Hamas knew the consequences of not releasing the hostages – and now it is paying the price

And it's not just been Israel making it clear that if Hamas refused to release more hostages then there would indeed be consequences; it has been the President of the United States, too, who could not have been clearer.

On 5 March he said: “I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don't do as I say.” There would, he continued, be "hell to pay" if the hostages were not released: “Release all of the hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you. For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance."

That brings us to the second key point: Joe Biden is no longer president. The former president repeatedly constrained Israel from taking the full, necessary action against Hamas. Donald Trump, in contrast, is giving Israel what seems to be unlimited support. (That’s a point that goes wider than just Gaza: the US’s recent strikes on the Houthis and Trump’s statement yesterday on Iran are a welcome change from the Biden administration’s attempts to appease Iran.)

Yesterday it emerged that Israeli intelligence believed Hamas was planning some sort of repeat of October 7 by breaking through the border. Israel saw the consequences of doing nothing on October 7. No nation could stand by and allow a deadly enemy to regroup, especially when the threat is immediate.

But most of the reporting of the overnight strikes ignores all of this and simply regurgitates Hamas’ propaganda. The Times’ website, for example, is leading at the moment with “Israel-Gaza ceasefire broken as ‘404 Palestinians killed’ by strikes”. As has been the case from day one of Israel’s military operation, Hamas’ figures are repeated as fact with no caveats beyond the formulaic statement by some media that the figures come from the Hamas-controlled health ministry.

But as Seth Frantzman has pointed out today: “The Hamas health ministry claims ‘more than 400 killed’…how is this plausible when the strikes last night were limited and as far as I can tell they have not continued much throughout the day? This death toll is similar to the ones claimed at the most intense days of the war. Now is a good opportunity to do real fact checking here. This is quantifiable. You have less than 12 hours of airstrikes. You have a period you can quantify and strikes you can quantify. Let’s see.”

It’s not just the casualty figures. You can read the entire story and be entirely unaware that the strikes were targeted at – and reportedly successful in killing – senior Hamas figures including Brigadier General Bahjat Abu Sultan, its head of central operations in the Gaza Interior Ministry, Major General Mahmoud Abu Watfa, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Interior, and Issam al-Da’alis, who was the king of spades in the playing card pack of Hamas targets which Israel produced for troops at the start of the war.

Israel is also reported to have destroyed Hamas command centres. The resumed Israeli strikes are not difficult to understand. The ceasefire had a purpose: the release of the hostages. Hamas decided to stop further releases, which meant the ceasefire was over.