“Everyone agreed to the deal proposal presented by Biden, while Hamas has not agreed yet.” “A ceasefire could have been reached 12 days ago, but that did not happen because Hamas did not respond yes.”
These two statements by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken expressed the US administration’s position on the indirect negotiations between the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Israel. According to Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, the bias of President Joe Biden’s administration toward the Israeli side appears in both of them.
Blinken’s position, which he expressed during his visit to the Qatari capital, prompted Taher Al-Nono, media advisor to the head of Hamas’s political bureau, to say that “Blinken should be Israel’s foreign minister.”
Hamas also considered that the positions of the US Secretary of State, which are trying to exonerate the occupation, “are a continuation of the American policy of complicity in the brutal war of extermination.”
Since the start of the indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel, the United States has sought to hold Hamas responsible for any disruption of the agreement, despite the flexibility it showed during those negotiations, according to what observers say.
Since Biden announced the proposed Israeli plan for prisoner negotiations, the United States has sought to say that Hamas is the one obstructing the progress of negotiations and a ceasefire.
Try to press
Washington, along with Israel, is aware of the extent of the dilemma that the latter faces in its aggression against Gaza, and that the cost of the war is now threatening Israel more than was thought at the beginning of this war. Israeli society is in a state of severe division and the economic situation is deteriorating, while the occupation army is suffering from many losses and a state of fracture. And the disintegration, especially after the law exempting religious Jews (Haredim) from military service, which prompted the families of reserve soldiers to ask their children to lay down their arms and not participate in the war.
This crisis situation prompted the American administration to take over the negotiations instead of Israel, and work to reach an agreement that allows Israel to catch its breath and try to heal its wounds before the breach expands.
The quest for a deal to stop the war urgently and the attempt to achieve the Israeli vision of the war on Gaza, which is supported by the Biden administration, and the efforts of both parties to prevent the victory of Hamas and the resistance, is what prompted officials in Washington to repeatedly declare that Hamas is the obstructing party, in the words of many officials of this administration, in an attempt Some of them are to pressure the movement to give up or ease its conditions and accept what is possible, in order to release the Israeli prisoners held by the resistance and resume the war later according to what suits Israel.
Holding Hamas responsible for the failure to reach an agreement would show the movement as the main cause of the massacres committed by the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip because it refuses to reach an agreement that exempts Israel from launching its indiscriminate raids against civilians in the Strip.
American annoyance
The United States considered that what happened in the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7 constituted a blow to its policy in the region, as Washington had previously succeeded in paving the way for a state of political stability in the region and the integration of Israel as a major player in it.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, less than a month before the Battle of the Flood – specifically on September 29, 2023 – praised the administration’s approach to the Middle East, saying, “The Middle East region is calmer today than it was two decades ago.” Before that, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his speech at the United Nations in the same month that the Palestinians should not be given the right to veto new peace treaties with Arab countries. The existing assumption at the time was that any peace between the Arabs and Israel would force the Palestinians to accept what was presented to them.
Therefore, it can be said that what the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, did on October 7 was directed against it as well, and not just against Israel.
After the green light that Washington gave to Israel to eliminate Hamas, and to provide it with military and political support that exceeded “reasonable limits,” according to observers, the Israeli failure – to achieve a significant achievement in the Gaza Strip – shocked the American administration, which discovered that Israel was suffering from a severe state of weakness and was not… She can get out of the predicament that the resistance put her in during the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle.
Which prompted the United States to take the initiative to be the main player in the file and try to get rid of all the obstacles it faces in the region after the war on Gaza, and to send a message to many parties that it can go far in targeting everyone who works to obstruct its efforts and arrangements.
President Biden expressed this – in an article he published in the Washington Post last November – when he said that he is working for a Middle East in which there is no place for Hamas.
Resistance and minefield
Since the first day of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, Hamas, along with the resistance in Gaza, has realized that the United States is not a mediator and that it is a major party in the war. Therefore, dealing with it as a mediator is very similar to walking in a minefield and trying to avoid the traps that the United States and Israel set in the negotiations. As many political analysts say.
The movement did not reject any proposal presented to it, but rather said that it welcomed what was presented positively and dealt with the situation as a matter of negotiation. Hamas, along with the resistance, believes that they did not submit in the battlefield, so why should they bow in the field of politics and accept the pressures being exerted on them?
This is what Hamas confirmed that it dealt “positively and responsibly with the latest proposal and all proposals for a ceasefire and the release of detainees.”
Therefore, Hamas and the resistance were slow in their responses to any proposals presented to them and presented amendments and additions to what was presented, as they approached the negotiations with caution to avoid falling into any interpretations of what was reached. Hamas also realizes that what Israel and America did not achieve in the field, they want to achieve in politics, which the resistance rejects in its entirety.
In its negotiations, the resistance relies on its strength in the field and what it achieved during 9 months of war and the infliction of heavy losses on Israel. It also relies on the fact that its demands are legitimate to achieve what the Palestinian people aspire to, even if only temporarily. Hamas believes that it has shown “the positivity required to reach a comprehensive and satisfactory agreement based on the just demands of our people,” according to a statement it issued following Blinken’s accusation that it obstructed the agreement.
Therefore, according to what the Israeli Kan channel reported in its response to the Israeli proposals presented by Biden, Hamas demanded the inclusion of China, Russia, and Turkey as guarantors of the agreement.
In its effort to show its seriousness in negotiating, Hamas called on Blinken and the Biden administration to “pressure the occupation government that is determined to complete the mission of killing and extermination.”
What Israel – and with it the United States – faces in negotiating with Hamas and the resistance, Washington and Tel Aviv are not accustomed to in the latter’s negotiations with the Palestinians, especially since the Oslo Accords, as what was offered was accepted and this was helped by the pressure exerted by some Arab countries on the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization. That time.
Therefore, it is not unlikely that the push and pull in the truce negotiations will continue until the field has its say again, and the Israeli government realizes that the possible space before it is a final ceasefire to stop the war and prevent it from spreading to Lebanon, and for Israel to enter a circle from which it is difficult to get out of in an attempt to return to what was before the battle. Al-Aqsa flood.