Imagine that you are in control of a piece of territory and your people are suffering terribly and facing a hunger crisis.
Now imagine there’s an agreement on the table with your enemy that would halt the fighting for 60 days and significantly ease that hardship. The deal even includes meaningful concessions from the other side.
What would you do?
This is not some theoretical exercise. It’s the very real situation currently facing Hamas. Its people are in anguish, and, according to various reports this week that cannot be dismissed as mere propaganda, some are going days without food. They claw at one another to reach distribution sites where food is being handed out.
Hamas could end this misery immediately by agreeing to a ceasefire deal that’s on the table. But it hasn’t.
Instead, as hunger deepens, Hamas delays. It dithers over clauses, sends out positive signals only to later walk them back. It acts as though it’s negotiating the purchase of a house, where another day, another week, another month doesn’t really matter.
But this isn’t about a house – it’s about a deal that could relieve the unbearable conditions of the very people Hamas claims to represent. Not to mention bringing an end to the torture of the hostages it continues to hold.
And yet, what does Hamas do? It balks. It haggles. It stalls.
And the longer it delays, the more the spotlight shifts – not toward Hamas, but toward Israel. Around the world, television screens fill with images of malnourished Gaza babies and desperate crowds fighting over sacks of flour.
So what does the world do in response? It places nearly all the blame and responsibility on Israel, as though Hamas has nothing to do with the dire food shortages.
And in so doing, the international community only prolongs the suffering. Because each angry UN condemnation, each news report that shows scenes of devastation without critical context, each harsh statement from Western democracies, gives Hamas oxygen. And with that oxygen, Hamas calculates that by dragging this out longer – by letting the death toll tick higher and the images get grimmer – the world will eventually force Israel’s hand.
IN A RATIONAL world, Hamas would be the one scrambling to end the war, grabbing any deal on the table to spare its people further misery. But this is not a rational world. And what we saw again this week is the latest iteration of a grim and all too familiar pattern.
There’s a flurry of talk about progress in the negotiations. The world, and some in Israel itself, ramps up pressure... on Israel. Hamas balks. And we’re back to square one.
For the past three weeks, starting with the lead-up to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, there has been chatter about a breakthrough. US President Donald Trump himself fanned the optimism, saying on June 27, “I think it’s close... we think within the next week we’re going to get a ceasefire,” and again on July 16, “We have good news on Gaza.”
Yet that good news keeps getting pushed off, day after day, week after week.
Some countries are well-meaning, others are driven increasingly by anti-Israel bias
And then, other countries come in. Some – let’s give Canada and Italy the benefit of the doubt – well-meaning. Others, like Spain, Ireland, and Slovenia, driven by their governments’ unceasingly anti-Israel bias. And what do they do? They issue one-sided statements condemning Israel. Hamas? Barely a mention. Israel? Condemned outright and responsible for everything.
“The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,” declared the foreign ministers of 29 Western countries this week. “The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability, and deprives Gazans of human dignity. We condemn the drip-feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food. It is horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid. The Israeli government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable. Israel must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law.”
Nothing at all about Hamas’s responsibility for any of this, beyond a call on the terrorist organization to immediately and unilaterally release hostages. Nothing about Hamas’s role in the death of Palestinians seeking aid, because it wants to thwart any aid delivery mechanism not under its control. There is a call to resume the humanitarian assistance through “the UN and humanitarian NGOs,” without as much as a word about how Hamas has hijacked aid through those agencies to remain in power.
And then, of course, there is the pledge of allegiance to a two-state solution and the obligatory condemnation of settlements and “settler violence,” with no word, of course, of Palestinian violence in Judea and Samaria.
It’s almost as if they don’t care whether Hamas remains in power.
Twenty of the European Union’s 27 countries, as well as several non-EU countries, including Canada, Australia, Japan, and Switzerland, signed the statement. It is worth noting the seven EU countries that did not sign, composing the roster of Israel’s most reliable friends in Europe today: Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.
HAMAS, NO fool, saw an opportunity and seized it, issuing a statement praising the signatories: “Hamas welcomes the international statement calling for ending war on Gaza and condemning Israel starvation policy.”
Of course it does. The statement is a gift. It gives Hamas a lifeline, a reason to keep holding out.
