President Biden Underestimates Hamas

When President Biden spoke at the White House last Friday about his version of Israel's proposed ceasefire, I was most struck by what he said about Hamas:

The people of Israel should know they can make this offer without any further risk to their own security because they’ve devastated Hamas form- — forces over the past eight months.  At this point, Hamas no longer is capable of carrying out another October 7th, (italics mine) which — one of the Israelis’ main objective in this war and, quite frankly, a righteous one.

This is a rather bold statement from President Biden and an enormously risky one to make. Let's keep in mind, it was President Biden who said it was not inevitable the Taliban would take over Afghanistan. Not only did the Taliban take over Afghanistan, but it did so two weeks before U.S. forces were due to withdraw. 

Now, where it concerns Hamas, it is certainly possible that Biden might be correct to say that Hamas couldn't carry out another October 7th attack today. But what about the next six months? Or to be more precise the next five months and two days?

Suppose Israel and Hamas negotiate a ceasefire and sometime between now and November 5th, Hamas launches yet another attack on Israel - this one more deadly. Or what if Hamas decides to attack the U.S. be it on U.S. soil (as it has threatened to do) or U.S. interests such as an embassy or a consulate killing Americans in the process?

Should that come to pass then Biden can just hand over the White House keys to Donald Trump.

Hamas is going to do what it has always done - regroup and rearm. 

Hamas has proclaimed it will repeat the acts of October 7th as many times as necessary until Israel is no more. 

While President Biden's proposal is based on Israel's proposal the one major difference is that Biden, who at the outset of the war compared Hamas to ISIS, would effectively allow Hamas to live to commit another massacre another day. This means more hostages, more rapes and more death with Hamas taking comfort in the knowledge the U.S. will prevent Israel from retaliating as it sees fit.

Mind you, I say all this as someone who does not want a second Trump presidency under any circumstances. Frankly, I have no more confidence that Trump could handle Hamas than Biden. If Trump was willing to recognize the Taliban, then why wouldn't he recognize Hamas? Yet it is abundantly clear that President Biden is underestimating Hamas just as he underestimated the Taliban. 

Should Israel enter into a ceasefire with Hamas and Hamas launches a major attack against Israel prior to the 2024 election then it will demonstrate not only that President Biden hasn't learned anything from Afghanistan, but that he insists on learning the hard way if at all.