Biden's Own Negotiator Confirms: Hamas, Not Israel, Blocked the Hostage Deal

Biden’s Own Negotiator Confirms: Hamas, Not Israel, Blocked the Hostage Deal

For nearly three years, the charge was repeated on campuses, at the United Nations, and across much of the media: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was dragging out the war in Gaza to survive politically, and Israel, not Hamas, stood between the hostages and their freedom. Now the man who led America’s side of the hostage negotiations has confirmed what Israel said from the start.

Brett McGurk, President Joe Biden’s top Middle East adviser, has given his full account of the talks in his new book, Brink, and in an interview on Dan Senor’s podcast, Call Me Back. His conclusion is unmistakable. Hamas was the obstacle all along, and no deal was possible while Yahya Sinwar was alive.

“Complete BS”

After Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, murdering about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages into Gaza, the United States, Qatar, and Egypt began working on a deal to bring them home. McGurk led the American side.

The claim that Hamas was ready to free everyone, McGurk said, was “complete BS.” From the start, Hamas demanded the release of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, a permanent ceasefire, and the right to stay in power under the October 6 status quo.

“No Israeli government was ever going to accept that,” McGurk said. This was not a Netanyahu problem, he stressed. “That was everybody.” According to McGurk, Sinwar planned to hold hostages for years.

“Hamas broke the deal”

The pattern appeared within weeks. Under the November 2023 truce, Hamas released hostages in daily groups in exchange for each extra day of calm. When Hamas still held several young women, it refused to free them and asked to release older men instead. Israel offered to keep the truce going for as little as one more name. Hamas refused, and the ceasefire collapsed.

“Hamas broke the deal,” McGurk said. He believes Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher should have come home that November. Instead, they remained in Gaza for 14 more months, until January 2025.

Pressure on the wrong side

As the war went on, Washington’s pressure fell increasingly on Israel. On March 25, 2024, the United States abstained on UN Security Council Resolution 2728, allowing it to pass. The resolution demanded a ceasefire and the release of the hostages in the same breath, but it did not make the ceasefire conditional on the hostages coming home, and it did not condemn Hamas. Israel’s UN ambassador warned that this “gives Hamas terrorists hope to get a ceasefire without releasing the hostages.” McGurk now says the vote “did not produce a ceasefire” and played back “extremely negatively” in the talks.

The following month, an Israeli drone strike mistakenly killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza. Rather than pressing Hamas, Biden turned on Israel and threatened to change U.S. policy. In May, he warned Israel to stay out of Rafah, Hamas’s last stronghold, and withheld a shipment of 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs.

None of it brought a single hostage home. McGurk says cutting off Israel “would not have ended the war” and “would not have gotten any hostages home.” Israel defied the pressure, went into Rafah, and killed Sinwar there five months later.

Israel said yes. Hamas said no.

On May 31, 2024, Biden announced a three-phase hostage deal from the White House and presented it as Israel’s own proposal. In an interview with Time conducted days earlier, Biden had been asked whether Netanyahu was dragging out the war to survive politically. “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion,” he answered, though he later softened it, telling reporters, “I don’t think so.”

The deal itself told a different story. The UN Security Council endorsed it on June 10, noting that Israel had accepted and calling on Hamas to do the same. Hamas answered the next day with changes that Secretary of State Antony Blinken called unworkable. In August, the United States offered a revised proposal. Blinken announced that Netanyahu had accepted it. Hamas rejected it.

McGurk told the Jerusalem Post that this was the pattern throughout the war: Israel agreed to proposal after proposal, while Hamas held out.

Two verdicts on the same day

In late August 2024, Israeli forces found six hostages executed in a Rafah tunnel, among them the American Hersh Goldberg-Polin. On September 2, Labor Day, a reporter asked Biden whether Netanyahu was doing enough to get a deal. Biden answered: “No.”

Hamas seized on the remark immediately. A senior Hamas official called it American recognition that Netanyahu was undermining the talks.

That same day, inside the White House Situation Room, Biden’s own negotiator reached the opposite conclusion. As long as Sinwar held the keys, McGurk concluded, “we were not going to get a deal.”

He was right. A deal came only after Israel killed Sinwar, eliminated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, crushed Hezbollah, and struck Iran. In January 2025, as Biden left office and Donald Trump arrived, the agreement was signed and hostages began coming home.

Too late

For three years, the world was told that Israel was the obstacle. The President of the United States gave that story his voice, and Hamas used his words as a weapon. Now Biden’s own negotiator has confirmed that Hamas never wanted a deal, and that only Israeli strength brought the hostages home.

The truth came too late for the hostages who died waiting. It must not come too late to set the record straight.