Although Hamas and the Israeli government appear to be inching closer to a ceasefire agreement, analysts are deeply skeptical that the parties will ever implement an agreement that goes beyond a temporary truce.
What is at stake is a three-phase agreement, proposed by Israel and backed by the United States and some Arab countries, which, if fully realized, could eventually involve the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and the return of all hostages. remaining captured in the October 1 attacks. 7 attack and a plan to reconstruct the territory.
But reaching that goal is impossible if the parties are not willing to even begin the race or agree on where it should end. Fundamentally, the dispute is not just about how long a ceasefire in Gaza should last or at what point it should be implemented, but whether Israel will ever be able to agree to a long-term truce as long as Hamas maintains significant control.
For Israel to accept Hamas’s demands for a permanent ceasefire from the outset, it must recognize that Hamas will remain intact and play a role in the territory’s future, conditions that Israel’s government cannot endure. On the other hand, Hamas says it will not consider a temporary ceasefire without the guarantees of a permanent one that effectively ensures its survival, even at the cost of countless more Palestinian lives, lest Israel resume the war once its hostages are returned. .
However, after eight months of grueling war, there are signs that the sides could be moving closer to the proposed first phase: a six-week conditional ceasefire. While that step is hardly guaranteed, reaching the second phase of the plan, which calls for a permanent cessation of hostilities and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, is even more unlikely, analysts said.
“It is a mistake to see this proposal as anything more than a stopgap,” said Natan Sachs, director of the Middle East Policy Center at the Brookings Institution. “Most importantly, this plan does not answer the fundamental question of who governs Gaza after the conflict. “This is a ceasefire plan, not a plan for the day after.”
Hamas leaders and the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are considering what the deal will mean not only for the future of the war, but also for their own political future. To win buy-in from skeptical partners for the first stage of the plan, Netanyahu is especially incentivized to keep his commitments to the later phases vague.
On each side there are influential figures willing to prolong the war. Some within Hamas say the group, dominated by those still in Gaza, such as local leader Yahya Sinwar, should not accept any deal that does not immediately create a permanent ceasefire. In Israel, the mere mention of stopping the war and a full troop withdrawal has led Netanyahu’s far-right allies to threaten to topple his government.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Osama Hamdan, a Hamas spokesman, said the group would not approve an agreement that does not begin with the promise of a permanent ceasefire and includes provisions for the full withdrawal of Israeli troops and a “serious and “A Real Deal” to exchange the remaining hostages for a much larger number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.
Shlomo Brom, a retired brigadier general and senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, said “clearly to everyone this proposal is primarily political.”
“The first stage is good for Netanyahu, because some hostages will be freed,” Brom said. “But he will never reach the second stage. As before, he will find something wrong in what Hamas does, which will not be difficult to find.”
More than 100 hostages were freed under a more limited agreement last November, which lasted about a week. Netanyahu said Hamas had not delivered all the promised female hostages as it had promised; Hamas said Israel rejected alternatives. When the truce expired, Hamas launched rockets into Israel. Since then, the war has continued unabated.
This time there is also no guarantee that the first phase will be replaced by the second. That could suit Netanyahu, analysts agreed, pacifying the Americans with a temporary ceasefire and increased aid to Gaza, while finding reasons not to go beyond that agreement.
Netanyahu hopes, analysts said, that Hamas will not accept the proposal at all, thus getting him off the hook. As hostilities with Hezbollah intensify in the north, he suggests to his allies that even if he must accept the Gaza proposal, negotiations in the second stage could continue indefinitely.
President Biden, who laid out the plan from the White House last week, has his own political considerations for the parties to reach an agreement sooner rather than later. He clearly wants to stop the Gaza war well before the November presidential election, said Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment, adding: “The only party that’s really in a hurry is Biden.”
That’s why Biden is putting pressure on both Netanyahu and Hamas to accept the deal quickly.
