Joe Biden's grand plan to end the Gaza War is unofficially dead. The three-phase plan called for a six-week pause in the fighting, allowing for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from most of Gaza, the release of non-military hostages, and the freeing of an undetermined number of Palestinian prisoners.
The administration was originally optimistic because Hamas and, to a certain extent, Israel had accepted the deal's first phase. But phase two proved to be a bridge too far for Hamas, and Israel was in no mood to end hostilities short of achieving their primary war aim of destroying Hamas.
Hamas is demanding a full withdrawal by Israel from Gaza territory. That's not going to happen. Hamas is content to allow the rest of the world, including the United States, to put pressure on Israel to end the conflict while leaving Hamas relatively intact.
With neither side willing to compromise, the Biden administration is despairing that the war will continue well into the summer. The longer the fighting continues, the more civilian casualties pile up, the tougher the political situation for Biden.
What's more, Biden looks weak and ineffective in his inability to control Netanyahu.
“No one is confident this deal is going to move forward in the way the administration had hoped,” one U.S. official briefed by the White House on the current status of ceasefire talks told Politico. “There are so many unknowns.”
“I think this is going to go on until at least the end of 2024,” another of the officials said.
There's growing domestic pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ink a deal with Hamas to release the remaining hostages. But Hamas says they don't know how many hostages are still alive, and they want to leverage the lives of the captives to force Israel completely out of the Gaza Strip.
U.S. intelligence puts the number of living hostages at no more than 50.
That assessment, based in part on Israeli intelligence, would mean 66 of those still held hostage could be dead, 25 more than Israel has publicly acknowledged.
The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and military declined to comment. Hamas didn’t respond to a request for comment but has told mediators in the cease-fire talks that it doesn’t know how many hostages are alive.
The bodies of 19 hostages have been returned to Israel, including eight in the past three months. Israel has determined that another 41 hostages are dead.
In addition to dead hostages, Netanyahu has to deal with a growing split with the IDF. The army says it can't "destroy" Hamas. This is a public and unprecedented rebuke of the prime minister's war aim. “The idea that we can destroy Hamas or make Hamas disappear is misleading to the public,” military spokesman Daniel Hagari told Israeli television on Wednesday night.
Netanyahu has said repeatedly since October 7 that he won't end the war until he "destroys Hamas as a military and governing body."
The prime minister's office released a statement saying, “The security cabinet headed by Prime Minister Netanyahu defined the destruction of Hamas’ military and governmental capabilities as one of the goals of the war. The IDF is of course committed to this,” it said,
The exchange was an illustration of months of mounting tensions between Netanyahu and the country’s military leadership, who argue that Hamas could only be defeated if Israel replaces it with another governing authority in Gaza. During more than eight months of war, the Israeli military has invaded swaths of the Gaza Strip, only to see Hamas reconstitute itself in areas when Israeli forces withdraw.
“What we can do is grow something different, something to replace it,” Hagari said Wednesday. “The politicians will decide” who should replace Hamas, he said.
Israeli politicians? Or Palestinian politicians? That's the ultimate question. A Palestinian politician brave enough to go against Hamas will not last long enough to negotiate anything. Israel imposing a new government on Gaza will force the IDF to station thousands of troops in the Strip to enforce the will of the Israeli-backed government.
Hamas is vastly weakened. But the war has no doubt been a great recruiting tool for them. I fear that this will become the latest cycle of violence to plague the region.
