Well, someone's lying. Late yesterday, news outlets around the world reported that Hamas had agreed to a "modified" version of the US proposal for a temporary pause in fighting to exchange hostages for prisoners and allow aid into Gaza. As I warned at the time, "modified" could mean a lot of things, even if the source -- notoriously unreliable Al-Arabiya -- got the story right at all.

This morning, Hamas denounced Al-Arabiya and claimed it lied about their position, which they refuse to change:

Hamas denied that it had agreed to a new proposal, stating early Wednesday morning that "there is no truth to the news published by Al-Arabiya attributed to a 'senior Hamas source' about the movement receiving an international offer for an extended ceasefire in Gaza, the gradual return of the displaced, or a delegation heading to Cairo to discuss the details."

"We ask that the media ensure accuracy and credibility in reporting the news, and not manipulate the feelings of our people who are being subjected to a Zionist aggression and a Nazi war of extermination," added the terrorist movement.

Speaking of lies, only one side like to have Mein Kampf on their shelves, and it ain't the Israelis. Hamas went on an orgy of rape, kidnapping, and murder on October 7 and somehow expected the Israelis not to recognize that the Gazans under their leadership wanted to annihilate them. When it comes to accusing people of lying, let's just say that Hamas leadership appears expert on the practice.

That doesn't necessarily mean that Al-Arabiya got this entirely wrong, though. For one thing, the war has interrupted communications within Hamas, to the point where leadership in Gaza appears to be at odds with the billionaire-leader clique in Qatar about what they will accept. Yahyah Sinwar reportedly wants to fight to the death, while the billionaires in Doha want to protect their aid-skimmed wealth. It's very possible that the Al-Arabiya leak was intended as a trial balloon, or some sort of factional power play that didn't pan out.

According to several reports, the billionaire Hamas clique in Doha has some reasons to worry. The patience of their Qatar hosts has reportedly run mighty thin, and they have allegedly been warned that they could be ejected if they don't start getting more flexible about negotiations:

Qatari and Egyptian mediators believe significant progress has been made this week toward securing a truce between Israel and Hamas, after talks appeared dead in the water, a senior Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.

Progress was made after Doha placed significant pressure on Hamas, warning the terror group that its leaders residing in Qatar would be kicked out of the country if they didn’t adapt their approach in the negotiations. ...

In a rare statement, Israel’s Mossad spy agency said Saturday night that Hamas was stiffening its demands, making a deal unreachable. Nonetheless, talks have continued this week under Egyptian, Qatari and US mediation.

If true, that threat may well have prompted a little more ... flexibility. Ismail Haniyeh and his terror-network billionaires are marked for death if they travel anywhere outside of Qatar, and they know it. The Israelis have pledged to make every member of Hamas a "dead man," and the Israelis usually deliver on such promises. Just ask the members of Black September, the Fatah wing that committed the Munich Olympics terror attacks and who spent years getting clipped by the Mossad to make the point clear.

However, it's not clear that this threat prompted the little pas de deux yesterday. Hamas, like most terror networks, love to sociopathically manipulate people and situations for their own benefit; this is seen most clearly in their hostaging strategy and their use of Gazans as willing human shields. It certainly suits their purposes to hint that they are being flexible while giving up nothing at all, so as to put pressure on Israel to offer more concessions and dupe Israel's allies into demanding them. That has worked rather brilliantly thus far, with Joe Biden nearly at the breaking point with Benjamin Netanyahu and demanding that Israel accept Hamas' terms for a cease-fire. 

The White House belatedly seems to have realized just how badly Biden has been played by Hamas and its useful idiots in the US. For the first time in days, Biden admin officials publicly defended Israel and rebuked reporters for asking about "red lines," a topic that Biden himself raised:

On Tuesday, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan repeatedly defended Israel against critical lines of questioning from reporters during a White House press briefing, rejecting the notion that US President Joe Biden had characterized an Israeli military operation in Rafah as a “red line” and pouring cold water on speculation that Washington is considering withholding security aid if the Israel Defense Forces move into the southern Gaza city.

“We’re not going to engage in hypotheticals about what comes down the line, and the reports that purport to describe the president’s thinking are uninformed speculation,” Sullivan said, adding that the policy to date has been against restricting Israel’s aid.

“I would just note — having been around a little while — that I know all of you are obsessed with this concept of the red line, [but] the president didn’t make any declarations or pronouncements or announcements,” he told reporters.

Sullivan was referring to the answer Biden gave in an MSNBC interview on Saturday when Biden was asked whether an Israeli operation in Rafah would be a “red line.” He responded, “It is a red line,” before appearing to backtrack and saying, “I’m never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical. There’s no red line [in which] I’m going to cut off all weapons so that they don’t have the Iron Dome [missile defense system] to protect them.”

Perhaps the White House has also discovered, belatedly, that far more voters support Israel than they do Hamas or "the Palestinians" in this conflict. Biden isn't going to win an election by allowing himself to be led by the nose by an Iranian proxy terror group to betray the only real liberal democracy in the Middle East. Maybe Biden should start demanding concessions from Hamas first in the future. That might actually change the leverage; it would at least be a change of pace from the shameful attacks on an ally for defending itself against an annihilationist terror network bent on their destruction.