US President Joe Biden told reporters on Monday that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to end the war.
Upon his return to the White House after a two-week vacation in Delaware and California, Biden was asked whether Netanyahu has done enough. His response? “No.”
It’s not clear, however, what else the president believes Israeli can or should do, other than accept Hamas demands for Israel’s complete surrender, which is a non-starter. Israel is engaged in a seven-front existential war, defending its population from attacks not only by Hamas, but also from Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Judea and Samaria and at one point even from Iran itself.
How Should Israel Respond to Hamas Now?
Biden told the reporters that the US is “very close” to proposing another hostage release deal this week. Will it be successful? “Hope springs eternal,” he said.
A senior Biden Administration official who spoke with The Washington Post said the US plans to offer Hamas and Israel a final “take it or leave it” deal. If either side fails to accept it, the US may finally walk away, ending the endless round of rejections by Hamas, whose demands have not changed since negotiations began.
His remarks follow a weekend in which the bodies of six Israeli hostages were discovered and recovered by Israeli forces as they searched a tunnel beneath the southern Gaza city of Rafah. All had been tortured — shot multiple times at point-blank range before being executed with a gunshot to the head. Among the dead was Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a dual American-Israeli citizen.
It was the Biden Administration that pressured Israel to delay its entry into the city, possibly sentencing the hostages to death. Biden even threatened Netanyahu and slow-walked military equipment and weapons deliveries in an attempt to dissuade him from allowing Israeli forces to invade Rafah, which they finally did anyway on May 6, 2024 despite international efforts to prevent it.
In Rafah, the IDF discovered more than 150 subterranean terror tunnels, including at least 50 crossing under the southern border into Egypt. Some were large enough to accommodate trucks carrying luxury goods, Iranian cash and weapons, and terrorists. Others were found to contain multi-level infrastructure complete with electricity, water and communications systems.
Israeli forces carefully searched each and every one, hunting for terrorists and praying to find hostages. Sadly, this past weekend they succeeded but were too late to save them.
It is believed that more hostages are being held captive in Rafah as well as in Khan Younis, the hometown of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. How many of them are still alive, no one really knows. Miraculously, three hostages were rescued alive last month in an extremely dangerous Israeli operation that took place in Khan Younis. At least one of the three hostages was being held captive by a famous Gaza physician who is considered by locals to be one of the city’s highest ethical role models.
Hamas has held the hostages captive in Gaza since kidnapping 251 people on October 7, 2023. The Iranian proxy has rejected 29 different deals that have since been placed on the table by Israel, Qatar, Egypt and the US, including the most recent deal that Biden himself announced, with acclaim from the United Nations Security Council, the European Union and fellow deal brokers Qatar and Egypt. Israel accepted that deal too — and Hamas rejected it.
The Iranian-backed terror group violated the one hostage release deal that was signed last November, in which more than 100 hostages were freed in exchange for hundreds of terrorists incarcerated in Israeli prisons and a temporary ceasefire. The ceasefire ended with Hamas renewing its attacks on Israel, but at least some of the hostages were freed.
Since that time, IDF soldiers have risked their lives to search for hostages still being held by the terrorists in “civilian” apartments and tunnels deep beneath the surface of Gaza. Some have been rescued alive; others were brought home, sadly, in body bags.
