The latest twists and turns in negotiations to end the war in Gaza appear labyrinthine and confusing. But it’s really not that complicated. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, must compromise on the outstanding details of the proposed ceasefire deal and Hamas’s weekend counter-offer – and immediately halt Israel’s criminal bombing of Gaza and reckless military incursions into refugee-populated areas around Rafah.
For its part, Hamas must honour previous understandings about the staged release of Israeli hostages and cease its crude, last-minute haggling, especially about exactly how many Palestinian detainees, and which ones, are freed in return. Its priority should be alleviating the plight of Gaza’s civilians, not scoring points. Its demands that Israel agree a “permanent” end to the war at this stage were always unrealistic.
Wholly unrealistic, too, is Netanyahu’s position, adopted immediately after the 7 October massacres of Israeli civilians, that the only true measure of victory is the complete and utter destruction of Hamas. This is the biggest single obstacle to peace. Since this aim is, and always was, practicably unattainable, Netanyahu is caught in a trap of his own making, bound to wage unending, unwinnable war.
“The heart of the dispute has revolved for months around a single question. Hamas demands that any deal include the end to the war and a full retreat of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip, backed by guarantees … Netanyahu refuses to agree to this, because it would mean admitting his failure to achieve the war’s stated aims and could therefore open a political hornet’s nest,” wrote the Haaretz analyst Amos Harel.
The key problem, as many Israelis and foreign diplomats see it, is that ongoing war is actually Netanyahu’s preferred choice. He fears that even a truce or pause, let alone enduring peace, could hasten his political demise, his defenestration as prime minister and, potentially, his condemnation in court on various longstanding corruption charges. In power he’s protected. Out of power, he’s toast.
Hoping Netanyahu will do the decent thing is a little like hoping it won’t rain in Manchester. But there are powerful people around him, such as Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet and longtime adversary, who might force his hand. The opposition, led by Yair Lapid, wants early elections. Yet this prospect further incentivises Netanyahu to stick to his guns.
Elections would have the advantage of potentially ridding Israel of an unrepresentative, hard-right coalition propped up by extremist ultra-Orthodox Zionists such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. At the weekend, Ben-Gvir again insisted nothing less than Hamas’s “complete defeat” and “absolute surrender” would suffice. The behaviour of these men and their supporters since 7 October continues to undermine Israel’s interests and its wider hopes of peace. The fact that Netanyahu made himself dependent on such zealots is reason enough to topple him.
One response by Israeli officials to Hamas’s revised stance has been to dismiss it as a “ploy” designed to cast Israel as the recalcitrant party in the eyes of the world. They should wake up and smell the cordite. The mass killing of Gaza civilians by the Israel Defense Forces since October has achieved exactly that result without any help from Hamas. Israel’s international reputation is deservedly in shreds.
Yet Hamas’s leaders must also stop playing politics with the lives of innocent people, and demonstrate their decisions, too, are not being driven solely by internal rivalries. Hamas’s overall boss, Ismail Haniyeh, who lives safely in exile in the Gulf, enjoys hobnobbing with the likes of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. There is reported friction between him and Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader inside Gaza, who is pushing for an unconditional end to the war.
Media reports suggest one of the final sticking points concerns Hamas’s gruesome insistence on distinguishing between hostages who are still alive and those who are dead. The way Hamas sees it, the release of a living hostage is “worth” more than the return of the body of a dead hostage, measured in terms of the number of Palestinians detainees to be released in exchange.
This degree of callousness, which Israel has been obliged to go along with as part of the negotiations, is a reminder of how inhumanly fanatical the behaviour of Hamas has been – not only on 7 October but also during the ensuing months when it has, in effect, hidden behind Gaza’s civilians, including children, sacrificing them to its Netanyahu-like delusions about the final destruction of Israel. Like Netanyahu, Hamas’s leaders have a responsibility reaching beyond their selfish personal interests. Now is the moment to live up to it.
At this critical point, with the hope of peace, or at least of a halt to the killing hanging in the balance, the US – by far the most influential external party to the conflict – continues to tread far too cautiously, particularly around Israel’s concerns. Excess caution is a hallmark of Joe Biden’s presidency. His reluctance to risk a confrontation with Russia has led Ukraine to the brink of defeat two years after Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Likewise, Biden’s refusal to confront Netanyahu hard and early over Gaza has greatly contributed to a deepening of the catastrophe – and Biden’s own critical loss of support among American voters.
Amid all the back and forth over the final shape of a ceasefire deal, two fundamental aspects of the 7 October and Gaza tragedies are in constant danger of being overlooked or minimised. One is the continuing dire plight of more than a million Palestinian civilians who are facing famine conditions, or already suffering them. The other is the enduring agony of the families and friends of about 130 Israeli hostages who were seized last October and are still unaccounted for. Sheer, gut-wrenching misery felt by ordinary people, Jewish and Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian, lies at the dark heart of this awful conflict. It is in itself sufficient cause and motivation to end the war without any further prevarication or delay.
The second aspect, largely overlooked until relatively recently, is the flagrant abuse of the rules of war and international humanitarian law by both parties. Israel, despite its protestations to the contrary, has self-evidently repeatedly breached its legal obligation to minimise the dangers to a civilian population arising from military operations. Netanyahu is personally accused of using starvation as a weapon of war. Hamas’s attacks last October involved the most terrible crimes imaginable. Its hostage-taking, hostage-killing and accompanying abuses are legally and morally reprehensible. Both Israeli and Hamas leaders should hang their heads in shame.
Biden (backed by the UN, Britain, the EU and the Arab states) says a military offensive in Rafah is unacceptable. He says Israel and Hamas must agree the initial ceasefire deal on the table, which would stop the fighting, free hostages and increase aid supplies. Biden is right. And if Netanyahu, in particular, continues to ignore him, ostensibly to maintain pressure on Hamas but in truth because he’s trying to save his own skin, the US must cut aid to Israel, impose immediate sanctions – and publicly back Netanyahu’s indictment for war crimes.
Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator
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