A deal filled with unhatched chickens

Almost from the moment it was announced on October 9th, Jews around the world have been celebrating the “historic” agreement between Israel and Hamas to free the hostages and end the war in Gaza. We should be thankful that the hostages have been freed, but celebrating this agreement is premature, and it may also violate Jewish law. We will get to that.

This agreement in chief lacks real substance. Moreover, the events that led to it should seriously concern us.

Those events go back to September 9, when Israel launched an airstrike over Doha, the Qatari capital, targeting a residential complex where several senior leaders of Hamas were meeting at the time. Six people were killed, including a Qatari security guard, but the Hamas leaders survived.

In response to the international outpouring of criticism that followed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the attack because it put all Islamic terrorist groups on notice that there was no place they could hide from Israeli retaliation. He also issued a warning “to Qatar and all nations who harbor terrorists: You either expel them, or you bring them to justice — because if you don’t, we will.”

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Trump, who had said he was “very unhappy about every aspect” of the Doha airstrike, made Netanyahu eat his words on September 29, during Bibi’s visit to the White House. He excoriated Bibi and then forced him to get on the telephone then and there, to read a scripted apology that the White House had prepared with help from Qatari officials. It expressed “deep regret” that a Qatari soldier was killed, apologized for violating Qatar’s sovereignty, and pledged never again to conduct such an attack on Qatari soil.

That, however, was nothing compared to what Trump did next. He signed Executive Order 14353, “Assuring the Security of the State of Qatar,” which was meant as a not very well veiled warning to Israel — a warning unlike anything coming from a U.S. president since the State was established in 1948.

According to the order’s preamble, it was issued “in light of the continuing threats to the State of Qatar posed by foreign aggression,” which was why “it is the policy of the United States to guarantee the security and territorial integrity of the State of Qatar against external attack.”

Section 2(a) explicitly declares that the United States “shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.” Section 2(b) commits the United States to respond in every “lawful and appropriate” way, including militarily, “to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”

In other words, any future military action inside Qatari territory now carries the risk of a direct U.S. armed response. That makes this order a gift to terrorists who could flee to Qatar whenever they need to avoid Israeli retaliation, thus nullifying Bibi’s no-place-to-hide threat.

The reason most of us know nothing about Executive Order 14353 is deliberate. News of it was released just a few hours before Yom Kippur began on October 1. It was officially published in the Federal Register on October 6, just hours before the start of Sukkot on the one hand, and preparations for October 7 memorial ceremonies on the other. It was totally obscured on October 8, when the news broke that Israel and Hamas were about to take “the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace…,” in Trump’s words. “This is a GREAT Day for the Arab and Muslim World, Israel, all surrounding Nations, and the United States of America.” [Emphases are Trump’s.]

Experts agree, however, that the deal is nothing of the sort. Retired U.S. Army Four-Star Gen. Barry McCaffrey is one such expert. He served in uniform for 32 years before retiring in 1996, when he stepped down as the head of the U.S. Southern Command. In McCaffrey’s opinion, “This is not peace — this is the absence of war.”

Following the Doha airstrike, Trump decided to ramp up the pressure on Netanyahu to end the war. In effect, he basically decided to blackmail Netanyahu into accepting whatever was put on the peace table by issuing Executive Order 14353. It was Trump’s way of telling Netanyahu that unless he did what he was being told to do, it would not go well for Israel, because in the Middle East, Israel was no longer the only game in town. Trump strongly hinted at this at other recent times, as well, including when he warned Israel that he would never allow it to annex the West Bank.

Looking realistically at the terms of the deal, such as they are, that Netanyahu was forced to accept and comparing them to his unwaveringly aggressive and consistent statements made up to his U.N. speech just three days before Trump threw him under the bus, it is easy to see just how successful the president was in twisting Israel’s prime minister around his little finger.

Consider some of the statements Netanyahu has made this year alone. In May, he said there was “no way we will stop the war” until Hamas was destroyed. In August, he said, “We will not reward terror. We will defeat it.” He also said that to halt the war “would lead to a repetition of the horrors experienced on October 7 and result in Israel facing an endless war.” At another time, he vowed that Israel will “complete the task of obliterating Hamas.”

On September 29, however, Trump turned Bibi’s bluster into worthless mush. Bibi was forced to accept Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which then led to the agreement on October 8, under which Hamas can stay in Gaza, at least for now. Also, it does not have to completely disarm, and its current leaders — the architects of October 7 — can remain in place.

Among other things, Israel must release 1,950 Palestinians, 250 of whom were convicted of committing lethal attacks on Israelis and others. Among them is the mastermind of the suicide bombing of two buses in Beersheba on August 31, 2004, which killed 16 people, including a 3-year-old boy. Another 100 were injured. This was by far the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s south until October 7.

Beyond the first phase of this deal, virtually nothing has been settled.

According to Yigal Levy, who specializes in civil-military relations, public policy, and political sociology, “Israel has agreed to a dangerous plan.” Among the reasons he gives is that its “recipe is problematic, requiring 2 million people who have been stripped of their humanity and sovereignty to obey a foreign regime.” Levy is a professor in the department of sociology, political science, and communication at the Open University of Israel.

Haaretz correspondent Jack Khoury is a much-sought-after expert in matters of Israel-Arab diplomacy. He summed up his analysis of the deal by saying that what may look like “a new beginning…may prove to be just a brief pause in a much longer story whose ending is still nowhere in sight.”

It did not take long for his words to begin to look more like a prophecy.

Last Friday, the deal that Trump said was the path to “everlasting peace” in the region became riddled with potholes and even some sinkholes:

• Hamas announced that it has no intention of disarming. Then on Sunday, Trump said that “we gave them approval for a period of time” to stay armed so that Hamas can oversee the restoration of law and order in Gaza.

• Hamas, among others, rejected any international “Board of Peace” that would oversee how Gaza would be governed, which is a key element of Trump’s 20-point peace plan. On the possible plus side, the Palestinian Authority on Sunday granted conditional approval to the oversight plan after meeting with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who would be its active leader.

• Netanyahu went on Israeli TV and repeated all his pre-deal rhetoric, including a vow to go back in and finish the job if Hamas gives him the slightest excuse.

Jewish law, for its part, takes a dim view of counting one’s chickens before they hatch, as can be seen in the concept known as “the egg that hasn’t been born” (habeitzah she-lo nolda). The concept flows from the very first debate in the Babylonian Talmud tractate Beitzah (which means “egg”). Cooking is allowed on a chag, but only those foods for which all the ingredients were readied before the festival began. The debate deals with whether an egg that was laid on a festival may be eaten even though no provision could have been made for it before the chag began. (See BT Beitzah 2a.)

As this applies to the terms of the deal, its signing marked the start of the “festival.” As such, only those resources and assets that already existed at that moment may be “cooked” (in this case, celebrated) because the “egg” itself will only be “laid” during the deal’s implementation phase. “Consuming” the egg before its “birth” — in other words, before its terms have been realized — is therefore forbidden.

“I believe it is peace in our time,” Neville Chamberlain declared on September 30, 1938, in describing the Munich Agreement he had just reached with Adolf Hitler. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland.

This is not the time to celebrate. Other talmudic principles reinforce this. Basically, they prohibit making agreements or vows based on contingencies that may never materialize. This deal is filled with requirements that may never materialize, either. There is good reason to question whether this egg will ever “get born.”

It is also time to be thankful for the return of the living hostages and to mourn the ones whom Hamas has murdered.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is www.shammai.org.