Hamas: We Want It All, or Nothing … Still

Just how ridiculous is the long-awaited Hamas response to the latest Qatari proposal for hostage releases? Even Joe Biden can’t summon much enthusiasm for it. At a presser earlier this afternoon, Biden tried to keep a positive spin, but …

Hamas’s response to #Gaza hostage deal ‘a little over the top’ – #President Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/q5XR1y6mrC

— My right to exist (@MyRightToExist) February 6, 2024

Hamas’ counter-proposal for the release of 132 hostages held in Gaza is “a little over the top,” US President Joe Biden said Tuesday night, as Israel braced for the four-month anniversary of the October 7 attack in which the captives were seized.

Biden attempted to put a positive spin on possibly a deal even though Hamas and Israel have been at loggerheads on the question of whether the agreement would include a permanent ceasefire or a pause to the Gaza war.

There “is some movement,” Biden told reporters at The White House, adding that “they’re continuing negotiations right now.”

Narrator: No, they aren’t, at least not in any meaningful or substantive manner. Earlier in the day, news agencies around the world flashed the breaking news that the Qataris described Hamas’ response as “generally positive,” but that they couldn’t share the full response to the media. That only meant one thing, I warned this morning:

‘Generally positive’ means Hamas will continue to demand its maximalist terms. Bet on it. https://t.co/dAb2KbSjyy

— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) February 6, 2024

And sure enough, that’s exactly what had transpired. The counter to the proposal was not just “a little over the top,” as Biden noted, but basically a rerun of their earlier counterproposal. They want all of the Palestinian prisoners freed in Israel and a full withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza just to start discussing the release of hostages.

Needless to say, Israel isn’t going to agree to that:

Israel will not accept Hamas’s conditions for a permanent ceasefire as part of hostage release negotiations, an Israeli government source tells the Kan public broadcaster.

“We will not accept any conditions for ending the war,” says the source.

After over a week of waiting, Hamas finally delivered its response today to an outline hammered out in Paris last weekend with Qatari and Egyptian mediators and with UN and Israeli negotiators. It demanded a “comprehensive and complete ceasefire, and ending the aggression against our people, and guaranteeing relief, shelter, [and] reconstruction, [and] lifting the blockade of the Gaza Strip, and completing a prisoner exchange” — non-starter terms for Israel.

Kan reports that Hamas’s response is interpreted in Israel as a rejection of the proposed outline.

Gee, you think? It’s the same set of demands that Israel has refused all along. They want to get the hostages out, but not at the expense of letting Hamas reconstitute in Gaza as an existential threat. Hamas apparently has trouble believing that — perhaps rationally, given Israel’s previous agreements to end hot conflicts in Gaza, usually pushed into them by the US. October 7 changed all those calculations, however, as it made clear that Hamas would continue to conduct grotesque murder-rape-kidnapping sprees for as long as Israel continues to exist.

In truth, Hamas cannot afford to release any hostages anyway, not unless they’re willing to flee Gaza. They wanted this war and conducted the most barbaric attack possible to ensure they’d get it, with the apparent hope that their comrades in Lebanon and Syria would join them. Now the hostages are the only shields they have against Israel, although their numbers are dropping. Almost a quarter of them have been killed, the IDF announced earlier today:

At least 32 hostages held in Gaza, nearly a quarter of the estimated 136 hostages held captive in the Hamas-run enclave, are dead, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing the IDF.

The families of the 32 deceased individuals whose deaths have been confirmed have been informed. 

That leaves Hamas with few rational options, except to either accept defeat or keep trying to bluff their way out of it and hope the West convinces Israel to stop. Speaking of bluffs, the Hamas official who publicly and explicitly promised genocide declared today that Hamas’ goal is to humiliate Israel and to score the biggest release of Palestinian prisoners in history:

Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad tells Reuters that the terror group intends for the release of the largest number possible of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. …

“Netanyahu is trying to make everyone believe that he has or will achieve victory to preserve his coalition government,” Hamad tells Reuters.

He adds that it took Hamas some time — over a week — to issue a response because “many of [the agreement’s] issues were unclear and ambiguous.”

At some point, one has to question why anyone bothers to negotiate with Hamas at all. They’re not interested in a diplomatic resolution to address their grievances; they want to destroy Israel and control the region “from the river to the sea.” Hamad and other Hamas leadership have publicly insisted that they mean that literally, and will not stop waging war until they achieve it. Their insistence on a “permanent ceasefire” is a sick joke in itself, as Hamas has violated every cease-fire to which it has agreed. The rocket and missile attacks on Israeli population centers have been nearly uninterrupted for the last 17 years, which attests to Hamas’ devotion to the idea of “permanent ceasefire.”

This is the war the Gazans wanted when they put Hamas in charge in 2006. This is the war that Hamas tried to give them on a number of earlier occasions, but which the West pushed Israel to freeze in place over humanitarian concerns. The only way for the Gazans to learn to refrain from starting wars is to feel the full repercussions of utter defeat.