Qassam Muaddi
Mondoweiss / December 3, 2024
Ceasefire negotiations have resumed in Egypt between Hamas and Israel. A new push for unity between rival Palestinian factions could offer a new path forward, but internal Israeli political strife could once again prevent a deal from taking shape.
An Israeli delegation will leave for Cairo in upcoming days to resume Gaza ceasefire talks, Israeli channel 13 reported on Tuesday. The news comes on the heels of a U.S.-led push to conclude a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal in Gaza, ahead of Donald Trump’s assumption of office.
While the details of the negotiations, and what the deal might look like, are still taking shape, some of the main issues being discussed right now, according to reports, are post-war governance, the role of the Palestinian Authority, a prisoner exchange, and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from key points along the Gaza and Egyptian borders.
Here’s what you need to know.
A unified Palestinian front could play a central role in the deal
Hamas has already sent a delegation to Egypt, made up of two parts. The first will discuss with Egyptian mediators the current deal proposal, while the second is already engaged in internal Palestinian talks over the formation of a Palestinian technocratic committee to administrate Gaza after the war.
New to this round of ceasefire talks, is the presence of Hamas’s rival faction, Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the occupied West Bank. Leading up to these talks, the two rivals had already met twice to discuss the topic of post-war governance in Gaza.
According to Palestinian reports, progress has been made with both parties agreeing that the technocratic committee should be formed of personalities independent of the two parties, and that it would respond to the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority, formed by a decree by the Palestinian Authority president. The commission will be in charge of receiving the Gaza reconstruction funds, allocating them, and administrating different reconstruction projects.
The renewed inter-Palestinian talks are the latest in a long string of attempts to breach the divisions between both factions, and reunite the Palestinian leadership which has been split between Gaza and the West Bank since 2007. However, this time around, both parties face the unprecedented urgency to find an agreement for two main reasons.
The first reason for this urgency is the total collapse of any prospects of a political process restarting with Israel, whose aggressive policy has stripped the Palestinian Authority of the last reserves of political leverage it had as a partner to a potential two-states solution. Israel has escalated this policy through the outright rejection of a Palestinian state, the financial strangling of the PA, and its explicit plans to annex the West Bank. The second reason is the wholesale destruction and humanitarian crisis caused by Israel in the Gaza Strip, and the need for a unified Palestinian vision to be part of the scenario of ending the war and moving on to reconstruction.
Hamas and the ‘day after’ in Gaza
The Fatah-Hamas talks coming simultaneously with the renewal of ceasefire talks with Israel indicates the broader push to conclude a deal within a U.S. vision for “the day after” scenario, in which Hamas wouldn’t be running the strip anymore.
However, both poles of Palestinian politics are not discussing a long-term unification of a political program, or the renewal of the Palestinian political leadership. These issues were discussed and agreed upon in previous rounds of talks along with the rest of Palestinian factions, the last of which was in Algeria, before the events of October of last year, but never saw their way to implementation.
This time around, Fatah and Hamas are agreeing on a pin-point practical matter, concerning a mechanism to administer the reconstruction phase in Gaza after a potential ceasefire, which leaves the “Day after scenario” empty of any direct Hamas implication, but without cancelling previous political inter-Palestinian agreements to hold free elections to renew the Palestinian leadership.
The absence of Hamas from any immediate role in the running of Gaza after the war has not only been an Israeli demand, but a main U.S. demand too. Hamas’s position has been that Palestinian leadership is to be determined internally by Palestinians, be it Hamas or any other political faction. Separating the immediate aftermath of the war from the overall political leadership seems to be a way out of the dilemma for the Palestinian side.
According to Israeli news daily Haaretz, however, speculation remains over whether Netanyahu will ultimately reject a deal that gave the Palestinian Authority any time of governing control in Gaza.
“One Palestinian official who spoke with Haaretz said it was highly uncertain whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government would go along with this move, especially given that Israel has so far opposed any involvement of the Palestinian Authority in the management of Gaza,” Haaretz reported.
Will Israel withdraw from key border points ?
A key sticking point in previous failed ceasefire negotiations is the status of Israeli military presence in Gaza, particularly in two key points in and along the strip.
Israel has been holding to its demand to maintain a military presence in the Philadelphi corridor, the strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border, in the Rafah area, and the Netzarim corridor, the other strip of land that cuts through the Gaza Strip from east to west, just south of Gaza City. Both corridors were created by the Israeli army during the current assault on Gaza, by forcing the population out of their homes in the areas, enacting widespread demolitions, and turning the areas into buffer zones with permanent checkpoints and stations for troops.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on maintaining Israeli military control along the Gaza-Egypt border during the last round of ceasefire talks in the summer, is what ultimately led to a collapse of the attempts to reach a deal.
But Egypt is still demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal from the area bordering the Rafah crossing.
Egyptian foreign minister Badr Abdel Ati said following a meeting with the UN deputy-secretary general on Monday, that Egypt reiterates its refusal of an Israeli presence on the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing. The Saudi-based newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted on Monday unnamed Egyptian officials saying that Netanyahu’s insistence on maintaining Israeli control of the Rafah crossing was meant “for local consumption” in the Israeli public opinion, and that he is likely to back down on it in the face of the Egyptian refusal.
A prisoner deal is on the table, but does Israel want its captives back ?
The U.S. government seems to be intensifying its pressure to get a deal before the Trump inauguration, as demands to conclude a prisoner exchange with Hamas increased in Israel after the ceasefire deal with Lebanon, last week.
Demonstrations renewed in Tel Aviv, as Hamas released new footage of an Israeli-American captive demanding Trump and the Israeli public to pressure to conclude a deal. The mother of the captive said in a protest in Tel Aviv last weekend that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told her that “conditions have matured to conclude a ceasefire deal.”
On Monday, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump said in a post on ‘X’ that there will be “all hell to pay” in the Middle East and for those in charge in case the Israeli captives are not released before his inauguration.
And while Israeli officials celebrated Trump’s statement, with Netanyahu thanking Trump for his commitment to the release of Israeli captives, Israel’s torpedoing of previous ceasefire deals, all of which included a prisoner exchange and the release of captives, tells a different story.
Even in the current negotiations, Israeli ministers are pressuring Netanyahu not to accept a ceasefire deal that would see the release of the captives being held in Gaza. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir threatened to withdraw from the government coalition in case a ceasefire deal is reached. Israel’s right-wing Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich thanked Trump for “clarifying who the good guys and who the bad guys are,” but added that the only way to return the Israeli captives in Gaza was through military pressure on Hamas, and not “submitting to its ridiculous demands.”
Meanwhile, a poll in Israel showed that 57% of Israelis now support ending the war, which indicates a significant change in the Israeli public opinion.
Hamas, who had accepted the U.S. president’s Biden deal proposal back in July, holds to a full end of the war as part of any prisoner exchange deal, including an Israeli withdrawal from the strip.
As the ceasefire negotiations continue, Israel continues its genocidal assault on Gaza. Israeli strikes across the strip have killed more than 44,500 Palestinians so far, 60% of whom are women, children, and elderly according to the Palestinian health ministry. Over 1.8 million Palestinians are displaced, most of them living in tent encampments amidst dire conditions and rain floods as winter starts, while in the north of the strip, around 70,000 Palestinians continue to be subject to a total siege, without food, medicine, rescue services or safe shelter from Israeli strikes for the 61st day in a row.
Qassam Muaddi is the Palestine Staff Writer for Mondoweiss
