Hamas’ recent rejection of the U.S.-backed Gaza ceasefire and hostage agreement is not surprising. Despite wishful thinking from some Biden administration officials, alleviating the suffering in Gaza is not a priority for Yehya Sinwar, the architect of the October 7 massacre. Hamas’ military leader is well aware that the war he started has stirred up virulent anti-Israel sentiment around the world.
Sinwar also knows that a pause in the fighting won't stop Israel from ousting him from the government. After a prisoner exchange, Israel could resume its campaign to eliminate Hamas. If Sinwar and his lieutenants defect to another country, as Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat did in Tunisia in 1982, Israeli intelligence could track them down. For now, Hamas has little incentive to retreat.
What's surprising is that the Biden administration has put so much effort into that failed diplomacy approach, and appears to be toeing the same line now. At a press conference on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken questioned whether Hamas was “moving in good faith” (do you think it was?), but said they were still “committed to closing the gap” in the negotiations.
How? Israel has a political and strategic need to eliminate Hamas as a fighting force in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has an existential need to survive for the next battle as the winds of international opinion increasingly favor it. The Biden administration appears to have labored for months under the assumption that this contradiction could be circumvented with sufficiently careful diplomacy. The result has been a predictable series of failed ceasefires.
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It's time for President Biden to stop trying to bridge an unbridgeable gap and use his power to force one side to submit to America's will. That means either fully supporting Israel's military objective of wiping out Hamas or openly calling for an end to the war that has given Hamas power. Biden has resisted taking either side out of political calculation, but his painful diplomatic tightrope has reached its limit.
The first option would be the natural one: Biden could declare: “My Administration has been trying for months to secure a generous ceasefire offer with Israel. We had hoped for good faith from Hamas' leadership, but Hamas' latest refusal has dashed those hopes. Israel now fully supports the military objectives of destroying Hamas' military capacity, killing its leadership, and disarming the entire Gaza Strip, no matter how long it takes. Sinwal, listen to me: You missed the best offer ever.”
As long as Israel continues its military operations, Hamas may accept a hostage deal — not because it wants peace, but because its leaders are under siege and need a pause in the fighting to flee for their lives. Biden could hasten that day by stopping to flaunt the possibility of increasingly favorable terms for terror groups.
The second option is to try to force Israel into a permanent ceasefire while Hamas remains the governing force in Gaza. Biden could declare: “This war has gone on for too long, and too many innocent people have been killed. Yes, Hamas has rejected my agreement to cease fighting, but that is because they believe Israel will resume the war after it stops. So I promise Hamas that I will not allow Israel to resume the war. If Israel resumes the war, I will cut off military supplies and end diplomatic support to Hamas.”
Another way Hamas could agree to a hostage deal would be if it was persuaded that a pause in the fighting would lead to a permanent end to Israeli attacks, giving it a chance to be reborn and lead the Palestinian cause.
Hamas is already preparing for a post-war settlement along those lines. As a report from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy explains, the terror group is vigorously building the institutional foundations to participate in a new Palestinian government. Hamas is more popular than rival Fatah and remains the most armed group in Gaza. Biden will have to defend Hamas' continued dominance of Gaza politics as the price of tough measures to force Israel to end the war.
Either option — going all out to destroy Hamas or forcing Israel to allow Hamas to continue in power — can be justified by some sense of justice and morality. And both would be politically difficult for Biden: the former would further infuriate vocal critics on the anti-Israel left, while the latter would invite a bipartisan backlash even fiercer than when Israel threatened to lay down its arms if it entered the Hamas stronghold of Rafah.
But as the Israel-Gaza war drags on, some say Biden's current triangulation, ineffectual exhortations, and endless failed negotiations are politically most harmful and least moral. The time has come for Biden to choose, and to defend politically: Israel's terms or Sinwar's terms.
