WASHINGTON – What happened to not negotiating with terrorists?
Despite the discovery over the weekend that Hamas had executed an American hostage captured during the Oct. 7 atrocity against Israel, the Harris-Biden administration went right back Tuesday to pressuring the Jewish state to pull back against the terror group as part of a potential cease-fire deal.
“Hamas executed one of its American hostages. That requires an overwhelming American response,” Richard Goldberg, senior adviser to the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told The Post. “… We need to bring the hammer down on Hamas and all its sponsors and enablers.”
The latest sticking point between Washington and Jerusalem is a narrow strip of territory along the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt called the “Philadelphi corridor,” which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his forces must hold to prevent Hamas from replenishing its arsenal through a network of smuggling tunnels in the area.
On Tuesday, however, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby balked at the idea, telling reporters the latest proposal to stop the fighting “included a removal of [Israeli forces] from all densely populated areas, and that includes those areas along that corridor. That’s the proposal that Israel had agreed to.”
When asked point-blank whether President Biden thinks a hostage release deal is still “possible,” Kirby became indignant.
“The president wouldn’t be personally engaged the way he is, and he wouldn’t have taken the time over the weekend to meet with his team if he didn’t believe that that was, in fact, an outcome that we can achieve,” he said.
On Monday, the president and vice president were in the White House Situation Room with negotiators plotting a new, yet-to-be-detailed deal to secure the remaining hostages’ release – confounding Goldberg
“People seem to have forgotten that Hamas has rejected every proposal put forward by the United States and Israel,” he told The Post. “Hamas and its sponsors prefer to murder hostages. That is the reality we face.”
“It’s been ‘Take it or Leave It’ for months,” Goldberg added. “Israel takes it, Hamas leaves it. And in return Israel gets pressured and Hamas and its sponsors get rewarded.”
“Today, Hamas sponsor Iran enjoys massive US sanctions relief; Hamas leaders get immunity in ‘non-NATO ally’ Qatar and NATO ally Turkey; Hamas facilitators Lebanon and Egypt get a lot of taxpayer assistance and DOJ does nothing to crack down on Hamas networks here in the United States,” Goldberg went on. “All of that must change immediately.”
Despite Harris and Biden vowing in written statements that “Hamas must be eliminated” and “Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes” following confirmation of the death of Goldberg-Polin and his fellow hostages, the administration’s subsequent actions have trended toward appeasement of the Palestinian terror group.
“Actually, Hamas leaders aren’t going to pay for their crimes, including the execution of an American citizen,” Victoria Coates, a former deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration, posted on X Tuesday. “Under Biden-Harris the U.S. [sic] taxpayer pays them to commit them.“
Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, echoed the sentiment in a message Tuesday blasting Biden and Harris.
“Hamas MURDERED 6 hostages, including a US citizen. Remember, it’s Hamas that’s been rejecting all reasonable ceasefire [sic] agreements, not the Israeli government,” Fallon wrote on X. “The Biden-Harris admin needs to start acting in the best interest of the US and our ally Israel.”
On Monday, Biden lashed out at Netanyahu, saying the PM should do more to force a hostage deal with Hamas – infuriating supporters of the Jewish state.
Asked Tuesday why the president is “harder than Netanyahu than he is on the terrorist leaders,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre skirted the question, saying Biden had been “very, very clear about what Hamas had done.”
“He was very clear on Oct. 7. He was very clear multiple times thereafter,” she claimed.
Hours later, the Justice Department unsealed criminal charges against Sinwar and other senior terrorists in connection with the Oct. 7 attack – though it is unlikely any Hamas leader will see the inside of a US courtroom.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) on Tuesday chided critics of both Netanyahu and the Harris-Biden administration over the hostages’ executions.
“Hamas executes six hostages in cold blood. Who gets blamed? Everyone but Hamas,” Torres posted on X.
“The ONLY beneficiary of the endless finger-pointing against ourselves (the right blaming the US government, the left blaming the Israeli government) is Hamas, which knows how to put the free world at war with itself in a never-ending blame game of mutually assured recrimination. We do the work of our enemies for them,” he added.
But Brian Carter, who manages the Middle East portfolio at the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, warned that the White House has handled Hamas with too soft a touch.
“It’s really important to clearly message to Hamas that their choices are not between … an end to the war on their terms and an end to the war on Israel’s terms,” Carter said, “but rather an end to the war on the terms that Israel and the mediators are laying out and an end to the war in which Israel continues to fight this thing out until Hamas is basically defeated or even destroyed.
“Those terms [must be] something that is going to enable Israel to ensure that Hamas cannot rebuild itself, which could require an Israeli presence in certain areas of the Gaza Strip.”
Former Israel Defense Forces spokesman and FDD senior fellow Jonathan Conricus added that Hamas “will not have a strong enough incentive to release the hostages or agree to the American proposal to reach a cease-fire” if they aren’t “faced with a viable threat to its political rule over Gaza.”
“It is absurd that Israel’s allies and friends are applying pressure not on Hamas … but on Israel,” he said, “which strengthens Hamas and lowers the chances of seeing the hostages released.”
