Biden's Gaza Diplomacy Try Falls Fatally Short

Hamas forces killed 1,200 civilians, among them women and children. Israel's retaliatory assault on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 34,000 civilians, according to Hamas figures.

Hamas is now reportedly considering the ceasefire proposal. Beyond the potential life-saving benefits of an immediate break in fighting, other more localized political concerns are driving the US and its pair of mediation partners, Egypt and Qatar, to press for a deal.

In particular, US politics has made President Joe Biden eager for some sort of settlement, even if only a short halt in the violence.

Biden faces a knot of political problems at home over his handling of America's support for Israel in the war.

On the one hand, a majority of his own Democratic Party supports his decision to supply arms to Israel while some think he has not been forthright enough in backing Israel's stated aim of destroying Hamas, both militarily and politically.

A faction of Biden's party also thinks he has effectively allowed Israel to disproportionately punish Palestinian civilians for Hamas' aggression.

Biden is facing loud opposition from Middle East-origin voters in the United States who habitually favor Biden's party but who are horrified by the carnage in Gaza.

They may rob Biden of key electoral support at the presidential election in November, including in the swing state of Michigan. Moreover, pro-Palestinian student groups have demonstrated at major American universities, suggesting Biden could also lose a section of the youth vote.

Biden's staff has taken pains to present his Gaza policy as even-handed and has taken the concerns of all sides into account.

“No country should have to live next door to a threat that is truly genocidal as Hamas has been,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for Biden.“So, while we make no bones about the fact that we have certain issues about some of the way things are being done, we also make no bones about the fact that Israel is going to continue to have American support for the fight that they're in to eliminate the threat from Hamas.”

Besides trying to placate domestic opinion favorable to the Palestinians, Egypt fears that a surge of Palestinian refugees would flood into the Sinai Peninsula if Israel enters Rafah, which lies at the Egyptian-Gaza frontier. More than a million refugees from other parts of the Strip have already taken refuge there.

A flow of thousands of migrants would raise fears of a new“nakba,” Arabic for the“catastrophe,” which occurred in 1948 and again in 1967 when tens of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven during wars with Israel into exile in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring Arab countries.

The Persian Gulf ministate of Qatar, meanwhile, has leveraged its longtime relations with Hamas, which most Western governments have designated a terrorist organization, to burnish its reputation and position as a mediator in Middle East crises.

But the concerns and agendas of interlocutors may not match the needs of the combatants.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces intense domestic criticism, both for being unprepared for the October 7 attack and increasingly for his unwillingness to put the lives of hostages at the forefront of his war management.

While he signed off on a ceasefire deal and expressed concern for the safe return of hostages, he has maintained that the main goal must be Hamas' destruction.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu told Blinken that Israel is ready to assault Rafah despite Biden's request, delivered over the weekend, not to do so.

“We will enter Rafah because we have no other choice,” Netanyahu
said Tuesday in comments translated from Hebrew.“We will destroy the Hamas battalions there, we will complete all the objectives of the war, including the repatriation of all our hostages.”

Hamas, meanwhile, might not be served diplomatically or militarily by a temporary ceasefire.

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A Hamas fighter demonstrates one of the group's networks of tunnels at Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip. Photo: Youtube Screengrab / BBC

On the one hand, a truce would provide a respite for its fighters, whose current number is unknown, after weeks of Israeli pursuit on the ground and from the air. It would also provide some relief for beleaguered civilians who have borne the brunt of Hamas' aggression.

Hamas is clearly looking for a way to declare some sort of victory, however Pyrrhic, by having stopped the Israeli advance. The Islamic group is thus seeking some sort of guarantee that the truce will become a definitive end to the fighting.

With that goal in mind, Hamas leaders pointedly resisted Blinken's call for fast action on the ceasefire deal and gave no timetable for responding. Blinken, in turn, scolded the group:“No delays, no excuses,” he said.

Observers are mostly pessimistic that a meaningful deal can be struck.

“The US and Egypt and Qatar all have very strong interests of their own, for various reasons, why they're trying very hard now to pressure both sides into agreeing to a deal,” said Mairav Zonszein, an analyst on Israel-Palestine issues at the International Crisis Group, a think tank.

“I'm pessimistic about the option of Hamas agreeing to a deal that doesn't have a permanent ceasefire baked into it.”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres painted an apocalyptic picture if Israel moves in on Rafah. An attack would“be an unbearable escalation, killing thousands more civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee,” he said.