After stepping out of the United States presidential race, Joe Biden said one of his last acts in office would be to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas and end the fighting in Gaza.

“I’m going to keep working to end the war in Gaza, to bring home all the hostages, and to bring peace and security to the Middle East and end this war,” he said in his first public address after announcing his exit. Since then, America has increased its involvement in ceasefire negotiations among mediators, Israel and Hamas.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the Middle East trying to get Israel and Hamas to accept a ceasefire deal. Early this month, mediators said negotiations looked positive. But on August 18, Hamas rejected the deal and accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of adding new stipulations it could not accept.

The issue was that Netanyahu demanded that the Israel Defense Forces remain deployed in the Philadelphi Corridor, along the Gaza-Egypt border and in the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land through central Gaza created by the Israeli military during the war to prevent Hamas from reestablishing itself in the north. Netanyahu’s aim is to stop weapons smuggling into Gaza and any possibility of Hamas reconstructing its military.

Negotiators told Netanyahu that if he did not compromise on the issue, there would be no deal. They were right. In its official statement on August 18, Hamas said:

After being briefed by the mediators about what happened in the last round of talks in Doha, we once again came to the conclusion that Netanyahu is still putting obstacles in the way of reaching an agreement and is setting new conditions and demands with the aim of undermining the mediators’ efforts and prolonging the war.

After leaving negotiations in Doha, Qatar, on August 20, Blinken told reporters that Israel and Hamas must demonstrate “maximum flexibility” in talks. “Time is of the essence,” Blinken said. “This needs to get done, and it needs to get done in the days ahead, and we will do everything possible to get it across the finish line.”

The next night, Blinken called Netanyahu to stress “the urgency of bringing the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure and discussed upcoming talks in Cairo to remove any remaining obstacles,” the White House said.

However, in an interview with Fox News, Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of one of Hamas’s founders, warned that America’s efforts in ceasefire negotiations are giving Hamas the advantage:

The approach of the current [Biden] administration that is hesitant, that is trying to please everybody, to win votes … well, this is a short political interest at the expense of the fundamentals of the country.

I think this is where Hamas can sense the compromise, when they see their hesitation, when they see the conflict within the administration, when they sense hypocrisy, they know that the politicians have been compromised. And this is when they can actually find a way to infiltrate and to press toward creating more division and more chaos.

Yousef, who grew up in the West Bank and spent his early life as a member of Hamas, said that “Hamas and Islamists hate America, period. It doesn’t matter who’s in office.” But he explained that “when there is a president who is not firm enough, not strong enough, behind the fundamentals … of America,” then Hamas can use its ideology to harm both Israel and the U.S.

Yousef explained how the pro-Palestinian riots that have spread across America are undermining security in the Middle East:

Many people don’t understand that by legitimizing violence, let’s say in the Middle East, for example, by justifying or validating the acts of killing innocent civilians indiscriminately or by raping women, by killing children, by kidnapping civilians, by killing people in their living rooms—if they think that is a legitimate thing by the name of resistance or … occupation, colonialism, whatever it is … they are inciting violence.

It’s about principle, and many people have been indoctrinated with so many strange ideologies. We have Islamists and Communists, socialists—all types of extreme opposites have been at play since the beginning of this conflict.

These ideologies are driving ceasefire negotiations. Pro-Palestinians, human rights activists and heads of state are all decrying what is happening in Gaza and demanding an “immediate ceasefire.” But Yousef warns that it “is very dangerous to advocate on behalf of something they don’t understand.”

For Israel, Yousef explained, “This whole thing is only for one purpose—to just bring the hostages back, and whenever there is an opportunity to just bring the hostages, I think this is where Israel is compromising.”

The only man not letting Israel compromise is Netanyahu. When the U.S.-led negotiations in Cairo ended on Sunday, media outlets began reporting that Israel was willing to reduce its forces in the Philadelphi Corridor if it meant Hamas would accept the hostage and ceasefire agreement.

Netanyahu’s office immediately released a statement on Monday rejecting the reports:

Prime Minister Netanyahu stands by the principle that Israel will physically remain in the Philadelphia Corridor, from the Kerem Shalom [Crossing] to the sea.

As Netanyahu stands for the safety of Israel, many accuse him of standing in the way of the agreement. This also means he is standing in the way of one of Biden’s last pledges. Biden and Netanyahu have never been on good terms. Their disagreement goes back to well before Biden occupied the Oval Office; it stems from the presidency of Barack Obama. To learn more, read “Who Is Behind the War on Netanyahu.”