In 2020, Greece, Cyprus, and Israel concluded an agreement to build the EastMed pipeline, through which they could export their offshore natural-gas to Europe. Egypt, Italy, the U.S., and other countries were involved in the project, but shortly after President Biden came into office his administration withdrew its support—putting plans for construction on hold. Since Europe gets most of its gas from Russia, the lack of alternative sources of energy has suddenly become a very obvious strategic liability. Shoshana Bryen comments:

Amos Hochstein, now Biden’s senior advisor for energy security, was reported by the Jerusalem Post to have previously said he would be “extremely uncomfortable with the U.S. supporting” EastMed. “Why would we build a fossil-fuel pipeline between the EastMed and Europe when our entire policy is to support new technology . . . and new investments in going green and in going clean?”

Yet Hochstein seems less than consistent in this view:

Hochstein was recently in Lebanon and Israel, trying to resolve a long-standing maritime border dispute to enable Lebanon to take part in the natural-gas drilling and exploration revolution in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Yes, that would be the same Lebanon that is occupied by U.S.-designated terror organization and Iranian proxy Hizballah, and which has built an enormous and increasingly powerful military force aimed expressly at Israel.

To make matters worse, Hochstein has also gotten behind a plan to bring Egyptian natural gas to Lebanon via Syria, as bringing Lebanon gas from neighboring Israel is, of course, out the question. Bryen finds America’s stance “staggering.”

First, . . . that Hizballah would 100-percent rather rule a “failed state” than take gas from Israel is a given. That the U.S. government agrees with Hizballah about this is troublesome, to put it mildly. And, [what’s more], the U.S. will facilitate commerce through the criminal and sanctioned Assad regime, responsible for the deaths of an estimated half-million-plus people, including through the use of chemical weapons, rather than issue an ultimatum to Hizballah—gas from Israel or no gas at all.

For the past 36 hours, I’ve been reading and listening to analyses of the terms and implications of the recent hostage deal. More will appear in the coming days, and I’ll try to put the best of them in this newsletter. But today I want to share a comment made on Tuesday by the Palestinian analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. While he and I would probably disagree on numerous points about the current conflict, this analysis is spot on, and goes entirely against most arguments made by those who consider themselves pro-Palestinian, and certainly those chanting for a cease-fire at all costs:

When a cease-fire in Gaza is announced, Hamas’s fascists will do everything they can to frame this as the ultimate victory; they will wear their military uniforms, emerge from their tunnels, stop hiding in schools and displacement centers, and very quickly reassert their control over the coastal enclave. They’ll even get a few Gazans to celebrate and dance for them.

This, I should note, is exactly what has happened. Alkhatib continues:

The reality is that the Islamist terrorism of Hamas, masquerading as “resistance,” has achieved nothing for the Palestinian people except for billions of dollars in wasted resources and tens of thousands of needless deaths, with Gaza in ruins after twenty years following the withdrawal of settlements in 2005. . . . Hamas’s propaganda machine, run by Qatari state media, Al Jazeera Arabic, will work overtime to help the terror group turn a catastrophic disaster into a victory akin to the battles of Stalingrad and Leningrad.

Hamas will also start punishing anyone who criticized or worked against it, and preparing for its next attack. Perhaps Palestinians would have been better off if, instead of granting them a temporary reprieve, the IDF kept fighting until Hamas was utterly defeated.