Jim Hanson spoke w/ Blaze TV about the announced hostage and ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. He notes it is quite one-sided in Hamas’ favor but still likely to be derailed by them.
BLAZE TV: So here to break this all down for us is Jim Hanson. He’s the President of WorldStrat and the Chief Editor for Middle East Forum. So Jim, this is a hostage deal, but it’s not an end to the war.
So what should we be taking away from this right now?
HANSON: At some level, Hamas has achieved A tactical victory. They are getting an incredible amount of their own prisoners, murderers, terrorists and other reprehensible people released.
for a fairly small number of Israeli hostages.
And I think this is this is due to pressure from the Trump administration. They wanted to have a deal done, as the president so forcefully put it, before January 20th or all hell was going to break out.
BLAZE TV: What do you expect this to really just kick off a Trump administration and peace through strength?
HANSON: Enemies and tyrants around the world should be scared of the United States. If they’re not, we’re doing something wrong. And we’ve been doing something wrong for the past four years. The Biden administration has exuded weakness in every way possible. And tyrants around the world, from Putin to the Iranians to Hamas, Hezbollah, all the other proxies of the Iranian regime have taken advantage of that.
Now, before he’s even in office, from Mar-a-Lago, while playing golf, President Trump has been more substantial in forcing, you know, compliance of some sort. From our enemies.
BLAZE TV: There’s a deal that’s coming, and it’s coming because of Trump’s mere presence and words before he takes office. BBut what are the chances that this actually is signed, sealed and delivered before he takes office? And even if even if that was in some way the case, it seems to me that when he gets into the office, they might decide to fine tune some details. Because as you said in the beginning, this is actually a pretty good way for Hamas to save face.
HANSON: Yeah, It will fall apart. There’s no question. Hamas never deals straight. They have not in their entire 75 plus year history of trying to push the Jews into the sea played straight with the state of Israel.
So what will happen is there will be some hostages released, thank God, and a lot of bad people will be released for for the Palestinians. And then the next phase, after about 14, 15 days of this back and forth, Is yet to be negotiated.
So that will happen during a Trump administration. Hamas is not going to agree to the conditions required for a final agreement. And I think it’s almost certain that Israel will roll back in, finish the military activity, and then start talking about what the days after kind of governance for the Gaza Strip will look like. It will not be Hamas.
