As yet another round of cease-fire and hostage negotiations took place in Doha, Qatar over the weekend and was set to continue in Cairo despite a total rejection by Hamas, President Joe Biden said a deal is “still possible.”

“We’re not giving up,” Biden told reporters on Sunday. 

Yet a number of experts argue that the Biden administration’s ongoing public drive for a cease-fire has contributed to the elusiveness of such a deal. 

The weekend’s events are part of a pattern that has repeated itself since December: Israel goes to Doha to engage in cease-fire and hostage negotiations. All along, senior American officials, including at times Biden himself, publicly emphasize the importance of reaching a deal. Israel and the U.S. say some modest progress has been made. Hamas rejects the proposal and puts the onus on Israel.

Soon after Israel assassinated Hezbollah military leader Fuad Shukr in Lebanon last month and Hamas political bureau head Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran the following day, American officials emphasized that a cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza would stave off a retaliation from Iran — a line that Tehran has also said.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration also suggested that Israel should pursue a cease-fire because it has accomplished all that it could in Gaza.

Israeli negotiators — Mossad head David Barnea, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, IDF representative Maj.-Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s diplomatic adviser, Ophir Falk — flew to Doha on Thursday and returned to Israel with “cautious optimism,” according to the Prime Minister’s Office.

Biden was less cautious in his optimism, saying that “we’re closer than we have ever been” to a hostage and cease-fire agreement. “I don’t want to jinx anything…but we may have something.”

The PMO’s initial statement expressed hope that there will be “heavy pressure on Hamas by the United States and the mediators…[that] will lead to a breakthrough in the talks.” 

But Hamas once again rejected the proposal under negotiation.

Netanyahu was circumspect about the talks’ prospects in his remarks at the start of Sunday’s cabinet meeting.

“We are conducting negotiations and not a scenario in which we just give and give,” he said. “There are things we can be flexible on and there are things that we cannot be flexible on…These principles are in keeping with the May 27 framework, which has received American support.

“Up until now,” Netanyahu continued, “Hamas has been completely obstinate. It did not even send a representative to the talks in Doha. Therefore, the pressure needs to be directed at Hamas and [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar, not the government of Israel. Strong military and diplomatic pressure are the way to secure the release of our hostages,” he added.

Netanyahu’s former national security advisor and head of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, Meir Ben Shabbat, who still remains close to the prime minister, wrote in a column for Israel Hayom that the ability of the U.S. to pressure Hamas “is minimal, if it exists at all.” [Ed. note: The reporter is also a senior fellow at Misgav.]

”Against this backdrop, it is likely that the compromise formulas [for a deal], would erode Israel’s positions, as Israel is more sensitive to American pressures and incentives. For Hamas, such reports are yet another reason to dig in,” he wrote.

Contrary to what American officials told The New York Times, and “even after Israel’s impressive military achievements,” Ben-Shabbat wrote, “much work remains to destroy Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities,” noting that the terrorist group shot rockets into Israel in the past week and still controls the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza.

If a deal is reached without ensuring that Israel’s advances in Gaza, such as control of the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, are preserved, Hamas could be re-empowered. Yet “Israel would find it difficult to backtrack on its commitments to the U.S., Egypt and Qatar,” Ben Shabbat wrote. “The U.S. would increase pressure, especially as the elections approach…Hamas, and not just Hamas, is banking on this.” 

The combination of publicly signaling a desire for de-escalation and attempts to appease Iran by publicly pressuring Israel to show restraint “always seem to end in disaster,” Rich Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Jewish Insider.

After the assassinations of Shukr and Haniyeh, “the assessment was that Yahya Sinwar wanted a deal,” he said. “A couple of weeks go by [with the U.S.] begging Iran to de-escalate…saying a cease-fire is the only way to stop Iran from attacking Israel, and suddenly Sinwar is not participating. He’s feeling emboldened.” 

Goldberg said this “proves the thesis that when you unshackle Israel and let Israel be Israel and go on the offensive against the Iran-led axis, Sinwar seems to want a deal. When you…make Tehran believe everyone is afraid…it seems to totally backfire in negotiations with Hamas.” 

Col. (res.) Gabi Siboni, a senior research fellow at the Misgav Institute, told JI that “it’s clear the Americans only want a cease-fire…The more they pressure Israel, the more the decision-makers in Hamas think that they can wait because the Americans will just pressure Israel more.” 

“I imagine the Americans know this, but it’s like an instinct” for the Biden administration, Siboni argued. “If Hamas says no, then they ask for more from Israel.” 

Joel Braunold, managing director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, argued otherwise, saying that the “Biden administration has worked this push [for a cease-fire] in tandem with Egypt and Qatar and all three are using their leverage on the parties to accept the deal.”

Siboni argued that the Biden administration talks far more about the need for a cease-fire, whereas Israelis are more focused on freeing the 115 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza for the past 317 days.

“The hostages are the last thing that interests the Americans. They take advantage of the hostages as a lever of pressure on Israel,” he said.

Braunold, however, said that “President Biden has constantly stressed as a priority of his presidency the returning of American hostages,” noting that he “mentions the hostages in every statement and has personally spent so much time with the families.”

For Biden, Braunold said, the urgency of a cease-fire is “linked directly to the fate of the hostages and is a critical lens in which he approaches this. As we saw in his extremely complex deal with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, he will go to every length to get a deal that will save their lives.”

Siboni said that divisions in Israel over hostage negotiations contribute to the dynamic of increased pressure on Israel that allows Hamas to remain recalcitrant.

”When the cabinet tells the negotiators we have to keep the Philadelphi Corridor, but a day before the negotiations the IDF chief of staff says we’ll know how to manage whether we’re there or not, he’s undermining the government’s position, which is catastrophic. It makes it harder to free the hostages. That is a mistake even a third-grader would know not to make,” he said.

Siboni argued that the only way to avoid this dynamic is to agree to only negotiate an exchange of all of the hostages for Palestinian prisoners, because a cease-fire at the start of the deal with a small number of hostages would mean that Israel has no leverage to free the rest of them.

Goldberg noted that Israel still needs to buy weapons from the U.S. in case of an escalation with Hezbollah or the broader Iranian axis.

”It very much feels like Netanyahu agreed to get back on the merry-go-round as the only way to unlock the munitions coming to Israel,” he said, arguing that the U.S. should have “announce[d] a massive arms sale to Israel and an expedited transfer of a range of munitions” immediately after Iran threatened to retaliate against Israel following Haniyeh’s assassination.

Instead, Goldberg said, “it was held back until Israel agreed to come back to ridiculous cease-fire negotiations. That’s having an adverse effect on the cease-fire negotiations that the administration demanded.” 

Even the Biden administration officials’ comments to The New York Times that Israel has nothing left to do in Gaza are “a disinformation campaign,” Goldberg argued, saying Washington believes that the headlines “give Israel political cover to make a bad deal with Hamas.” 

“It’s a very stupid claim,” Siboni said. “Gaza is full of weapons…above and below ground. They’re just saying it because they want to get something, not because Israel finished the job. It’s not logical, it’s just slogans for their base. 

“These people think that if they say something, it’ll just happen. But we have work in Gaza for years ahead,” he added.