President addresses the Knesset; declares 'the war is over' on the day phase one of the deal begins.

Listen. Listen. I am not going to take a victory lap away from a man for getting a hostage deal. The hostage deal is good. Twenty living people walked out of tunnels this week. Their families slept Tuesday night. That is real. The Egyptians and the Qataris worked the back channels for months. That is real too. I will give the President his due on the part of this where he twisted the right arms in the right rooms and got the right twenty signatures.

OK. That said. Now. Pay attention.

He stood in the Knesset on Monday afternoon and he told the legislators, on television, in the official voice of the United States, that “the war is over.” He said it twice. He said “the historic dawn of a new Middle East.” He got, by the count of the press pool, twenty-six standing ovations across an hour and twelve minutes. The man left the chamber and got back on Air Force One and flew to Egypt to sign the document.

Buddy. Phase one is the part of the document that exists.

Phase one is: twenty hostages back, two thousand prisoners released, an Israeli pullback to a designated line, a 72-hour clock. That is in writing. That is what got signed in Sharm el-Sheikh on the next day.

Phase two is: governance of Gaza, the disarmament of the militants, the path to a Palestinian state, the reconstruction money, the security architecture for the people who are still going to live there. That is not in writing. That is sticky notes on a refrigerator. That is a future memo. That is twenty different countries with twenty different opinions about what comes after the pullback line.

And the President of the United States, with phase one not yet executed and phase two not yet drafted, walked into the Knesset and said the war is over. The war that has gone for two years. The war that, the moment phase two falls apart, will start again, in the same neighborhoods, with the same bombs, with the same families.

I have run a casino floor. The deal is not over when one side stops shooting. The deal is over when both sides stop shooting and the security on the floor agrees on the rules going forward. He skipped that part of the speech.

I’m arguing with the television. The television is in Hebrew, and the subtitles are five seconds late.