If October 7 changed the way Israel sees Hamas, the Iranian attack over the weekend may have changed the way Hamas sees its leverage now. Their latest proposal for a cease-fire certainly implies it, coming just hours after the massive aerial attack. Hamas has not just rejected the US-drafted proposal for a 10:1 swap ratio but now refuse to swap at all until Israel withdraws from Gaza cities entirely.
Has their leverage really increased that much? Or at all?
Having rejected the terms of last week’s Cairo proposal for a hostage-truce deal, the Hamas terror group on Sunday reportedly presented mediators with a proposal of its own that requires Israel to end the war in the first, six-week phase of a three-phase process. No hostages would be freed in those first six weeks. Rather, all the hostages would be freed over the second and third phases, each of them also lasting six weeks, in…
