It’s bad enough that Hamas is executing people, claimed to be collaborators, in the streets of Gaza City with a bullet to the head in front of crowds. After all, how better to teach the natives to fear you and not resist than a bullet to the head?

Despite the fact that the Trump peace plan required Hamas to lay down its arms and relinquish control of Gaza, this doesn’t appear to bother Trump, who calls them “gangs” of “very bad people.”

But another prong of the peace plan is going even worse. It was integral to the scheme that Hamas return the bodies of dead hostages. That they be given proper burial is a huge issue in Judaism, and Hamas knows that. Hamas also knows that it was part of what it agreed to, and that Israel’s need for the return of the bodies of murdered hostages made the corpses very valuable commodities to Hamas. And yet, despite the agreement to return the bodies within 72 hours, Hamas has thus far managed to send Israel only 10 out of 28 bodies, only 6 of which are as yet determined to be bodies of Israeli hostages.

This isn’t the deal Israel and Hamas agreed upon.

Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, said on Wednesday night that it had handed over all of the remains of Israeli hostages that it had been able to recover without additional equipment, potentially putting a cease-fire with Israel in the Gaza Strip at risk.

In a statement, the Palestinian militant group said that it has “committed to what was agreed upon and handed over everyone it had in terms of living captives and what it had in terms of bodies that it could recover.” But it said that it needed “special equipment” to find and extract the remains of the rest of the deceased captives, adding that it was “making great efforts.”

Hamas agreed to return all the bodies. Not some, but all. This was what Hamas signed onto and, at the time it agreed, should have had some inkling of its ability to fulfill its part of the deal.

According to the terms of a cease-fire brokered by international mediators last week, Israel and Hamas would stop fighting and the militant group would return all the hostages it held — both living captives and the bodies of those who had died, totaling 48 people — in exchange for the freeing of Palestinians held by Israel, among other provisions.

It was anticipated that Hamas would be unable to return all of the bodies of dead hostages, given that most of Gaza City is rubble and there would be bodies buried. But the anticipation would be that only a few would not be immediately returned, not the majority of dead hostages. What to do?

On Wednesday, after Hamas’s announcement, the office of Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, said in a statement that he had directed the Israeli military to prepare a plan for the total defeat of Hamas in Gaza if the group did not abide by the terms of the deal unveiled by President Trump late last month, which also demanded Hamas’s disarmament.

Note that kicker at the end of the quote, for which Hamas has no excuse as it murders Palestinians who don’t support Hamas. Even if it’s plausible (it’s not) that Hamas can’t find the majority of the bodies of dead hostages and that it entered into the ceasefire plan knowing that it couldn’t perform its terms, executing Palestinians in the streets can’t be explained when its obligation is to disarm. Of course, it’s unlikely that there will be any consequences for this violation of the deal since Trump isn’t bothered by random executions.

The question raised by Hamas’s latest statement is whether Israel and the United States will interpret it as a violation of the agreement.

Mr. Trump had previously criticized Hamas on Tuesday, saying in a post on Truth Social that “the job is not done.”

“The dead have not been returned, as promised,” he wrote.

It comes as no surprise that Hamas failed to perform the terms of its agreement within days, and apparently never had any intention of satisfying its part of the deal. But this raises a difficult question. Now that the 20 living hostages have been freed, along with about 2000 Palestinian terrorists, will the world tolerate Israel returning to Gaza to try to do what most deem impossible, completely eradicate Hamas? Has Hamas done just enough to buy peace without performing the balance of the deal, including disarming and giving up control of Gaza?

Trump said that Hamas must disarm, and if they don’t, ‘we will disarm them,” violently if necessary.

Is the deal done or dead?