Frederica Mogherini, the EU’s top diplomat, has just declared the importance of creating “a more positive environment” in which negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority can begin again. Elliott Abrams writes:

What is the European Union’s reaction to [the chaos in the Middle East]? To focus on the single aspect of Middle Eastern affairs that is right now calm, and to intervene in ways likely to reduce the calm and create more turbulence. You’ve probably guessed it: fresh from the great and historic victory in the Iran nuclear deal, they now turn once again to the Israeli-Palestinian situation.

European leaders have been discussing replacing the Quartet, which consists of the UN, Russia, the EU, and the United States, with some new mechanism.

This would be sensible if there were the slightest indication that there has been no progress in the “peace process” due to failures of the Quartet mechanism. Perhaps it works too slowly, or isn’t persuasive enough, or something like that. But that is false, and clearly any new mechanism that includes only the EU but not the United States will have little clout. It also appears that the history of the last decade is unknown to EU leaders. In that decade PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas first said no to then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s peace offer after the Annapolis conference, and Abbas then refused to engage in the negotiations with Israel that Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama were trying to arrange.

Ron Ben-Yishai explains Hamas’s current calculations:

Strategically speaking, Hamas is hoping to add more and more days to the pause currently in effect, setting a new reality in stone, one which will convince the United States to get Israel to end the war. At the same time, they still have most of the hostages hidden in every underground crevice they could find, and hope to exchange those with as many Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners currently in Israeli prisons, planning on “revitalizing” their terrorist inclinations to even the odds against the seemingly unstoppable Israeli war machine.

Chances are that if pressured to do so by Qatar and Egypt, they will release men over 60 with the same “three-for-one” deal they’ve had in place so far, but when Israeli soldiers are all they have left to exchange, they are unlikely to extend the arrangement, instead insisting that for every IDF soldier released, thousands of their people would be set free.

In one of his last speeches prior to October 7, the Gaza-based Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar said, “remember the number one, one, one, one.” While he did not elaborate, it is believed he meant he wants 1,111 Hamas terrorists held in Israel released for every Israeli soldier, and those words came out of his mouth before he could even believe he would be able to abduct Israelis in the hundreds. This added leverage is likely to get him to aim for the release for all prisoners from Israeli facilities, not just some or even most.