US says Hamas is to blame for ceasefire delay – but is it Hamas or Israel?

Biden administration insists Israel is on board, but the latter’s evasiveness highlights the contradictions of any deal.

The United States’ position on the Gaza ceasefire is that Hamas is causing all the problems and that Israel has not just accepted the deal – it produced it.

In the weeks since US President Joe Biden announced his proposal for a ceasefire, his administration has repeated this point.

The US even took the notion to the United Nations, where the Security Council backed a text that said Israel accepted the deal.

But Hamas, despite the US trying to make it the intransigent party, has made positive statements about the proposal. In contrast, the side that refuses to say whether it supports the proposal is Israel.

The leadership of Hamas and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have taken different approaches to the deal, which is also being negotiated by Egypt and Qatar.

The Palestinian group has consistently said it supports a ceasefire and wants an end to the fighting in Gaza.

It also said it will “deal positively to arrive at an agreement”, and its political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said on Sunday that the group’s position was “consistent with the foundational principles” of the ceasefire proposal.

In early May, Hamas had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari proposal that laid out a timetable for a ceasefire and was said to have only minor differences from the deal currently on the table.

Instead, it was reported that Netanyahu told a closed-door meeting that Biden’s portrayal of the proposal was “inaccurate” and “incomplete”.

That has not stopped the US from laying the blame at Hamas’s door. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated to media on Thursday that Israel had accepted the proposal and Hamas had not.

On the same day, Biden said the biggest issue preventing a ceasefire from being agreed was Hamas refusing to sign up.

Is Hamas really the reluctant one?

Every time US officials are asked to help the world understand why Israel has been so equivocal in its response, they insist: Israel is all-in on the proposal.

The proposal calls for a three-stage timetable that would see a temporary stop to the fighting and the release of some captives in the first phase as negotiators work on the next two stages, which would include a permanent ceasefire.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said Hamas rule in Gaza would not be accepted and that fighting would continue to “remove Hamas operatives from … areas [in Gaza]”.

At the end of May, Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, even said the war would continue for “at least another seven months”, adding to other Israeli leaders who have suggested there will be no respite for Palestinians in Gaza even in 2025.

Meanwhile, Israel continues to attack Gaza since Biden’s ceasefire proposal announcement, both in Rafah, Nuseirat and elsewhere, leading to hundreds of Palestinian civilian deaths, and a death toll that now surpasses 37,000 people.

Hamas’s desire for more assurances when it comes to the latest ceasefire deal appears to be the result of a combination of self-preservation and a lack of trust in Israel’s adherence to the timetable set out.

Unlike the Israeli position, which focuses on the “military defeat of Hamas” for what Israel says is the elimination of an existential security threat, the Palestinian group shares the US’s stated goal of a permanent cessation of hostilities and a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Hamas is presenting its amendments to the ceasefire deal as merely a way to obtain reassurances that Israel will not simply abandon the deal after the first phase and continue the war.

This is perhaps understandable when looking at the previously stated Israeli position of total Hamas defeat.

What makes things more difficult for the US is that, after being such vocal supporters of Israel from the very beginning of the war, it is hard to suggest that perhaps an end to the war is now the priority and that the focus should be on what post-war Gaza will look like.

The contradictions inherent within both the Israeli and US positions put both allies in a bind.