On Wednesday the State Department, invoking the sort of language usually employed for acts of terror, “strongly condemned” an Israeli announcement that 98 houses would be built in the West Bank town of Shiloh. The condemnation is hardly coherent, and Jonathan Tobin suspects ulterior motives:

The new homes do not constitute a “new” settlement by any reasonable definition. They are within the municipal boundaries of Shiloh, a sizable settlement that dates back to the 1970s, not last week. . . .

What’s more, the administration knows very well the need to put those houses there stems not from an expansionist urge but from a desire to uphold the law and eliminate settlements that were built without the sanction of Israeli law. The new homes in Shiloh are part of a compromise solution that would allow the Israeli government to evict settlers from Amona, a settlement built on land owned by Palestinians rather than public or Jewish-owned land, as is the case with legal West Bank Jewish communities like Shiloh. The courts have ruled that the Amona settlers have to go, and it’s necessary that the government provide them with a place to go to.

What Prime Minister Netanyahu is doing here happens to be exactly what the Americans want him to do in tearing down Amona, so it’s more than a little disingenuous of President Obama to treat this decision as an insult or an effort to flout Washington’s wishes [as the administration has claimed]. . . . .

If there is anything suspicious about the timing, it relates to the Americans’ manufactured umbrage. If the president is planning on leaving office with one final, devastating parting shot at Israel and Netanyahu, he needs a [pretext] to justify betraying an ally at a United Nations that is already prejudiced against Israel and riddled with anti-Semitism. The real story isn’t Netanyahu’s alleged insult but what might be Obama’s careful planning for a devastating blow to the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.