Joe Biden is in big trouble with the radical left wing of the Democratic Party. The Democratic left has taken the Palestinian side in the war in Gaza while Biden continues to try to back Israel.
Biden is trying to play both sides against the middle by attempting to negotiate a ceasefire. But Israel and Hamas have their own agendas that have nothing to do with Biden's re-election chances and are resisting a pause in the fighting unless specific provisions can be achieved.
Israel is demanding the release of the hostages. Hamas is demanding that Israel withdraw from Gaza, among other impossible dictates. The Qatar mediators in Cairo can't bridge the gap between the two sides and Israeli negotiators have gone home.
In fact, there wasn't much of a chance for a ceasefire without significant movement by Hamas. Biden knew this when he predicted a ceasefire last week between Israel and Hamas before the end of the weekend on the "Seth Meyers Show."
He pulled the same trick the previous week before the Michigan primary. Biden said he hoped for a ceasefire "by the end of the weekend."
This is cynical politics deployed by a desperate president. Biden's playing this game to keep his left wing from bolting entirely. It's rank dishonesty and the media refuses to call Biden out for his shameful action.
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Israeli negotiators left Cairo after Hamas refused to give a list of surviving hostages. There is no good reason for them to do that. The grim reality may be that there are far fewer hostages alive than Israel estimates.
Israel doesn't have an exact count of living hostages because Hamas is using the number itself as a bargaining chip in negotiations. Meanwhile, dozens of families in Israel wait in agony to learn the fate of their loved ones.
“Hamas is in a much weaker position now than they were two months ago,” Greg Brew, an Iran analyst at Eurasia Group, told the Morning Dispatch. “But they are still holding onto a significant number of hostages, and they do feel that they’re in a position to negotiate a ceasefire. So they’re not going to surrender. And so long as there is resistance on the Israeli side to a deal that preserves Hamas in Gaza, reaching any kind of ceasefire is going to be very difficult.”
Hamas is stalling for time. They are hoping the West, especially the United States, can pressure Israel into ending the war while at least some Hamas fighters survive.
To some observers, Israel’s demand to know which hostages still remain in Hamas’ captivity represents the bare minimum requirement for a deal. “If you’re going to be negotiating for hostages,” said Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, “you want to know which ones are alive and which ones are not.”
But refusing to provide a list of living hostages wasn’t the only hang-up: Axios reported yesterday that Hamas was also seeking an agreement that would allow Palestinian civilians to return to northern Gaza. “Israel is wary of that,” Brew said, “because that suggests that Hamas wants to reestablish its control over north Gaza, which would undo what Israel feels that it has accomplished in its offensive.”
"The bottom line is, and the sad truth about whatever hostage exchange comes at last, is that Israel is not going to get all the hostages back,” Enia Krivine, senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Israel Program, told The Dispatch. “As long as the Hamas leadership is alive and is hiding underneath Gaza, it needs to surround itself with Israeli hostages to protect itself, as its insurance policy and its last piece of leverage, and they’re not going to willingly let go of that.”
Once Hamas gives up the names of the hostages it's just a small step to release them. It raises the question of where the hell the civilized world is in pressuring Hamas to give up their human shields.
The West gives hundreds of millions of dollars every year to Palestinians through the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). But with Hamas at least influencing UNRWA if not outright controlling it, that's like giving money to terrorists.
There's an effort underway to bypass UNRWA but in the meantime, Hamas grows fat and happy on Western aid and is protected by innocent Israeli hostages.
Israel should leave Cairo and start bombing Rafah. They should fight right through Ramadan until their people are freed and Hamas is begging for Israel to stop.
It's Hamas that has made this a war for existence. Let Israel finish it.
