How about go pound sand? Joe Biden, along with other Western allies of Israel, desperately need a pause in the fighting for their own domestic-politics concerns. And so does Israel, which is why they continue to engage negotiations for a hostage deal. 

But somehow the dynamics of a war started by Hamas and the Gazans have been inverted into a situation where the onus for trust-building has landed on the country attacked:

Tuesday’s push for a shorter cease-fire—even lasting a few days—could prove to both sides that the other is serious about a longer deal, negotiators said. Israel and some negotiators believe Hamas only wants to escalate fighting to inflame regional tensions during Islam’s holy month in March while Hamas points to Israel’s threat to launch a final offensive on Gaza’s southern border if no agreement is reached.

As the war in Gaza persisted on Tuesday, a silver lining in talks emerged when all sides agreed to keep talking for another day in the Egyptian capital, where mediators expect negotiations in the coming days to either result in a deal or break down into more bloodshed.

The U.S. and Arab negotiators pushed to keep talks going Tuesday as political pressure piled on the Biden administration to produce a pause in fighting in Gaza that has left more than 30,000 Palestinians dead, according to Gaza health authorities, who don’t distinguish between civilians and militants. The U.S. has grown frustrated with Israel as one of its closest allies oversees a humanitarian crisis that includes reports of children dying from malnutrition.

The "US" hasn't grown frustrated with Israel; Americans have much greater clarity on this conflict than do Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and the rest of the progressive clique running policy these days. Two weeks ago, a Harvard/Harris CAPS showed 82% of Americans supporting Israel, and 67% opposed to any cease-fire in which Hamas remains in Gaza and without the return of all hostages.

In other words, hostages first, then pauses. Not only is Biden and Blinken getting this backward, now they want Israel to pause their military operations in Gaza in a war started by the Gazans to build "trust" with the terrorists. And for what? Has Hamas offered any moderation of their demands during this entire process?

Nope:

Spoke with a senior Hamas official. He provided three sticking points in negotiations beyond a hostage/prisoner deal.

1. Announcement of a total, comprehensive ceasefire.

2. Withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

3. Allow displaced Gazans to return home "without any…

— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) March 6, 2024

These have been the same Hamas demands since they violated the previous "pause" back in November. They won't even produce a single hostage now until the IDF fully withdraws from Gaza, let alone all of them. They won't even provide a list of the hostages still alive, insisting that the list itself is too "valuable" to provide for free and that Israel has to stop its operations for several weeks in order to get that list.

In short, Hamas doesn't want a cease fire or a pause, and the idea of "trust" is laughable under the circumstances. Hamas violated a cease-fire on October 7 to conduct its barbaric spree of murder, kidnapping, and rape, just as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have violated every "permanent" cease-fire over the last 17 years. 

What Hamas wants is a Ramadan uprising:

However, Israeli officials are reportedly increasingly pessimistic over the likelihood of reaching a hostage and truce deal before Ramadan. 

According to similar comments from unnamed officials cited in several Hebrew media reports — generally indicating a coordinated leak — Israel believes that rather than wanting to secure a temporary ceasefire in the coming days, Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar instead wants to escalate the violence further over Ramadan.

That may be what Sinwar wants, but he'd better not count on any help in turning it into a "unified battlefield" operation. That doctrine got exposed as fantasy in the days following the IDF invasion of Gaza, and apparently for good reason. Hamas officials have begun leaking to friendly media that the October 7 attacks were not their idea, and that Sinwar went cowboy on them:

Yahya Sinwar, Hamas chief in Gaza, has been the object of criticism within the Hamas leadership for launching the October 7 attack without prior consultation with other Hamas leaders, according to a Sky News Arabia report on Tuesday. 

According to sources who spoke with the news outlet, those who made the decision to attack were Sinwar, along with his brother Muhammad Sinwar, Muhammad Deif, Hamas military chief, and Marwan Issa, Hamas’s Deputy Military Commander. The four had not consulted the rest of the Hamas leadership and its political bureau, who were ignorant of the decision.

A report published by a-Sharq el-Awsat in January, based on Palestinian sources close to the al-Qassam Brigades, claimed that the decision to attack was made solely by five Hamas leaders, among whom were Sinwar, Sinwar’s brother, Deif, Rouhi Mushtaha, a Hamas official close associate of Sinwar and Ayman Nofal, close to Deif and previous leader of the al-Qassam Brigades’ intelligence. 

In the days following the massacres, radical Islamists stood foursquare behind Sinwar. Six months later, their enthusiasm seems to be waning. That's likely because Israel has changed the terms of the game, refusing to respond to hostaging as predicted and ferociously operating in a Gaza that Hamas thought would be nearly impregnable. The fall of Gaza and the supremacy of the Israelis will make Hamas look impotent and stupid -- and those are two impressions that terrorists can't afford to leave anywhere, especially among former fanatics who may wonder why they swallowed Hamas' propaganda at all. Small wonder now that Hamas leadership elsewhere wants to hang the failure and defeat on Sinwar.

This emphasizes a truth about warfare, asymmetrical and otherwise, that keeps getting lost in this conflict in particular. And that truth is: War is hell. That's why people shouldn't start wars, but it's also why wars have to be fought to their conclusion, which is either capitulation or collapse, when the aggressor is determined to annihilate the other through war. Until the full "price" of war is felt by the people who start them, then they will keep starting them as long as they remain in the grip of their annihilationist fantasies. Only when it becomes clear that such wars will result in total destruction short of capitulation will the disincentives against war work properly. 

This situation doesn't need any more "trust building." It needs the strongest possible disincentives, and it needs those applied rapidly and without hesitation. If Biden and Blinken are too addled to figure that out, the American public is not.