ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Trump’s Peace Plan Succeeds Because Of Israel’s Military Victories

President Trump’s brilliant diplomacy has resulted in freeing the hostages and implementing a ceasefire. If the truce persists, it will be a great accomplishment and an important step toward peace — if only a cold peace — in the region.

It might also provide a stepping stone to a more enduring and somewhat warmer peace. Mr. Trump deserves enormous credit for his role in putting together a coalition of Arab and Muslim states and in pressuring both sides to accept what they each understandably regard as compromises.

It is important to note, though, that Israel’s decisive military victories in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran were the essential prerequisite to Mr. Trump’s accomplishments. These victories, which were extremely costly to both sides in human lives, made it possible to pressure Hamas to accept an agreement which many Hamas supporters regard as near-suicidal to the organization.

Because of Israel’s spectacular military accomplishments, Hamas lost the support of its major allies, especially Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran. It was also in the process of losing support among Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, because of the enormous toll the war, started by Hamas, exacted from civilians. Without Israel’s military successes combined with Mr. Trump’s diplomatic pressures, Hamas would still be fighting, the hostages would still be in Gaza tunnels, and there would be more bloodshed and death on both sides.

Had Israel followed the terrible advice it was offered by the Biden administration, by the New York Times’s opinion pages including the nearly always-wrong Thomas Friedman, by American left-wing academics, by CNN pundits, and by others who counseled “restraint,” Israel would not have entered Rafah.

Israel, too, would have abandoned the Philadelphi corridor; it would never have bombed Iranian nuclear facilities; it would not have aggressively gone after Hezbollah and other Iranian surrogates in the region; and it would have agreed to a cease-fire on disadvantageous terms.

Even if it had followed this awful advice, the anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrations around the world would not have diminished, because they were not designed to help Palestinians, but rather to hurt the nation-state of the Jewish people. Israel was wise to ignore the ignorant and bigoted condemnation and name calling that it has endured since October 7. It was wise to focus on the only thing its enemies in the middle east understand, and that is victory through strength.