Biden’s 2024 rivals launch attacks over Israel-Hamas hostage talks

by Laura Kelly - 12/02/23 12:00 PM ET

President Joe Biden talks to reporters aboard Air Force One during a refueling stop in at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, as he travels back from Israel to Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Biden’s role in high-stakes talks between Israel and Hamas is drawing attacks from his 2024 presidential challengers, pulling the fraught issue of hostage negotiations into America’s presidential race.

At least four Americans are among the more than 100 people released by Hamas to date, amid intensive negotiations to free an estimated 240 people taken hostage.

Fighting between Israel and Hamas resumed on Friday after a week-long pause. The Biden administration said they are working “literally by the hour” to try and restore what they call a tactical pause to allow more hostages to be released and humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

Biden has taken criticism from Republicans and Democrats over his handling of the talks — and the fact that four of an estimated 12 American hostages have been among the dozens released so far.

Former President Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, has accused Biden of not prioritizing the release of Americans in the deals, which have prioritized the release of children and women. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who launched a long-shot primary challenge to the president, took his own swing at Biden over the issue last week.

“I would have expected American special forces to perhaps play a hand in extracting them,” he said of US hostages on CNN. “I think it’s absurd, shocking and dismaying, that six weeks later, we still have American hostages held by a terror organization in Gaza.”

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Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is running as an anti-Trump Republican, has acknowledged Biden’s success in securing the release of hostages, but criticized the deal as “lop-sided toward Hamas.”

Under the terms of the initial deal, an estimated three Palestinian prisoners have been released from Israeli jails in exchange for every one Israeli hostage.

Christie has also criticized the pause in fighting for allowing Hamas to regroup. U.S. and Israeli officials agree with that assessment, but say the pause is worth it to encourage the ongoing series of hostage exchanges.

Neither of Biden’s top challengers — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration — have made a point of attacking Biden over the hostage talks.

But they have both criticized U.S. funding for UNRWA, the United Nations agency focused on Palestinian refugees. DeSantis has pledged to strip funding from UNRWA – funds were repealed by Trump and reinstated by Biden.

But lawmakers in Congress, from both sides of the aisle, are largely uniting behind how Biden is handling the crisis.

“I will say I am proud of this administration for standing with Israel,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said during a roundtable meeting with Israeli-American families of hostages held by Hamas.

“We stand united with you as Americans on this committee, we put our partisanship aside,” the chairman continued.

The White House has touted Biden’s efforts, saying his personal involvement has been integral to making progress. The agreements have also allowed a surge of humanitarian support into Gaza, which Hamas had demanded.

“The approach that we’re taking with Israel, and quite frankly, with our partners in the region, is working,” White House National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday.

“It’s getting aid into people that need it. It’s getting a pause in the fighting. It’s getting hostages out, it’s getting Americans out.”

The first hostages released by Hamas on Oct. 20 were an American mother and daughter, and a four-year-old American-Israeli girl was released on Nov. 26 – part of a four-day pause in fighting that allowed for the release of 58 hostages, including Israeli women and children, and foreign nationals from Thailand and Nepal.

American-Israeli Liat Atzili was released by Hamas on Nov. 29.

Hamas has released some Israelis with dual citizenship with Russia, viewed as a gesture toward Russian President Vladimir Putin after the Kremlin hosted the group in Moscow at the end of October.

“The Russians were not released because Hamas respects Putin, but because Putin showed respect to Hamas,” said Laura Blumenfeld, a senior fellow at the The Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.

Hamas has said it does not have all the hostages in its captivity. Hostages are believed to be held by other groups in Gaza, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which like Hamas is designated as a terrorist group by the U.S.

At least 108 hostages have been released as of Friday, when fighting between Israel and Hamas resumed with the truce expiration and failure to achieve an extension.

Outside experts say the Biden administration faces an incredibly challenging time in securing the release of hostages.

“The bottom line is, it’s very difficult to negotiate with a terrorist group and it’s pretty easy to backseat drive,” Matthew Levitt, director of the Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said of political criticism of the Biden White House.

Hamas has long used hostages as leverage with Israel.

“Traditionally Hamas asks for dozens or hundreds of released Palestinian prisoners for one person, and I anticipate that when the civilians are eventually all released, then it comes down to the remaining Israeli soldiers, mostly men, but some women as well, that Hamas is going to significantly raise the price and start asking for very, very large numbers,” he said.

“That’s not because of how the Israelis value lives, it’s because of how Hamas doesn’t.”

Levitt also said that Hamas is likely placing a higher price on hostages with American citizenship. The Biden administration has said that as part of negotiations, Hamas provides — at the last minute — a list of potential hostages for release to Israel and the U.S.

“It’s easy to be bombastic, but there aren’t a lot of great options here,” Levitt said of the criticism lodged against the negotiations. “And I think that’s why the Israelis are willing to extend this temporary ceasefire in an effort to get out as many people as they can.”

The war has dragged on Biden’s already weak approval numbers and opened fissures within the Democratic Party.

It’s also provided another opening for GOP candidates to question Biden’s strength and competency.

A YouGov poll found earlier this month that 56 percent of Republicans disapprove of how Biden has managed the conflict, while an NBC News poll released last week put that number at almost 70 percent.

The NBC poll found only a third of registered voters overall approved of Biden’s handling of the war, and only half of all Democrats.

Handling hostage talks is an issue that has bedeviled presidents in both parties for generations — and can have significant political consequences.

“A hostage crisis can be lose-lose for politicians when there’s an exchange, because your opponents will always criticize you for the terms,” said Blumenfeld.

“Hostage taking is the ultimate terror tool because the price you pay for their freedom can be used against you as a leader, if it’s anything short of a low-cost, heroic military operation.”

Since the war began, Republican lawmakers have focused much of their domestic ire on Biden’s earlier diplomacy of exchanging $6 billion in frozen Iranian oil profits to secure the release of five Americans imprisoned for years in Iran.

Some in the GOP even sought to link these funds to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. While Tehran is a military and financial backer of Hamas, Israel and the White House have not accused Iran of having direct involvement with the planning and execution of the attack. Still, Republican hard-liners oppose any negotiations with Iran.

The White House had held back greenlighting the transfer of the billions to Iran in the wake of Hamas’s terrorist attack, but Republicans have seized on the frozen funds as a Biden policy failure.

The Republican-controlled House on Thursday passed a bill that seeks to officially block Iran from accessing the $6 billion, even as the bill is unlikely to advance in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Jared Gans contributed to this report.