For Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the Gaza ceasefire negotiations are an exercise in playing both sides against the middle.
Raising hopes that a durable truce may be on the horizon nine months into the war, US and Israeli officials praised Hamas’ reply to new language put forward by the Biden administration in the three-stage ceasefire proposal announced in May by the US president.
In response, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister had authorized the Israeli negotiating team to engage in further talks in Qatar with US, Qatari, and Egyptian mediators.
President Joe Biden’s proposal calls for an initial six-week ceasefire during which Hamas would swap 33 of the 120 dead or alive Israeli and foreign hostages it holds for Palestinians incarcerated in Israel.
The ceasefire would be extended into the second phase while the parties negotiate an end to the war and include the release of the remaining live Hamas-held hostages. The third phase would involve the reconstruction of Gaza’s destroyed infrastructure and the return of the remains of hostages who were killed or died during the war.
The administration’s new language focusses on the terms of the ceasefire’s second phase. Mr. Biden’s original proposal said the second phase would remain in place as long as Hamas and Israel were negotiating.
While the proposal’s language gives both Hamas and Israel the ability to end the second phase at any moment, it, in effect, allows Mr. Netanyahu to maintain his insistence on resuming the war at a time of his choice to achieve his goal of destroying Hamas militarily and politically.
Mr. Netanyahu said as much this week in a telephone conversation with Mr. Biden, his first since May, by insisting that Israel will end the war “only after meeting all its goals.”
The coming days and weeks will clarify whether the Biden administration has succeeded in bridging the yawning gap that has dogged the ceasefire efforts for months or whether Mr. Netanyahu and Hamas are going through the motions to ensure that the other gets the blame if renewed talks fail.
Hamas has consistently demanded that a ceasefire herald an end to the war, while Mr. Netanyahu insists on a continuation of the hostilities after a temporary truce and an initial prisoner exchange.
Privately, some Israeli officials suggested that Hamas had not dropped its insistence that the ceasefire agreement explicitly prevent Israel from resuming the war after the truce’s first stage.
Similarly, Hamas officials said they continued to demand a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in addition to binding language regarding an end to the war.
Israeli media reports suggested that Hamas had opened the door to renewed ceasefire negotiations by demonstrating flexibility on the timing of a declaration to the end of the war. The reports said Hamas was no longer insisting that Israel declare an end in the first phase of the ceasefire.
An Israeli official said Hamas’ position “could allow for a humanitarian deal and lead to the release of the soldiers, women, the elderly and the sick. If Hamas violates the conditions, Israel will be able to return and fight.”
For all practical purposes, Mr. Netanyahu, pressured to end the war by his military, mass domestic protests demanding his resignation, and the international community struggles to maintain his balance as he walks a tightrope.
Concern that his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, the military, and the Biden administration are conspiring to force the prime minister to acknowledge that the war is coming to an end, may, in part, drive Mr. Netanyahu’s willingness to reengage in ceasefire talks.
“While there are differences between the Israeli generals and their American counterparts, they increasingly share a similar position on the day-after strategy in Gaza, while Netanyahu and his far-right allies object to even having one,” said journalist Anschel Pfeffer.
Mr. Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative coalition partners have threatened to collapse his government if he agrees to end the war. Interestingly, as of this writing, ultra-nationalists like National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have yet to respond to the resumption of the ceasefire talks.
Even so, Israel’s far-right has attempted to derail the talks by seeking to undermine Qatar’s credibility as a mediator because of its relationship with Hamas and asserting that Mr. Netanyahu is in cohorts with the Gulf state.
For years, Mr. Netanyahu encouraged Qatar to fund Hamas’ administration of Gaza as a way of keeping the Palestinian polity divided and incapable of cohesively pushing for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the latest far-right maneuver, the Washington-based Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI) regurgitated documents suggesting that Qatar had bribed Mr. Netanyahu with $50 million.
To complicate matters, the documents were initially leaked as part of Project Raven, implemented by an undercover team that included former US intelligence operatives recruited to help the United Arab Emirates engage in surveillance of other governments, militants, and human rights activists critical of the monarchy.
The leaks occurred during the 3.5-year-long UAE-Saudi-led diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar that was lifted in 2021.
There is no indication that the UAE was involved in MEMRI’s current months-long effort to sully Qatar and Mr. Netanyahu’s reputations.
Even so, MEMRI co-founder Yigal Carmon, insisting that he was anti-Qatar, not anti-Netanyahu, conceded that “the leaking of these documents stemmed indeed from a counterattack by the Emiratis against the Qataris after Qatar chose to reveal documents about the UAE… But this doesn’t mean that the documents are forged.”
A former advisor to Israel’s West Bank and Gaza occupation authority, and Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin, Mr. Carmon resigned in 1993 in protest against Mr. Rabin’s signing of the Oslo Accords.
The accords laid the foundation for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and created President Mahmoud Abbas’s West Bank-based, internationally recognised Palestine Authority.
Some analysts believe that Mr. Netanyahu’s re-engagement in ceasefire negotiations may involve more than political maneuvering.
Israel’s positive spin on the ceasefire negotiations and its decision this week to restore electricity for a Gazan desalination and water plant constitutes an attempt at “walking away from Gaza without admitting (Israel) is walking away from Gaza.”
Assuming that Mr. Netanyahu cannot afford to admit his failure to achieve Israel’s war goals – Hamas’ destruction, the release of the hostages, and pacification of Gaza –, Mr. Goldberg predicted that “the genocide will end with a whimper. Why? Because it remains politically risky to call for an end to the ‘war’ and even riskier to claim responsibility.”
Israel’s Coordinator for the Government’s Activities in the Territories (COGAT) described the restoration of electricity as a humanitarian gesture.
“Israel is beginning to outsource, to step away from its responsibilities by performing ‘gestures.’ It is not a gesture. It is a sneaky admission of defeat. Israel has failed to reach any of its stated goals in Gaza. It is now hoping no one will notice it ambling away,” Mr. Goldberg said.
*Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, “The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.”
July 6, 2024
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
