames and involve Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and possibly others including Russia in something that would more closely resemble World War III. He knows Hamas cannot defeat Israel alone but sees Hamas as a kind of vanguard that can lead the surrounding nations into a war that might actually overwhelm Israel and give him the outcome he cannot achieve alone.

This is unlikely to happen. Iran, Syria and Russia all have far too much to lose by getting more deeply involved. Sinwar has misread the regional situation from the start and continues to do so. Unfortunately, the White House cannot see him for the psychopath he really is. That’s what happens when countries like the U.S. have no diplomatic skills at all.

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