Biden says Netanyahu is not doing enough to secure a ceasefire deal. 

President Biden let loose with a one-word rebuke on Monday to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise of a cease-fire and hostage release deal, the latest version of the White House’s monthslong attempt at coaxing and denouncing the Israeli leader.

Emerging from Marine One onto the White House lawn on his way to a meeting of his national security team,  Biden was repeatedly pressed by waiting reporters about whether Netanyahu was doing enough to achieve a deal to get the hostages back. The president’s response was succinct: “No.”

But as the advisers briefed Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, whose every utterance on the Israel-Hamas war is being examined for evidence that she is ready to shift administration policy, it became clear that far more than Netanyahu’s own political calculations were preventing a preliminary hostage exchange and six-week cease-fire.

While administration officials say they have locked down 90 percent of the 18-paragraph-long preliminary accord, Hamas has still not approved a final list of which hostages would be released and which would be released in the first phase. In return, Israel would release a large number of Hamas fighters and other prisoners.

Included among those who were expected to be freed were at least some of the six Israeli and American hostages who, in an apparent fit of pique by their captors over an Israeli rescue operation they mistakenly believed to be underway, were executed over the weekend. Among them was Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, a dual citizen of America and Israel who had lost an arm trying to protect others during the Oct. 7 terror attack that precipitated the Israel-Hamas war.

Hamas has insisted upon nothing less than the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the Philadelphi Corridor, the thin stretch of land less than nine miles long that lies between Gaza and Egypt. Mr. Netanyahu said that Israeli troops must stay in the corridor to block the passage of weapons and ammunition to Hamas.

 In return, the draft agreement calls for a radical diminution of the number of Israeli forces in the corridor during the first phase of the cease-fire and complete withdrawal afterwards. Government negotiators in Israel have agreed to that gradual withdrawal. Still, Netanyahu has backpedalled on that part of the agreement, thus opening a public disagreement with his defence minister, Yoav Gallant.

“It is too late for the hostages who were murdered in cold blood,” Mr. Gallant said on Sunday, announcing that Mr. Netanyahu had to back away from his insistence on the troop presence in the corridor. “We must bring back the hostages that Hamas is still holding.”

White House officials are considering pushing another “final” draft of the agreement in the coming days after the region has cooled off from the execution of the hostages. There have been other final drafts. A week and a half ago, White House and State Department officials said there would be a meeting of the negotiators, except for Hamas, to approve a final accord. That meeting never happened after Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, rejected parts of it, and Mr. Netanyahu dug in his heels on the military presence in the corridor.

After the Situation Room meeting on Monday, Mr. Biden spoke little about his strategy over the coming days and weeks, including whether there would be another final draft presentation. “We’re in the middle of negotiations,” Mr. Biden told reporters after the meeting as he headed to a campaign event with Ms. Harris in Pennsylvania. 

A question to Mr. Biden about Mr. Netanyahu’s defiant stance in a news conference in Israel on Monday – in which the prime minister asked what message it would send to Hamas following the deaths of the hostages if Israel let up in the fighting- went unanswered. “Slay hostages, and you’ll get concessions? ” the prime minister said.

Mr. Biden would say only that “we’re still in negotiations — not with him, but with my colleagues from Qatar and Egypt.” Ms. Harris did not discuss the strategy. At the Democratic National Convention two weeks ago, she came out strongly in favour of Israel while adding that more had to be done to alleviate the suffering of the people of Palestine.

 However, she has been careful to hew closely to the administration’s current policy and deflected calls from the progressive wing of the party to cut off at least some weapons shipments to Israel, a step the British took on Monday. At a news conference in Israel on Monday, Biden dodged a question about Netanyahu’s defiant posture when the prime minister asserted that it raised a question of what message Israel would be sending to Hamas if it let up in the fighting after the deaths of the hostages.