Will Hamas Sink Trump’s Gaza Deal?

There’s a difference between keeping peace in Gaza and enforcing it, King Abdullah of Jordan told the BBC on Monday. “If it’s ‘peace enforcing,’ nobody will want to touch that,” he said. “If we’re running around Gaza on patrol with weapons, that’s not a situation that any country would like to get involved in.”

The Saudis and Emiratis have said as much privately. The more Hamas restores its power, the more these Arab powers back away.

The terrorists know this and are dragging out the return of the dead hostages to create a fait accompli in Gaza. On Monday they gave not a new body, as the deal requires, but only missing parts from a hostage’s body that Israel had already retrieved in 2023.

An Israeli drone watched as Hamas dug a hole in Gaza City, dumped the hostage’s partial remains from a nearby building, buried it under mounds of earth and then staged a discovery for the Red Cross. The video footage is grim.

Gaza’s demilitarization can’t wait for Hamas to dribble out an arm or a leg a week. By that point it would be too late for an international force, which would be little more than a fig leaf for Hamas’s power. Demilitarization needs to proceed with the return of the slain hostages.

This requires Israeli military action, which resumed after the Hamas shooting Tuesday. Israeli forces may take some more territory from Hamas for now, but the pressing need is for regular intervention to pressure Hamas and disrupt its reconstitution.

The main virtue of the Trump plan was its realism, which dictated that Hamas free all the hostages up front and leave Israel in half of Gaza until Hamas disarmed. This way, when Hamas inevitably reneged on the peace plan, Israel would be in position to enforce it. If, however, the plan is to restrain Israel even while Hamas violates the deal and no stabilization force is ready, it will fail.

Economic development alone won’t defeat Palestinian terrorism. That was the “New Middle East” idea of former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in the 1990s. It exploded in the suicide bombings of the Second Intifada (2000-05).

Mr. Trump seemed to recognize the risk on Saturday, when he gave Hamas 48 hours to comply with its obligations. Hamas blew past the deadline without consequence and now, in shooting again at Israelis, it flaunts its disregard for Mr. Trump’s deal. The President can let Israel enforce it or watch it sink.