Biden says Hamas ‘backing away’ from hostage-ceasefire deal, as Blinken heads to Egypt
Washington says even if talks advance, ‘complex issues’ remain; WSJ quotes Arab mediators as saying Hamas leader wants to expand conflict by attacking Israel from West Bank
CHICAGO, Illinois — US President Joe Biden accused Hamas on Monday night of “backing away” from a hostage deal with Israel that would halt the ongoing fighting in Gaza, as the Wall Street Journal reported that the terror group’s chief, Yahya Sinwar, believes the latest round of negotiations is a “bluff” meant to grant Israel further time to continue its military offensive.
His comments also came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was traveling to Egypt and Qatar on Tuesday for further talks after meetings in Israel on Monday.
“It’s still in play, but you can’t predict,” Biden said as he was preparing to leave Chicago after delivering a keynote address to the Democratic National Convention. “Israel says they can work it out… Hamas is now backing away.”
Hamas later issued a statement saying that Biden’s words were “misleading” and do not reflect the movement’s real position.
Hamas’s statement called Biden’s remarks an “American green light for the Zionist extremist government to commit more crimes against defenseless civilians.”
The Palestinian terror group said that the US-backed “bridging proposal” that was conveyed to Israel and to Hamas at the end of the talks in Doha on Friday was a “reversal” of what the parties had agreed on in early July, and blamed the US for its “complete bias” toward Israel and its “partnership” with Israel in the war.
Hamas further called on the US administration to reverse its policy toward Jerusalem and to “work seriously” to stop the war in Gaza.
On his ninth urgent mission to the Middle East since the war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 attack in southern Israel, Blinken said on Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had confirmed Jerusalem’s acceptance of the bridging proposal offered by the US last week in Doha. He called on the Palestinian terror group to do the same.
If Hamas accepts the proposal, negotiators will spend the coming days working on “clear understandings on implementing the agreement,” Blinken said on Tuesday. He stressed that there are still “complex issues” requiring “hard decisions by the leaders,” without offering specifics.
The Israeli negotiating team is set to meet US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators to discuss the proposal later this week, after two days of negotiations in Doha last week. Hamas did not directly participate in the talks. Mediators, including the US, had expressed renewed optimism that a deal was close after the Doha talks, but recent days have seen the positivity cool as Hamas has said it rejects the latest proposal.
Pressure to secure a deal to halt the fighting in Gaza and release hostages held by the terror group since October 7 has peaked in recent weeks after both Iran and Hezbollah threatened major retaliation attacks on Israel for the killings of high-level terror chiefs last month. Both are understood to be holding off pending the results of the negotiations.
The US efforts came as Hamas and another Gaza-based terror group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, claimed a suicide bombing attempt in Tel Aviv on Sunday, which the Wall Street Journal quoted Arab mediators as saying came as part of Sinwar’s efforts to intensify pressure on Israel by expanding the conflict beyond Gaza, including by launching attacks from the West Bank.
Hebrew media outlets identified the attacker, who was killed when a bomb in his backpack exploded in central Tel Aviv on Sunday evening, as a Palestinian man from the West Bank. However, reports have also suggested that Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah may have been involved in the attempted suicide bombing, given the sophistication of the ultimately unsuccessful explosive device.
In its statement taking responsibility for the attack, Hamas warned that suicide bombings would continue in response to Israeli attacks.
Suicide bombings in Israel have been rare since the Second Intifada in the early 2000s when hundreds of civilians were killed in a series of deadly bombings. Since then, intense ongoing efforts by Israeli security forces in the West Bank have repeatedly thwarted attacks, with officials saying numerous attempts are prevented every year.
Recently, amid the war in Gaza, Israeli security authorities have identified increased attempts by Hamas and other terror groups in the West Bank to carry out such attacks. In March of this year, a would-be suicide bomber was killed while trying to infiltrate into Israel from the West Bank. Other attempted attacks have been foiled in recent months at earlier stages.
Also, on Monday, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told Reuters that Sinwar had always been part of the decision-making process in the Gaza ceasefire talks. Sinwar was recently selected to lead the terror group’s politburo after Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran in late July, in an attack widely blamed on Israel.
“Due to security conditions, communication with Sinwar has tools and mechanisms in place, yet they are operating smoothly,” Hamdan added in the interview.
Sinwar has not appeared in public since the October 7 attack and is believed to be hiding out in the terror group’s vast underground tunnel network. However, he is understood to have played a key role in directing the fighting in Gaza and the negotiations for a ceasefire-hostage release deal.
Palestinian sources have said that Qatar-based Hamas political official Khalil al-Hayya will continue to lead indirect negotiations with Israel for a Gaza ceasefire, now with guidance from Sinwar instead of Haniyeh, who was also based in Doha.
The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
It is now believed that 105 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 34 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
