Why is a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas not working?
This article appeared in the Dutch newspaper NRC on 26 August 2024
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/08/26/waarom-lukt-het-maar-niet-met-een-bestand-a4863819 (note: there is a paywall)
By our correspondent Lucia Admiraal
Jerusalem. The best, but probably also the last chance. That is how US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the new rounds of negotiations on an agreement between Israel and Hamas during his recent visit to the Middle East.
A week later, the indirect talks, this time in Cairo, have again reached an impasse. Delegations from Israel and Hamas have already left the Egyptian capital.
Analysts are ambivalent about this, but highly sceptical about the possibility of an agreement in the short term. The main breaking point is still that Hamas wants Israel to permanently withdraw from Gaza, and Israel does not want to end the war.
Political ‘spin’, Gershon Baskin, Middle East director of the human rights group International Communities Organisation, calls the repeated optimistic words of Blinken and US President Joe Biden. In other words, a deliberate interpretation to influence public opinion.
Baskin was closely involved in brokered a deal between Israel and Hamas in 2011, when Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was released in exchange for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Since October, he has been in regular contact with Hamas leaders.
Last May, he was approached by them to play a ‘backroom’ role in indirect negotiations, where he would speak directly to Hamas on behalf of Israel. Israeli negotiators also agreed to this.
A few weeks later, however, he received a call. Whether he wanted to come to Tel Aviv soon. There he was told that his involvement was terminated. ‘I am almost certain that this decision came directly from Netanyahu,’ Baskin said by phone from Jerusalem.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the main reason why there is still no agreement, according to Baskin. ‘As long as he is in power, it will be very difficult,’ he says. In addition, he says, Hamas is ‘uncompromising’ because it wants an end to the war but is unclear whether it is willing to release all hostages in the foreseeable future.
Netanyahu does not want an agreement because the end of the war will also mark the end of his premiership, analysts and critics in Israel say. Israeli army commanders and negotiators recently accused him of sabotaging an agreement by coming up with new demands.
Also in May, the US sent out optimistic messages that a deal was imminent. According to Baskin, a plan for an agreement is indeed on the table from that period, and Netanyahu subsequently came up with new demands. However, he calls the plan in question ‘bad’, as it would see a short-term ceasefire and limited prisoner exchanges followed by renegotiation of phases two and three.
‘Instead, there should be a complete end to the war after only a few weeks,’ says Baskin, ’with the release of all hostages and Israel's complete withdrawal from Gaza.’
In May, Hamas unexpectedly announced that they had agreed to a deal, which would have been previously presented and approved by negotiators to Israel. Israel subsequently backtracked. ‘A missed opportunity,’ Baskin calls it. ‘Hamas then agreed to a temporary ceasefire and no Israeli commitment to an end to the war. Now Hamas is back to that maximalist demand.’
According to analyst Geoffrey Aronson, who is a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, there has been ‘hardly any progress’ in the talks since May, only a concretisation of demands in recent weeks.
‘Israel wants to retain full military, but not civilian control of Gaza, and the freedom to wage war,’ Aronson said. ‘Hamas wants an end to the war, not because it is so peace-loving, but because this would be a victory over Israel.
Blaming only Netanyahu is of little help, Aronson believes. ‘The success or failure of the agreements is ultimately the collective responsibility of all parties involved.’ He also calls the Hamas agreement ‘spin’: ‘There has never been an agreement, from either side, simply because the demands are incompatible.’
However, Mouin Rabbani, researcher at the Centre for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies in Doha and editor of online journal Jadaliyya, says Hamas did agree to a plan, and it is now being blamed by the US and Israel for refusing a proposal with new Israeli demands. He says the process of the talks is being deliberately stretched.
‘It is always suggested that the US is an ‘honest broker’, and that Israel joins initiatives to bring the war to an end,’ he says. ‘In this, Hamas always seems to be the culprit who wants to keep fighting. The negotiations have a kind of propaganda function.’
Rabbani compares the talks to the US-brokered ‘peace process’ and the eventual Oslo Accords in the 1990s between Israel and the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organisation. ‘The endless process was used as a cover for implementing and intensifying Israeli policies that were diametrically opposed to the formal objectives of the process, such as the massive expansion of settlements.’
A major breaking point in the latest round of negotiations is that Israel wants a continued military presence in the Netzarim corridor, a passage through which the Israel has divided Gaza in two, and the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt that Israel took over in early May.
This demand, according to Mouin Rabbani, shows that it is ‘absolutely not planning a ceasefire’, but a continued occupation and ever further division of Gaza. Baskin also believes that Netanyahu wants to militarily occupy Gaza for a long time. Moreover, he is under pressure from his ultra-right coalition allies, who want illegal settlements in Gaza again.
‘Israel has tried all kinds of scenarios in Gaza over the past decades,’ says Aronson. The idea that an ‘envelope’ of kibbutzim combined with army presence around Gaza would provide security clapped on 7 October. ‘Now they go back to what they know best: military occupation.’
While the formal goals of the negotiations are for an end to the war, an exchange of prisoners, a ceasefire, and more humanitarian aid, Israel's campaign in Gaza has intensified, Rabbani observes.
‘Just like during the Oslo talks, people are now saying that if you take measures to hold Israel accountable for its policies, that it will walk away from the negotiating table, that you are sabotaging the process,’ Rabbani believes. ‘So the ‘process’ becomes an endless excuse for doing nothing.’
Is the US role as leader of the talks to be taken seriously at all, as Israel's biggest ally whose military support helps enable the war in Gaza? The only way for the US to end the war, says Baskin, is to stop fuelling it by supplying bombs to Israel.
But even if the US would prefer a ceasefire to prevent a further regional expansion of the war, it is unwilling to put real pressure on Israel, Rabbani observes.
According to him, the US is not a real mediator but a party to the conflict. But excluding the US as a superpower from the diplomatic process is not realistic. However, additional parties - Hezbollah, Iran, the UN, the EU,- could have a role to play. ‘This issue is not only about Israel and the Palestinians. It is also about international peace and security.’
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