US-led efforts to forge a Gaza Strip ceasefire and win the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas militants are in limbo after weeks of intense and by all accounts still inconclusive shuttle diplomacy.
Moreover, US efforts to date show no sign of a potential grand accord to end the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict by carving out a path for the creation of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel.
Reports published in Israel, Egypt and the US outline a series of limited achievements: a temporary ceasefire of up to 40 days; the freeing of a few dozen of the more than 130 hostages held somewhere in the Gaza Strip; the release of hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned inside Israel; and the opening of a south to north passage for Palestinian civilians encamped at the Rafah border town to bombed out areas elsewhere in the enclave.
After Israel endorsed a proposal over the weekend, Washington pressured Hamas to accept it. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has spent weeks shuttling around the Middle East to cobble together an accord, pressed Hamas to take the deal as the best available for the moment.
“Hamas has before it a proposal that is extraordinarily, extraordinarily generous, on the part of Israel,” Blinken said. “In this moment, the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire is Hamas. They have to decide, and they have to decide quickly.”
The proposal, also endorsed by negotiators from Egypt and Qatar, falls short of actually ending the current war, which is soon to enter its eighth month.
It also skirts a proposal to end decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflicts by taking steps to create a Palestinian state alongside and at peace with Israel. US President Joe Biden revived the so-called “two-state solution,” a proposal that dates to the 1990s, as a means to bring lasting peace in the Middle East.
At best, the proposal is but a truce that offers no clear exit out of that vicious conflict. Israel says its goal is simply “restoring calm,” a kind of turning back the clock before October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a day-long murderous raid on Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip.
Hamas forces killed 1,200 civilians, among them women and children. Israel’s retaliatory assault on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 34,000 civilians, according to Hamas figures.
Hamas is now reportedly considering the ceasefire proposal. Beyond the potential life-saving benefits of an immediate break in fighting, other more localized political concerns are driving the US and its pair of mediation partners, Egypt and Qatar, to press for a deal.
In particular, US politics has made President Joe Biden eager for some sort of settlement, even if only a short halt in the violence.
Biden faces a knot of political problems at home over his handling of America’s support for Israel in the war.
On the one hand, a majority of his own Democratic Party supports his decision to supply arms to Israel while some think he has not been forthright enough in backing Israel’s stated aim of destroying Hamas, both militarily and politically.
A faction of Biden’s party also thinks he has effectively allowed Israel to disproportionately punish Palestinian civilians for Hamas’ aggression.
Biden is facing loud opposition from Middle East-origin voters in the United States who habitually favor Biden’s party but who are horrified by the carnage in Gaza.
They may rob Biden of key electoral support at the presidential election in November, including in the swing state of Michigan. Moreover, pro-Palestinian student groups have demonstrated at major American universities, suggesting Biden could also lose a section of the youth vote.
Biden’s staff has taken pains to present his Gaza policy as even-handed and has taken the concerns of all sides into account.
“No country should have to live next door to a threat that is truly genocidal as Hamas has been,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for Biden. “So, while we make no bones about the fact that we have certain issues about some of the way things are being done, we also make no bones about the fact that Israel is going to continue to have American support for the fight that they’re in to eliminate the threat from Hamas.”
Besides trying to placate domestic opinion favorable to the Palestinians, Egypt fears that a surge of Palestinian refugees would flood into the Sinai Peninsula if Israel enters Rafah, which lies at the Egyptian-Gaza frontier. More than a million refugees from other parts of the Strip have already taken refuge there.
A flow of thousands of migrants would raise fears of a new “nakba,” Arabic for the “catastrophe,” which occurred in 1948 and again in 1967 when tens of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven during wars with Israel into exile in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring Arab countries.
The Persian Gulf ministate of Qatar, meanwhile, has leveraged its longtime relations with Hamas, which most Western governments have designated a terrorist organization, to burnish its reputation and position as a mediator in Middle East crises.
But the concerns and agendas of interlocutors may not match the needs of the combatants.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces intense domestic criticism, both for being unprepared for the October 7 attack and increasingly for his unwillingness to put the lives of hostages at the forefront of his war management.
While he signed off on a ceasefire deal and expressed concern for the safe return of hostages, he has maintained that the main goal must be Hamas’ destruction.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu told Blinken that Israel is ready to assault Rafah despite Biden’s request, delivered over the weekend, not to do so.
“We will enter Rafah because we have no other choice,” Netanyahu said Tuesday in comments translated from Hebrew. “We will destroy the Hamas battalions there, we will complete all the objectives of the war, including the repatriation of all our hostages.”
Hamas, meanwhile, might not be served diplomatically or militarily by a temporary ceasefire.
On the one hand, a truce would provide a respite for its fighters, whose current number is unknown, after weeks of Israeli pursuit on the ground and from the air. It would also provide some relief for beleaguered civilians who have borne the brunt of Hamas’ aggression.
Hamas is clearly looking for a way to declare some sort of victory, however Pyrrhic, by having stopped the Israeli advance. The Islamic group is thus seeking some sort of guarantee that the truce will become a definitive end to the fighting.
With that goal in mind, Hamas leaders pointedly resisted Blinken’s call for fast action on the ceasefire deal and gave no timetable for responding. Blinken, in turn, scolded the group: “No delays, no excuses,” he said.
Observers are mostly pessimistic that a meaningful deal can be struck.
“The US and Egypt and Qatar all have very strong interests of their own, for various reasons, why they’re trying very hard now to pressure both sides into agreeing to a deal,” said Mairav Zonszein, an analyst on Israel-Palestine issues at the International Crisis Group, a think tank.
“I’m pessimistic about the option of Hamas agreeing to a deal that doesn’t have a permanent ceasefire baked into it.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres painted an apocalyptic picture if Israel moves in on Rafah. An attack would “be an unbearable escalation, killing thousands more civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee,” he said.
The very notion of a Palestinian state at this point is beyond absurd. And the idea that Hamas should remain in power is beyond insane. Not only does Hamas need to be thoroughly anihilated, but Palestine needs to be Nazified and thoroughly humiliated, just like the Nazis were in Germany. Germany at least had the culture of an advanced society with a functioning civil service. Palestine is a made up state/ethnicity completely devoid of their own culture, much less a functioning civil service. Tell me about the kings and queens of “historic” Palestine. Tell me about the famous Palestinian artists, musicians, philosophers and scientists. This idea of having their own state will make them join civilization is a joke. Its like the end of the Wizard of Oz. Scarecrow wanted a brain so the “wixard” gave him a diploma. Lion wanted courage so give him a medal. It doesnt work that way. Not in the real world. They need to create a civilization first and that will require a denazification process.
what an intelligent far sighted reply. Of course anyone in the right mind with an old school atlas would quickly come to the conclusions 1. Such two state would be, in effect, not a peaceful state but an encouragement to have yet “another go” at Israel on more favourable terms & conditions. 2. Even with the most unviable state ever considered in modern times, civil, strategically & economically without Israel eternally holding on to the Jordan valley heights and external boundaries including East Jerusalem expect the PA/Hamas to be “inviting” Iranian IGRC forces to join them facing Israel directly !