With the United States significantly increasing pressure on Israel to agree to an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, Hamas has little reason to release Israeli hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners in Israel. After all, why cut a deal now when the evidence suggests that you’ll be able to cut a much better deal tomorrow?

The White House doesn’t appear to understand this.

Abstaining on a Monday United Nations Security Council vote that called for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire, the U.S. enabled that vote to pass. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then canceled a planned delegation to Washington that was set to discuss plans for a looming Israeli offensive into Gaza’s Egypt-bordering Rafah area. Rafah is the primary remaining redoubt of Hamas forces in Gaza. White House national security spokesman John Kirby responded to Netanyahu’s action by stating, “We’re kind of perplexed by this. It’s a nonbinding resolution, so there’s no impact at all on Israel’s ability to continue to go after Hamas.”

The problem with Kirby’s logic should be obvious. Namely, if the resolution is nonbinding and doesn’t matter in terms of Israeli interests, why didn’t the U.S. veto it on that basis?

The reality that Kirby well knows is that the U.N. resolution does nothing to increase pressure on Hamas. By calling for a ceasefire, even absent a prior hostage release deal, the resolution significantly increases international political pressure on Israel to avoid a military operation in Rafah. Considering Rafah’s dense saturation of civilians in a small, highly urbanized area and Hamas’s penchant for using civilians as human shields, the U.S. has good reasons to be concerned over a prospective Rafah operation. Many civilians will likely die if the Israel Defense Forces conduct a Rafah operation as they conducted operations in northern Gaza. This risks causing, by U.S. association with Israel, grave damage to U.S. relations with its Arab allies. That is a concern the U.S. must confront.

Nevertheless, with tentative hostage negotiations underway in Qatar until Monday, the U.S. must at least have understood the effect that the U.N. vote would have on those negotiations: that Hamas would sense a strategic shift by Washington to put unprecedented pressure on Israel over the future of this conflict.

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Recognizing that pressure, Hamas thus has credible reason to believe it can get more out of Israel by avoiding any deal now. Put simply, Hamas believes it has both time and the political initiative on its side. These are toxic ingredients for Israel’s better interests.

So whatever the Biden administration’s motive for abstaining in Monday’s U.N. vote, it stretches credulity beyond the breaking point for administration officials to express surprise that Israel was infuriated and Hamas was encouraged by it.