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are vastly different and partly explain the conundrum.
While Washington wants an end to the killings in Gaza to assuage the concerns of voters at home, Netanyahu is likely waiting for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to win in November’s election to have a freer hand in how he handles the conflict. And Hamas wants to make sure that any deal ensures it isn’t exterminated and continues to rule the Gaza Strip.
Joost Hiltermann, the Middle East and North Africa program director for the International Crisis Group, said it is not that Netanyahu or Hamas don’t want a deal but that they want it “only on their terms, which are incompatible.” While Israel doesn’t want any deal that prevents it from continuing the war, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar wants a complete Israeli withdrawal, returning to the status quo ante prior to the group’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel.
In contrast, the Biden administration “very much wants a cease-fire based on compromise, given the heightened political sensitivities before the U.S. elections,” Hiltermann said.

The Fall and Fall of Mahmoud Abbas  (Khaled Elgindy, Foreign Affairs)
For nearly two decades, Palestinian leadership has been fractured. Along with a basic division between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, numerous other groups have competed for influence. In late July, leaders of all 14 Palestinian political factions, including Fatah and Hamas, met in Beijing to issue a call for national unity. The agreement they signed, known as the Beijing Declaration, promised to create a consensus government presiding over both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, to reform and expand the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and to hold national elections.
Such proposals are not new and largely reiterate the principles set out in previous reconciliation accords. But they have taken on much greater urgency in light of Israel’s unprecedented war on Gaza. As of mid-August, the Israeli assault launched in response to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel had killed more than 40,000 Palestinians—mostly women and children—forcibly displaced two million people, and reduced most of the territory to rubble. It has become the deadliest moment in Palestinian history and the most destructive episode in the century-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Amid this crisis, the Beijing Declaration provides a road map to a different Palestinian future, one with credible leadership and functioning political institutions that will be essential for the day after the war.
Yet despite the gravity of the situation, Mahmoud Abbas, the longtime president of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah in the West Bank, has—through a spokesman—disparaged the Beijing Declaration as unhelpful and insignificant. (Abbas sent a Fatah representative to the talks in his place.) It is puzzling that a political leader, especially one as deeply unpopular as Abbas, in a moment of national trauma and existential despair, should show such open contempt for a display of national unity. Perhaps he sensed that Hamas’s back was against the wall and thus felt no sense of urgency to share power with the group. Or maybe he did not want to defy U.S. and Israeli officials, who, in the wake of October 7, are dead set against any political accommodation with Hamas. Either way, Abbas’s arrogant dismissal of the plan highlighted two hallmarks of his nearly 20 years in power—a profound disconnect with his people and an unwillingness to promote a coherent strategy for Palestinian liberation. If the Palestinians’ painful history has taught them anything, it is that bad things happen to them when they don’t have credible leaders. Such is the case with Abbas today.