Imagine that, as seems likely, those efforts are arrested. What will happen? I don’t know the whole picture, but it’s dead certain that Donald Trump will say: “You see, I brokered peace between Israel and some gulf states. And look at Sleepy, Crooked Joe. The whole region’s a disaster again, and it’s all his fault.”
Naturally, it is not all Biden’s fault. Trump’s Abraham Accords were one of the few good things his administration accomplished. But Saudi Arabia is a much bigger boulder to push up the hill than Bahrain, and some real progress was apparently being made in the talks. Now that process is probably in tatters. Many will believe Trump’s assessment, because it sounds simple and seductive.
I don’t know how much thought Hamas’s leaders gave to domestic U.S. politics before they launched this offensive. But I bet they gave the topic some consideration. They are corrupt, destructive, violent people, and like all corrupt, destructive, violent people around the world, they presumably want Trump back in the White House. This is partly because he’s a corrupt, destructive, violent kindred spirit. And it’s partly because they know, as Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin know, that Trump will bring more chaos and instability—and chaos and instability, particular in the United States, are exactly what they want.