The editors of the New York Sun consider Hizballah’s recent strike on the Golan Heights, which caused the most Israeli casualties since October 7, and America’s response:

The attack on Majdal Shams throws into sharp relief the error of the Biden administration’s headlong hunt for a ceasefire, which would amount to a reprieve for Hamas and Hizballah. An American official tells Axios that “What happened today could be the trigger we have been worried about and tried to avoid for ten months.” A better worry would have been how to help Israel achieve victory over its foes.

The White House calls the attack “horrific,” but more telling will be whether it backs Israel’s response. If the past is prelude, President Biden—and Vice-President Harris—will seek to restrain the IDF in favor of Hizballah. Ms. Harris’s harsh words for Israel last week suggest that she has little enough appetite for one conflict, let alone two. Mr. Biden has sought to suppress a war, but Hizballah has been emboldened. That is often the price of appeasement.

Indeed, it seems that the president’s one-word warning to Hizballah in October—“Don’t”—has not been taken to heart.

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.