As Israeli troops have reached the Egyptian border and major operations in the war are coming to an end, the president has said Hamas is no longer capable of carrying out another October 7-style attack and is putting pressure on Netanyahu. to publicly accept his own proposal.
Netanyahu has done his best to confuse everyone about his intentions, denying that his goal of dismantling Hamas has changed and refusing to support a permanent end to the fighting, which he called “a failure” on Sunday.
Biden also emphasized that Hamas “should accept the agreement,” which it has not accepted, and simply said that he views the proposal “positively.”
The proposal, as Biden and his officials explained, has three stages.
In the first phase, both sides would observe a six-week ceasefire. Israel would withdraw from Gaza’s main population centers and several hostages would be freed, including women, the elderly and the wounded. The hostages would be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, whose names are still to be negotiated. Aid would begin arriving in Gaza, reaching about 600 trucks per day. Displaced Palestinian civilians would be allowed to return to their homes in northern Gaza.
During the first phase, Israel and Hamas would continue negotiating to reach the second phase: a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Gaza, and the release of all remaining living hostages. If talks last more than six weeks, the first phase of the truce will continue until they reach an agreement, Biden said.
If they ever do.
Israeli officials, from Netanyahu on down, have insisted that Israel must retain security control over Gaza in the future, making it highly unlikely that they will agree to completely withdraw Israeli troops from the buffer zone they have built inside Loop. And even if they did, Israel insists on the ability to move in and out of Gaza as it deems necessary to combat Hamas or other remaining or reestablished fighters, as it does now in the West Bank.
As one former senior intelligence official put it bluntly: “There is no good solution here and everyone knows it.”
Stopping the war without ensuring that Hamas cannot return presents a real dilemma, he said. But is it realistic to expect that the continuation of the war will achieve this goal? The release of the hostages (an estimated 125 of whom are still held by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, although dozens are believed to be dead) is a top priority, but it is unclear whether continuing the war increases the pressure. on Hamas to make a deal for their freedom or put the hostages who are still alive in greater danger. And even if Israel were to stop the war after so many months in captivity, its release could take longer than it has.
The timing may also favor a first-phase deal, because Israel is struggling to complete its military control over Rafah, on the southern edge of Gaza, and the border with Egypt. The fighting, which Israel has undertaken with fewer troops, less bombing and more attention to civilians following American pressure, is expected to last two or three more weeks, Israeli officials suggest, about the time it would take to negotiate the first phase of the cessation. -fire agreement.
Israeli troops are slowly advancing toward the most populated areas of Rafah city, forcing civilians to evacuate further west toward the coast and areas officially designated as safe spaces, even if housing, water, food and Medical care is rudimentary at best and civilians continue to die from Israeli attacks.
According to Israeli officials and the Institute for the Study of War, which follows the conflict, “Israeli forces continue to clear operations in central Rafah” and “targeted operations based on intelligence.” On Monday they attacked what Israel called “an active combat complex” and carried out air and drone strikes on what was called a “Hamas weapons production site in Rafah.” Hamas fighters have responded with mortars along the border, roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.
With Hamas forces effectively dismantled as organized units and fighting almost exclusively as small gangs, Israel can declare the major war in Gaza over, analysts said, while continuing to fight Hamas and other fighters where they emerge or are still concentrated, opening the way for a temporary ceasefire.
“Israel has done a lot and Hamas has been dramatically degraded,” Sachs said. But Israel has taken no steps to administer Gaza when the army withdraws.
Brom agreed that Israel’s military had made real progress. “My interpretation,” he said, “is that Hamas’s military and terrorist capabilities are terribly weakened.” It is always difficult to claim victory in such an asymmetrical conflict, he said. “Did we win against the Islamic State? It still exists and works,” but greatly diminished.
Despite relentless American insistence, analysts said, Netanyahu has refused to decide who or what will govern Gaza, if not Hamas.
“It should be an integrated political and military strategy, but the political side is completely missing,” Brom said. “We can stop Hamas from ruling Gaza, but who will replace them? That is the Achilles heel of the entire operation.”