As expected. Joe Biden's "peace plan" for Gaza never got off the ground. Even though Biden is insisting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to the plan, Netanyahu wants Hamas to agree before he commits to ending the fight.
Hamas had Biden's peace plan for 12 days before they responded. And that response showed why it was idiotic to expect Hamas to deal fairly with Israel to end the war.
Biden's plan called for a ceasefire in three stages with the first stage seeing the “withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza” and “release of a number of hostages, including women, the elderly, the wounded in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners," according to CNN.
The second phase would be an“exchange for the release of all remaining living hostages, including male soldiers.”
In the final phase, there would be a “major reconstruction plan for Gaza would commence and any final remains of hostages who’ve been killed will be returned to their families.”
But the whole plan is dependent on getting clear and accurate numbers of the remaining hostages. Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama Hamdan says that's not possible.
“I don’t have any idea about that. No one has an idea about this,” he said.
He said, without evidence, that the Israeli operation to free the four Israeli hostages killed three other hostages as well as allegedly more than 200 other Palestinians. One of those hostages killed, Hamdan says, was an American.
The entire interview has to be read to be believed. He says October 7 was Israel's fault. It was “a reaction against the occupation," Hamdan said.
“The one who is in charge or responsible for that is (the Israeli) occupation. If you resist the occupation, (they) will kill you, if you did not resist the occupation, (they) also will kill you and deport you out of your country. So what we are supposed to do, just to wait?” he said.
Perhaps calling a halt to killing Israeli civilians would be a good start.
It's clear that the Palestinians think anything short of their total annihilation could be sold as a glorious victory. One thing is certain: they aren't interested in saving any Palestinian lives.
Speaking to CNN in the Lebanese capital Beirut, Hamdan said the latest proposal on the table – an Israeli plan that was first publicly announced by US President Joe Biden late last month – did not meet the group’s demands for an end to the war.
Hamdan, who has been part of the Hamas negotiations team on the ground, told CNN that the group needed “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves, the reconstruction, the (lifting) of the siege … and we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange.”
The response by Hamas to Biden's proposal was "disappointing" said Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He said Hamas’s decision to submit “numerous changes," describing some of them as going “beyond positions (Hamas) had previously taken," was unacceptable.
“Some of the changes are workable. Some are not,” Blinken said at a news conference in Doha on Wednesday.
“The Israelis want the ceasefire only for six weeks and then they want to go back to the fight, which I think the Americans, till now, they did not convince the Israelis to accept (a permanent ceasefire),” he said, adding that he believes the U.S. needs to convince Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire as part of the deal.
The Americans have yet to see that they've been hoodwinked by Hamas and are now committed to a deal that would hand Hamas a victory if Biden and Blinken went through with it.
"Hamas has to demonstrate that it too wants this to end. If it does, we can bring it to an end. If it doesn’t, then it means that it wants the war to continue,” Blinken said.
Hamas is not going to say anything or do anything to end the war. Why should they when they have Joe Biden doing the heavy lifting for them in forcing Israel to accept a ceasefire?
