Former Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum told Newsmax on Wednesday the big reason Iranian-backed terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas are reaching out for peace deals is because they know President-elect Donald Trump will be less sympathetic to their cause than the Biden administration.
A ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah took effect earlier Wednesday after more than a year since Hezbollah began firing rockets from southern Lebanon into northern Israel following Hamas' terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel responded by wiping out all of Hezbollah's senior leadership — many through exploding pagers — as well as destroying most of its missile-launching capacity.
Now there are reports that Hamas wants to negotiate a ceasefire in Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip, which began after the terrorist attack.
"The only incentive that these people have for a ceasefire is that they've been beaten," Hassan-Nahoum told "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" and guest host Bianca de la Garza. "So in terms of Hamas, we've managed to get rid of all of the senior leadership.
"We've managed to destroy about 70 to 80% of their soldiers, their terrorists, and a lot of their armaments, and infrastructure. It's basically lawless now at the moment in the Gaza Strip; they've lost control.
"And there they want a ceasefire because at the moment they're begging for survival. And that's taken us a long time to get to this point."
"Not only that, the fact that Trump is going to be in office on January, the 20th, is the biggest incentive of all, because they know that he's going to be a lot less sympathetic to their cause than the Biden administration."
Reaching a peace deal with Hezbollah could help President Joe Biden's pursuit of salvaging his legacy regarding the Middle East. The issue, Hassan-Nahoum said, is that Biden kept the same policy as his former boss, Barack Obama, in regard to dealing with Middle East issues.
"I hope he wants to salvage some of his legacy. I really do, because that will be good for the Middle East," Hassan-Nahoum said.
"The problem with the Obama doctrine, which unfortunately remained in the Biden administration, is to try and appease Iran, a brutal Islamic fundamentalist regime, which is exporting terrorism and has created proxies all around them that have attacked Israel.
"That's why we're in a seven-front war. It doesn't work."
"Appeasing — as [Winston] Churchill used to say, feeding a crocodile, hoping you will get eaten last — is really not the way forward," she said, "and that is the legacy of Obama's Middle East policy that saw him abandoning allies and strengthening rivals and enemies."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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