Former US president Joe Biden’s top Middle East adviser argues in his new book that public pressure on Israel from the previous administration proved counterproductive, as it led Hamas to harden its positions in negotiations on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal.

“Looking back, it’s no wonder that Hamas never responded to our proposals during this period. We now know that in March 2024, as this political debate was taking place in the US, [then-Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar was in a tunnel complex underneath Rafah. An avid consumer of news, he would have understood that relations between Biden and Netanyahu were approaching the boiling point,” McGurk writes in his book “Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages.”

An edited excerpt of the book — out on October 6 — was published Monday in The Atlantic.

While Israeli officials have long made this argument to criticize the Biden administration’s pressure against Israel during the war, McGurk’s comments represent one of the first times such criticism has been voiced by a senior US official who appeared to acknowledge that the strategy was a mistake.

In his book excerpt, McGurk — who helped lead the administration’s efforts to broker a ceasefire and hostage release deal — places most of the blame for the dragged-out nature of the Gaza war on Hamas.

He says a November 2023 ceasefire deal collapsed after seven days because Hamas refused to adhere to its terms by holding onto young women still in its captivity.

Subsequent negotiations went nowhere, as Hamas was insisting that it be allowed to remain in power after the war— something McGurk said no Israeli government could have accepted after the terror group sparked the conflict by leading a mass invasion of southern Israel during which some 1,200 people were killed and another 250 were taken hostage into Gaza.

McGurk doesn’t exonerate Netanyahu completely, though. He recalls traveling to Jerusalem in early 2024 to push the premier to accept a six-week ceasefire and hostage release deal. Netanyahu didn’t want to discuss the hostages and was more focused on advancing Israel’s military campaign against Hamas, believing military pressure was the only tool that would work.

While Netanyahu eventually told McGurk he accepted the proposal in principle, the former Biden aide writes that he wasn’t sure if the premier was actually on board. It didn’t end up mattering, though, as Hamas would go on to reject the offer.

Biden’s accidental ‘red line’

By March of 2024, the civilian toll of Israel’s offensive in Gaza was piling up, and the administration was beginning to come under pressure at home and abroad over its continued military support for the Jewish state.

Biden was asked during a CNN interview whether a threatened Israeli invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah would be a “red line” for him, and he responded in the affirmative before somewhat contradictorily adding that he would “never leave Israel.”

“Biden later told us........

© The Times of Israel