J Street to President Biden: It’s Time for Maximum Pressure on Netanyahu and Hamas to Seal the Deal Now

In an email to supporters yesterday, J Street mourned the horrific executions of six hostages last week by Hamas, condemning the group as “murderous, heartless terrorists” and expressing the grief and heartbreak of the whole J Street community at the ongoing tragedy.

J Street also specifically called out Prime Minister Netanyahu, with J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami, writing, “We must now turn to Netanyahu and ask, how many more hostages must die at the hands of Hamas before you make a good-faith effort to end the war? How many more Palestinian families must perish from disease, hunger and bombs? We expect the worst from Sinwar but we expect so much better from the Prime Minister of Israel. He abandoned the hostages and continues to impede a ceasefire and hostage deal that would end this nightmare for everybody.”

The question now, the email poses is “how do we change course? Specifically, what more can President Biden and the United States do today?”

While the Biden Administration has worked tirelessly to hammer out a deal that will bring the hostages home alive and end the war, the results to date have been insufficient. J Street is calling for President Biden, together with the other mediators – Egypt and Qatar – to put a final bridging proposal on the table and ask both parties for a yes or no response. When they do, the US must ensure that its partners, as well as all other international actors, bring maximum pressure on Hamas to accept the terms.

At the same time, President Biden needs to spell out clearly – and initially privately – to Prime Minister Netanyahu the costs if he continues to block a deal.

President Biden will need to be explicit. He should:

Pledge a thorough review of every single arms shipment scheduled from the US to Israel and make clear that certain offensive weapons will be withheld if Israel chooses to continue to pursue the illusory goal of “total victory” rather than take good-faith steps to end the war;
Promise to clearly and publicly assign accountability for the failure of negotiations – i.e., to lay the blame for failure squarely on Netanyahu’s doorstep if he says no to the deal as presented in this round of negotiations (and on Hamas’s doorstep if they reject it); and
Inform the Prime Minister that this is an inflection point in US-Israel relations. Rejecting this deal and pursuing the war further will have a lasting impact on both the scope of US assistance to Israel and the protection it will provide in international fora.

Netanyahu has made last-minute demands – including an indefinite presence of IDF troops on the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Philadelphi Corridor – to a proposal placed on the table months ago. Even high-level Israeli security figures agree that the conditions Netanyahu is now placing on the deal are not necessary to ensure Israel’s security.

“It is unconscionable that Netanyahu has left so many innocent lives hanging in the balance by throwing eleventh-hour poison pills onto the negotiating table designed to kill the deal, not seal it,” Ben-Ami added today. “President Biden knows that a head of state’s primary responsibility is to protect the nation and its people. Netanyahu has failed at this most fundamental and profound task. It is within the President’s power to change the course, and we urge him to lean on every lever within his reach to get him to sign the deal, and end the suffering, once and for all.”