So US Vice President Kamala Harris is doing what she does best - indulging in self-congratulatory moral preening - with a call for a 6-week ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and also chastising Israel for not doing enough to get aid into southern Gaza for good measure.
Here's the hangup, Madame Veep: Hamas won't specify release numbers - either of the Israeli hostages it's holding captive or the number of its terrorists it wants released from Israeli prisons:
Israeli officials said on Sunday that Hamas responded to the proposal agreed with mediating countries in Paris last week, but still refuses to provide the names of Israeli hostages who are still alive and state how many Palestinian prisoners they demand would be released from Israeli prison, for each hostage freed.
"There is no Israeli delegation in Cairo," the officials said in reaction to Arab and American media reports that a delegation was making its way from Israel. "Hamas refuses to provide clear answers and therefore there is no reason to dispatch the Israeli delegation to the talks in Cairo," they said adding that position was agreed to by all relevant professional teams and was not exclusively the position of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Oh, and Hamas is insisting one one other little thing, which really makes the brokered talks for a ceasefire a non-starter:
A Hamas official said that the terror group has not backed down from its demand that a hostage release deal would include an end to the war. According to a report in the Qatari newspaper Al-Araby al Jadeed, Hamas rejects Israel's demand for names unless there is an agreement on the full withdrawal of IDF forces from Gaza.
No, that's the mirror opposite of what needs to happen.
Our hearts understandably go out when we see Gazan hospitals trying to treat injured and malnourished children with inadequate resources, but what doesn't get nearly enough mention is that Hamas has extensive tunnels underneath those hospitals as well as putting its jihadists working as UNRWA staff in schools, mosques and churches.
No, there could be not just a ceasefire, but an end to this entire conflict if Hamas would do two things: release all Israeli hostages and dismantle itself.
Only those without a functioning moral compass would deny this, a position that is pregnant with the implication that Hamas has some kind of valid point.
It doesn't. It wants the state of Israel obliterated and Jews killed.
So here we are.
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