The appointment of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense has ushered in a major shakeup at the Pentagon, although it remains unclear what the long-term effects will be. Aharon J. Friedman and Allan Barall suggest that now would be a good time for rethinking the military’s approach to preventing civilian casualties, and in particular its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), advanced by the former secretary of defense Lloyd Austin:

The focus on civilian harm is all-encompassing, drawing in virtually every civilian office and military command. The Department of Defense explicitly recognized the new constraints go beyond international law, but it nonetheless used them to tie the hands of our soldiers.

The CHMR-AP also attempts similarly to handcuff America’s allies, including with civilian-harm baseline assessments of allies and partners (CBAPs), and it requires the Defense Security Cooperation Agency to incorporate the new guidance in working with our allies. . . . President Biden held up munitions to Israel because Israel had not refrained from attacking Hamas when it committed the war crime of using human shields; Trump released those munitions.

The guidance completely ignores the reality that civilians are harmed in U.S. military operations primarily because our enemies use human shields—a term that does not even appear in the guidance. The myopic focus on preventing civilian harm by America’s warfighters will likely lead to greater civilian harm in the long run because it encourages our enemies to increase use of human shields.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.