David Israel1 Tammuz 5784 – July 7, 2024
A series of developments, secret and public, over the past few weeks and more heatedly the past few days, have created a notion of progress in the negotiations for a deal with Hamas. In reality, it is more about American optimism––no, make it wishful thinking––that a window has been opened for a deal to bring home the hostages, dead and alive.
On Wednesday, Hamas put forward a counterproposal to the ongoing negotiations. According to two US senior officials speaking to the NY Times, Hamas is seeking international guarantees ensuring that once an initial ceasefire begins, both parties would continue negotiations until they reach a conclusive agreement to end the conflict and secure the release of all remaining hostages in Gaza.
In other words, Hamas’s primary concern is to avoid a scenario where they release a significant number of hostages, only to have Israel resume military operations.
This would be a good opportunity to point out that we have here a ruthless terrorist organization seeking international guarantees, and, worse, those guarantees would be forthcoming should Israel surrender to the pressure from the Biden administration (no withdrawal – no weapons and ammunition, the familiar threat).
The American optimism has been translated and delivered to the Israeli public at a high volume, and predictably again created an expectation that soon, if only PM Netanyahu and the “right-wing extremists” in his cabinet heed Hamas’s demands, joyous hostages would come roaming out of the terrorists’ tunnels, dead and alive. But reality has not changed, and despite the new flexibility and concessions on the part of Hamas, following considerable flexibility on the part of Israel, the terrorists use words skillfully to lure Israel into a suicidal gambit.
After you clean up the linguistic fluff, in Arabic and English, it becomes clear that Hamas continues to insist on the exact same point that it has insisted on since the previous ceasefire crashed last November 29, namely the release of all the hostages only in exchange for a permanent ceasefire, the end of the state of war, the complete withdrawal of IDF forces from Gaza, and international guarantees that when Yahya Sinwar finally sticks his head out of his burrow he won’t be seeing a shadow followed by drone fire.
Vedant Patel, the State Dept. Principal Deputy Spokesperson put it succinctly at a press briefing on July 2: “At every turn, what we have seen happen is Hamas has moved the goalposts. It has changed the parameters. It has come back asking for different things, even though it had previously approved various iterations of this proposal before. Let’s not forget that this is a proposal that Israel had accepted, that the United Nations had accepted, that partners in the Arab world had accepted, and that, of course, as I said, it’s something that the United States was pushing for as well. So, if there’s an interest in seeing this conflict end, if there’s an interest in bringing about some sort of relief for the Palestinian people, the solution is quite simple: Hamas can stop haggling and they could accept the ceasefire proposal that has been on the table.”
Hamas wants the deal to start with guarantees that the temporary ceasefire of the first of three phases would lead to a ceasefire during the second phase, culminating in a permanent ceasefire; Israel is adamant on exactly the opposite point: it wants to keep its ability to return and fight after the first ceasefire, or at the latest at the point when the negotiations for the second phase collapse.
In Friday’s meeting between Mossad chief David Barnea and the Prime Minister of Qatar Mohammed Al-Thani, Barnea announced that there was nothing to discuss and Israel would not budge from its position, which has been adopted both by President Biden and as part of the Security Council’s resolution. Now the world is awaiting an answer from Hamas, but there is no new information, only a projection of optimism. Hamas submitted its reservations to Israel’s proposal, and now, unless Israel increases its pounding of Rafah and Khan Younes until hundreds more bodies of Hamas fighters, maybe thousands more, roll in the streets – there is no motivation for Hamas to confirm a deal and no manner of stopping it from changing its mind mere days later.
Nevertheless, there is a feeling of momentum in the air––real or manufactured––there is an expectation of a re-start of the contacts, and this momentum by itself creates a dynamic that may drive contributing moves and stronger international pressure on the parties. For instance, the top Israeli security brass is secretly feeding the media its view that it’s time to end the war and leave Gaza before any more fine young Israeli men are lost. At the same time, the lower ranks in the security establishment are still very much Gung-ho about keeping the war going until Gaza is cleansed of its 20 to 30 thousand very bad men.
CIA Director William Burns is set to visit Doha in the coming week for discussions with intelligence chiefs from Israel, Europe, and other nations regarding a potential cease-fire deal in Gaza. Burns is also expected to travel to Israel to encourage the Israeli government to accept a deal.
US officials continue to stress that recent modifications to the agreement, which outline specific conditions for transitioning between phases, could be sufficient to initiate the release of hostages after months in captivity.
Approximately 120 hostages remain in Gaza out of the roughly 250 people kidnapped on October 7, 2023. During a weeklong truce in November, 105 hostages were exchanged for 240 terrorist prisoners. However, Hamas has since refused to release any more hostages without a permanent cease-fire and an end to the war. Israeli estimates suggest that only 77 hostages are still alive, and they have endured harsh conditions over the past nine months.
Content retrieved from: https://www.jewishpress.com/news/eye-on-palestine/hamas/us-brokered-hamas-deal-resets-war-gains-to-zero-with-international-guarantees-for-idf-withdrawal/2024/07/07/.
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