This pattern is not new. Just two months ago, a similar statement – this time from Canada, the UK, and France, threatening sanctions against Israel – coincided with sensitive negotiations and was quickly lauded by Hamas. Once again, one-sided international condemnation of Israel gave Hamas a reason to stall.
Today, with negotiations at another critical juncture, history repeats itself: as soon as diplomatic progress seems possible, a wave of external pressure targets Israel, Hamas publicly celebrates, and the incentive for it to compromise disappears. The underlying dynamic is the same – international actors, whether intentionally or not, are providing Hamas both political cover and motivation to prolong the conflict.
US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who took Israel to task three times last week – once having to do with an American-Palestinian killed in Samaria, another about visa policy for Christian immigrants, and a third about the burning of a church that never happened – responded to the statement this way: “Disgusting! 25 nations put pressure on @Israel instead of savages of Hamas! Gaza suffers for 1 reason: Hamas rejects EVERY proposal. Blaming Israel is irrational.”
But his message barely registered. Ask most Israelis, and they’ll recall Huckabee’s sharp criticism of Israel – that made news. But ask if they heard about his post on X defending Israel and condemning Hamas, or the one supporting Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s point that anyone getting praise from Hamas is “in the wrong place,” and the likely answer will be no.
BUT LEAVE Huckabee aside. His sympathies are known. Instead, listen to Brett McGurk – the Biden administration’s former National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and one of its top hostage deal negotiators. Speaking last week at the Aspen Security Forum, McGurk said: “History is being rewritten by people who weren’t involved in it.”
McGurk then recalled a Gaza deal nearly reached in May 2024.
“On May 7, there was a deal on the table that gave Hamas 85% of everything it wanted that could have stopped the war the next day, but Hamas did not answer,” he said, until six weeks later, when it “fundamentally changed the whole thing.”
Back to the drawing board. Then on August 16, another deal was offered, this time one that “had about 95% of what Hamas wanted, and again they did not say yes, they did not answer.”
McGurk’s bottom line: “This war could have stopped at multiple times, if Hamas stopped the war and released hostages.”
And now, here we go again. “Right now there is a deal on the table to stop the war for 60 days. That’s a long time, and given where we are, I think if you stop the war for 60 days, that is the end of the war, and we are still negotiating over maps. And all the pressure comes on Israel, which I get, and I hope President Trump is putting pressure on Israel to get to a point where we can close the deal, but there’s like no pressure on Hamas.”
McGurk’s comment came just days before the statement by those 29 Western countries pressuring, of course, Israel.
Pressure on Israeli leaders also domestic
IN ALL fairness, the pressure on Israel is not only coming from the outside, it is also coming internally – from those yelling that Netanyahu doesn’t want to free the hostages, that he only wants to prolong the war for political reasons. This unrelenting pressure is coming from many of the hostage families and much of the media.
But the claim that Israel – not Hamas – is the main obstacle to a deal contradicts what key figures directly involved in the negotiations are saying. Not only in the past, but also now. And these aren’t anonymous sources with agendas; they are senior officials speaking publicly and on the record.
People like Biden’s former NSC spokesman John Kirby and former secretary of state Antony Blinken, who have placed the blame squarely on Hamas.
In a January parting interview with The New York Times, Blinken was asked whether Netanyahu blocked a ceasefire last July that could have led to the hostages’ release. His reply: “No, that’s not accurate. What we’ve seen time and again is Hamas not concluding a deal that it should have concluded.”
Only now, as the latest round of talks falters, has some of the Israeli media begun to shift, placing more of the responsibility on Hamas.
That may be due to unmistakable signals from Washington. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Mideast envoy and chief negotiator, has been blunt. And on Wednesday, even Bishara Bahbah – the Palestinian-American businessman serving as the informal envoy between Hamas, Qatar, and the US – called out Hamas on social media:
“For days, the mediators have been waiting for a response from Hamas, while the procrastination continues, costing the Palestinian people dozens of victims daily,” he wrote. “Enough procrastination and continued bloodshed. Let us move forward with a deal that allows everyone to negotiate with American guarantees to reach a permanent ceasefire.”
And yet Hamas delays. The deaths mount. The images of hunger and malnutrition go viral, and the world points fingers – almost exclusively at Israel. Hamas, seeing the pressure shift in its favor, keeps playing for time.
And the grim cycle just grinds on.