Jason Burke
The Observer / August 17, 2024
Decision-makers on either side of the conflict are biding their time in order to secure the best ceasefire deal
With the most recent round of talks now over, any hopes of a ceasefire in Gaza in the immediate future appear this weekend to have been dashed. There are further discussions scheduled for this week, but these feel more like a desperate attempt to keep the process alive than offering a real chance of peace.
This is not the first time there has been similar disappointment. A dozen or more rounds of mediated negotiations, a UN resolution, pressure from Washington and other powers, and much else has failed to push either the leaders of Israel or Hamas to make the concessions necessary to stop the 10-month-old war.
The reason for this is simple. Days of detailed argument over the exact parameters of any agreement obscure the fact that a deal can only be done when the most influential decision- makers on each side believe that the time is right to end the fighting. At the moment, this does not appear to be the case.
Despite the immense damage done to Israel’s international reputation and its relations with Washington, the economic cost, its 300-plus military fatalities, the seething anger in the occupied West Bank and more, Benjamin Netanyahu still appears convinced that there is more to be gained from continuing the offensive Israel launched into Gaza last October than halting it.
After a slow start, Israel has killed a significant number of senior Hamas military personnel in the territory. These include Mohammed Deif, its military chief in Gaza, and his deputy, Marwan Issa. Dozens of lower-level commanders have died in Israeli strikes.
This has hurt Hamas badly, and gone some way to mitigate the fear and trauma in Israel after the militant Islamist organization’s surprise attacks on 7 October last year that killed almost 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and led to about 250 being taken hostage.
Israeli security officials believe too that the country has restored the deterrence that has been central to its strategic defence for decades.
But Israeli military claims that 14,000 Hamas combatants are among the 40,000 or more people who Palestinian health officials say have been killed so far in Gaza appear far-fetched, with credible evidence that two-thirds are women and children.
Early in the conflict, senior Israeli officers who spoke to the Observer said their strategy was absolutely not to kill “every single Hamas militant one by one”, but when any army start measuring success by body counts, victory is usually distant.
Military experts – some in Israel, plus many in the US and elsewhere – advise ending the operation and bringing back the 100 or so hostages who are still being held in Gaza as soon as possible.
This would achieve at least one of Israel’s war aims and allow its armed forces to face other looming threats, most notably that posed by Iran, which blames Israel for the assassination in Tehran on 31 July of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, and appears highly likely to retaliate.
Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant Islamist movement in Lebanon, poses another clear and present danger, especially since the assassination in Beirut of Fuad Shukr, a senior commander, just hours before the strike on Haniyeh.
But Netanyahu is in no hurry to do a deal. One factor may be the prospect of the collapse of his ruling coalition as right-wingers adamantly opposed to concessions peel away. This would leave the veteran politician potentially facing prison if continuing corruption trials end badly for him.
Another may be Israeli public opinion. Polls show Netanyahu remains deeply unpopular and a substantial proportion of Israelis favour a deal to bring back the hostages. But the ratings of Netanyahu’s Likud party have ticked up again in recent weeks. If Israel managed to kill Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the 7 October attacks, the political and legal prospects of the prime minister would brighten.
Sinwar does not appear to want a deal either. His 40-year career within Islamist militancy has been marked by unremitting dedication to the eventual destruction of Israel and much brutal violence.
Now believed to be hiding in a tunnel under Gaza, Sinwar was held for 23 years in Israeli prisons before being released in 2011 in a prisoner exchange. According to one Israeli former interrogator who worked at the institution where Sinwar was held, the 61-year-old is “1,000% committed and 1,000% violent – a very, very hard man”.
This month, Sinwar was picked to succeed Haniyeh, a relative pragmatist, at the head of Hamas. The choice consolidated the authority of the most intransigent of senior officials of the fractured organization and one close to Tehran. Few observers think this improves the chances of a ceasefire deal.
Sinwar now appears to believe that Hamas is in a strong position in negotiations, with civilian suffering in Gaza increasing international pressure on Israel and so potentially forcing further concessions.
He knows too that a shadowy Hamas administration still exists in much of the territory and that the organization is able to recruit new fighters.
According to a June report in the Wall Street Journal, emails to other Hamas leaders in Doha earlier this year reveal Sinwar’s belief that even hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths are a “necessary sacrifice” and his commitment to “move forward on the same path we started” whatever the cost.
The key to any deal would be finding a formula that would allow Sinwar and Netanyahu to claim victory. This is very hard, but not entirely impossible.
On Friday, a White House statement signed by co-mediators Qatar and Egypt described a new proposal that “builds on areas of agreement over the past week, and bridges remaining gaps in [a] manner that allows for a swift implementation of the deal” as early as this week.
That is very optimistic. But in the circumstances, anything suggesting possible progress is welcome.
Jason Burke is the International security correspondent of The Guardian
