Since October 7, the Biden administration has been on an all-out diplomatic push to negotiate a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Early efforts were relatively successful, returning dozens of hostages to Israel and allowing for Gazan civilians to relocate out of harm’s way, while not overly hampering Israel’s just effort to eliminate the scourge of Hamas once and for all. That initial achievement played into the White House’s self-image as the “adults” who would return the state of the world to its — in their minds — pacific pre-Trump state. Over the past several months, the administration has sought to broker more deals, but in the process it has sacrificed shared Israeli and American interests on the altar of negotiation.
For the Israeli government and the people it represents, Hamas is an existential threat that must be eliminated. But Hamas and its Iranian backers will accept nothing less than victory on their own terms: a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the lifting of the blockade on the Strip to allow in all types of goods (namely, weapons) without inspection, the continuation of Hamas rule over Gaza, and a complete end to fighting — until, that is, Hamas deems it useful to its goals. Their leverage is the innocent hostages still held in Gaza. In the face of fundamentally incompatible goals, the Biden administration has kept pursuing this dead-end path.
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