The Trump admin­is­tra­tion's cap­ture of Venezuelan dic­tator Nicolás Maduro on Sat­urday was a US vic­tory on two fronts: the war on drugs and the great-power com­pet­i­tion with China and Rus­sia.

For years, the war on drugs has been fought at home, primar­ily with slo­gans, aimed at chan­ging the beha­vior of Amer­ican cit­izens.

Pres­id­ent Trump upen­ded that feck­less approach in 2025 when he began bomb­ing the narco-ves­sels bring­ing drugs to the United States.

His strategy was con­tro­ver­sial, to put it mildly: Even strong pro­ponents of the US mil­it­ary and fierce oppon­ents of the nar­cok­ing­pins were alarmed by Amer­ica's use of force in the Carib­bean Basin.

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Ezzat al-Reshq, a spokesman for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, denied reports Saturday that his group was walking away from the Gaza cease-fire brokered by President Trump.

Al-Reshq's statement came amidst a flurry of news out of Gaza.

It began when a Hamas fighter crossed the "yellow line" that marks the frontier between Hamas-controlled territory and the parts of Gaza that Israel controls. The Hamasnik was neutralized. Consistent with past Hamas violations of cease-fires, the Israelis then struck five senior Hamas officials across the Gaza Strip.

Whether or not Hamas officially exits the 20-point Trump plan, enshrined as UN Security Council Resolution 2803 last week, the deal is holding on by a thread.

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By its nature, war imposes incalculable costs. There is no way to put a price on the tragic loss of a son, a daughter, a parent, or a spouse. Nor is there any good way to measure the psychological costs of war, either on those who bear its burdens directly or those who live with secondary effects. When we hear that Hamas's October 7 massacre was the proportional equivalent of fifteen 9/11s — or that the death toll of 900 Israeli soldiers killed in two years of fighting is proportionally four times that of the U.S. military in 20 years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan combined — it still fails to convey the depth of Israel's suffering.

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Behold, the Guardian of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. —PSALM 121:4

The last live hostages are out of Gaza. Hamas is battered and bloodied. Indeed, all of Israel's regional foes are worse off than they were two years ago. President Donald Trump has declared the Middle East to be at peace. But the guardians of Israel know that's not true. There is still some fighting left, both out in the open and in the shadows. It is important now for Israel to lock in the gains from these grueling two years of war.

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Khalil Al-Hayya made his first public appearance on Saturday night. The chief Hamas negotiator, who is also described by the terrorist organization as the leader of Hamas in Gaza, looked less than excited to be featured on Qatari television. He lost his son, Humam, when the Israeli Air Force, in partnership with the Shin Bet, struck an apartment building in the heart of Doha on September 9.

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