WASHINGTON (news agencies) — In Middle East capitals, at the United Nations, from the White House and beyond, the Biden administration is making its most concentrated diplomatic push of the eight-month-old war in Gaza to persuade Israeli and Hamas leaders to take a proposed deal that would bring a cease-fire and release of more hostages.
But one week into the U.S. pressure campaign, the world still is waiting for signs that the cease-fire appeal begun May 31 by President Joe Biden was working, by moving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders toward a negotiating breakthrough.
For Israel and Hamas, the U.S. diplomatic press has become a public test of whether either side is ready to stop fighting — at least on any terms that fall short of their professed goals, whether it’s the complete crushing of the militant group or the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
For Biden, who describes the proposal as Israeli, it’s the latest high-profile test of U.S. leadership in trying to convince ally Israel as well as the militant group to relent in a conflict that is killing tens of thousands of people, inflaming regional tensions and absorbing much of the administration’s focus.
Here’s a look at the U.S.-led push for a Gaza cease-fire and where it stands:
It wasn’t that the cease-fire proposal Biden outlined in a televised address from the White House a week ago was startingly new. It was that Biden laid out the terms to the world and put the full weight of the U.S. presidency behind the appeal for both sides to take this deal.
The terms that Biden described for the first of three phases sounded much like the deal that U.S., Qatari and Egyptian mediators and Israel and Hamas have been haggling over for months.
There would be a six-week cease-fire in which Israeli forces pulled back from populated areas of Gaza. In exchange for Israel releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, Hamas would release some women, older people and wounded among hostages it had seized in the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel that set off the war.
The proposal calls for a full release of remaining hostages and an Israeli withdrawal in later phases, although the terms are vague.
“Everyone who wants peace now must raise their voices and let the leaders know they should take this deal,” Biden said a week ago.
But by Friday, neither Israel nor Hamas had said yes. Netanyahu says the terms of the proposal aren’t as they have been described publicly and that Israel will never cease fighting until “the destruction” of Hamas’ military and leadership.
In effect, said Nimrod Novik, a former senior adviser to the late Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Biden “decided to ‘out’ Netanyahu and let the Israeli public know how serious the potential for bringing all hostages out.”
The U.S. aim: “So Israel would say ‘yes’ to its own proposal,” said Novik, now the Israel fellow at the Washington-based Israel Policy Forum.
The Biden administration isn’t letting up in its drive to get Hamas and Israel on board.
“The U.S. is going to do everything it can in some formulation to keep pushing this. Until there’s no place to go any more,” said Jonathan Panikoff, a former U.S. intelligence official. He’s now the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East program.
At the U.N., U.S. diplomats are asking the Security Council to adopt a resolution demanding a permanent cease-fire between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, over Israel’s objections. Biden is sending Secretary of State Antony Blinken back to the Middle East next week for his eighth visit since the war began, a lightning tour of Middle East capitals to promote the cease-fire proposal.
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