Brett McGurk (the Biden White House Middle East coordinator and lead hostage negotiator) said that Israeli military pressure was the leverage that produced Hamas hostage releases, not an alternative to deals. In a summary of his appearance on Dan Senor’s podcast, McGurk’s points include: 1. Claims that Israel could have brought everyone home almost immediately were “absolute bullshit.” A comprehensive early deal would have meant accepting Hamas terms, and U.S. assessments held that Hamas intended to keep some hostages for years as bargaining chips. 2. The first (November 2023) deal collapsed because Hamas tried to skip releasing young women still alive and move to older men; Israel refused to skip that category. 3. Before the Rafah operation there was no deal Hamas was prepared to accept. Israel agreed to difficult proposals (including releases of serious offenders); Hamas rejected them, including the framework Biden publicly outlined. 4. Biden’s push to slow or stop before Rafah was not because Israel had torpedoed a deal. By then Biden had reached the limits of his tolerance for the war and regional risks. The U.S. push for reduced fighting during Ramadan, McGurk said, actually reduced Hamas’s incentive to compromise. 5. As long as Yahya Sinwar was alive, McGurk saw no realistic full deal. The Rafah operation was part of the sequence that led to Sinwar’s killing. Military pressure brought Hamas to the points where it agreed to releases. In his view, pressure and a hostage deal were not alternatives - the pressure was what made the deals possible.