EDITORIAL: Egyptian diplomat says the obvious about Hamas out loud

Egypt’s top diplomat delivered a blunt assessment last week of the turmoil in the Middle East. Deluded apologists protesting in the United States and elsewhere in support for Hamas terrorists should pay heed.

Speaking in Germany at a security conference on Saturday, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry criticized Hamas. “The organization is outside the Palestinian consensus,” he said, the Jerusalem Post reported, “which recognizes Israel and wants to reach negotiations with it, because (Hamas) is not ready to give up its support for violence.”

He also said his nation had “no intention of providing safe areas” in Egyptian territory “for the Palestinians” if Israel launches an offensive in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, but “we will deal with it with the necessary humanity.”

Mr. Shoukry’s comments highlight two points. First, Hamas’ stated goal of using its barbaric Oct. 7 attack on Israel to push the Arab world to stand alongside the terror group in an effort to eradicate the Jewish state have failed. Second, the remarks vindicate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stance that a negotiated cease-fire with Hamas would only embolden the terror group.

Egypt has been involved in negotiations between Israel and Hamas to end the hostilities. But Mr. Shoukry is acknowledging that Hamas would use any cessation of violence to simply recover and reload before eventually resuming its savage attacks on Israel. Hamas leaders have publicly proclaimed that they plan to carry out more massacres like the one that provoked the current fighting and left 1,200 innocent Israelis dead.

“I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us,” Taher El-Nounou, a Hamas media adviser, told The New York Times in November.

This is the context in which President Joe Biden — desperate to appease the hard-left activists who now dominate the Democratic Party — leans on Mr. Netanyahu to temper his nation’s military response and to take extraordinary measures to minimize civilian casualties.

As Mr. Shoukry so aptly noted, Hamas remains wedded to violence and the elimination of Israel. Until the terror group recognizes that this strategy will lead it to ruin and violates civilized norms — and it would help if more Arab leaders exhibited Mr. Shoukry’s political courage — Israel has every right to take up arms against those who kill its civilians and threaten its very existence.

Egypt has now implicitly acknowledged this. How about the Biden administration?