Qassam Muaddi
Mondoweiss / August 21, 2024
Hamas isn’t blocking a ceasefire in Gaza, Israel is. Netanyahu has systematically sabotaged negotiations at every turn. Israel’s current demands for military control over Gaza ensure they will fail.
Since the start of the week, two news items about the latest ceasefire negotiations have surfaced that seem to contradict one another.
One has gained widespread attention in the international press, claiming that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted the U.S. ceasefire deal, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken stating that the ball is now in Hamas’s court.
The second only gained traction in Israeli media: Netanyahu told a group of families of Israeli captives held in Gaza that he isn’t sure a ceasefire deal is going to happen because Israel would not withdraw from the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors in Gaza “under any conditions.”
While the first is being used to blame Hamas for the lack of a ceasefire, the second proves that in fact, it is Israel that is insisting on continuing its genocidal assault on Gaza.
Netanyahu’s insistence on holding onto Netzarim and Philadelphi — which even a U.S. administration official said was a “maximalist” demand that isn’t helpful to “getting a ceasefire deal across the finish line” — is tantamount to saying Israel isn’t interested in a ceasefire after all.
The background: how Netanyahu repeatedly sabotages negotiations
The latest round of talks started last week following a call by the U.S., Egypt, and Qatar for the resumption of negotiations. The three governments rushed to revive the ceasefire efforts after Iran and Hezbollah pledged to attack Israel in retaliation to its assassination of Hezbollah’s top military commander Fouad Shukr, in Beirut’s southern Dahiya district, as well as Hamas’s politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Both assassinations ramped up tensions, bringing the possibility of a regional war to the brink.
Then Blinken said that Netanyahu had accepted the deal proposed by the U.S. In a statement on Tuesday, Hamas said that U.S. claims that the group was refusing the deal were “misleading,” accusing the U.S. of complying with Netanyahu’s desire to prolong the war. The group also said that “the mediators know that Hamas has reacted responsibly with all rounds of negotiations,” and that it had accepted Biden’s proposal in May, based on the UN Security Council resolution to end the war.
The latest round of talks centered around a new U.S. proposal, the details of which have not been fully disclosed. However, according to a statement by Netanyahu on Tuesday, the proposal “takes into account Israel’s security needs.”
The basis for the proposal, presented by Biden back in May, included three phases, starting with a 42-day halt in hostilities in which an initial prisoner exchange would occur. The initial proposal included a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. At the time, the U.S. claimed that the proposal was originally presented to Washington by Israel, although Netanyahu publicly stated in a televised interview that he wasn’t ready to end the war.
On July 10, the Israeli daily Haaretz published a report showing how Netanyahu had been sabotaging the ceasefire as early as January. For instance, in one round of negotiations back in April, Netanyahu leaked sensitive information from the talks to the media regarding the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released via his Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich. This damaged the negotiation efforts. At the end of April, Netanyahu recalled the negotiating team and ordered them to back down from agreements that had already been reached, without the knowledge or approval of his war cabinet.
Then, in May, as Israel’s military and intelligence leaders expected a positive reply from Hamas to Biden’s proposal, Netanyahu announced his will to invade Rafah and that he would never agree to end the war in any future deal. In early June, Israel invaded Rafah, and the chances of a deal vanished yet again
Hamas announced that it accepted Biden’s proposal in early July, as it included the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Strip, the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza, and the beginning of reconstruction efforts at the end of the prisoner exchange. Hamas’s only amendment to the U.S. deal was for there to be guarantees that Israel wouldn’t resume the war after the conclusion of a prisoner exchange, demanding that an Israeli withdrawal be permanent and that reconstruction efforts start before the end of the final phase of the ceasefire.
This was a disaster for Israel. Hamas had essentially accepted a deal put forward by President Biden himself. This sent the ball flying back into Israel’s court, pushing Netanyahu into a corner. Netanyahu’s position was made worse by the fact that Biden had presented the proposed deal as an Israeli initiative.
Netanyahu’s way out of it was to claim that Hamas had changed the conditions of the deal, insisting that there was no Israeli consensus to end the war. And so the war dragged on.
Netanyahu’s shifting goalposts on the future of Gaza
In mid-July, Egyptian and Qatari mediators called Israel and Hamas back to the table. Netanyahu sent a smaller delegation with limited powers to Cairo. The Israeli team returned to Tel Aviv hours later after an argument with Netanyahu over what was increasingly becoming the Israeli prime minister’s focus in the negotiations — the future of the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors.
But why focus on these two areas? The answer lies in their strategic location and Israel’s vision for the future of Gaza.
The Netzarim Corridor is a four-kilometer-wide strip of land in the center of Gaza that the Israeli army has cleared of inhabitants and uses as a military zone to station and move its troops. More importantly, Netzarim extends from Gaza’s eastern edge to the west, bifurcating the coastal enclave in two and thus cutting off northern Gaza from the south. The Philadelphi Corridor plays a different strategic role; it’s a two-kilometer-wide strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt, and Israel claims that Hamas has been smuggling weapons via tunnels that run through it.
Netanyahu’s statements about holding onto those two corridors followed Blinken’s departure from Israel to Egypt, where he met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Egypt’s position was clear in the meeting: Israel has to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor. The Egyptian presidency also said in a statement that Sisi impressed upon Blinken that it was time for a ceasefire deal to be reached followed by the international recognition of a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution.
Netanyahu claims that the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egyptian border is of “strategic importance,” necessary for Israel to guarantee that weapons won’t be smuggled into Gaza in the future. Yet there has been disagreement on the importance of holding onto the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors — even within the Israeli military.
The Israeli army’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, was quoted by the Israeli public broadcaster in mid-July saying that Israel “can deal with the Philadelphi Corridor without maintaining forces in it.” Israel’s war minister, Yoav Gallant, also said in July that Israel could withdraw from the area under specific conditions, namely the installation of surveillance technology to avoid the smuggling of weapons.
But Netanyahu’s stiff position seems to have little to do with security reasons, according to Israeli observers. Unnamed Israeli sources told Israel’s public broadcaster that the powers Netanyahu conferred to negotiators were so limited that they had to constantly leave the meeting room to report to Netanyahu and receive his instructions. The Israeli daily Haaretz said in its editorial on Tuesday that it’s hard to believe Netanyahu when he had made similar statements favorable to a deal in the past “when in fact he was working to torpedo the proposals.”
This criticism echoes the statement of the mother of one of the Israeli captives in Gaza, who testified before an independent civilian commission of inquiry that the head of the Israeli Mossad told her it was impossible to reach a deal under the current Israeli government. Netanyahu’s office issued a statement denying that the head of the Mossad made those remarks.
Israeli media also quoted unnamed Israeli negotiators saying that Netanyahu’s remarks about not withdrawing from Philadelphi and Netzarim were intended “to blow up the talks,” and that he must stop putting obstacles in front of chances for a deal.
Upon concluding his stay in Israel, Blinken said that Netanyahu assured him of Israel’s acceptance of the latest U.S. ceasefire proposal, stressing that it is up to Hamas to accept it in order to move forward to discussing implementation details. But as the timeline of events above shows, Israel has consistently undermined ceasefire talks throughout the Gaza genocide, and Netanyahu’s conditions on Philadelphi and Netzarim are just the latest ploy.
These demands are a non-starter that Hamas will be forced to reject, which is exactly what Netanyahu wants: he nominally accepted the U.S. proposal, putting the ball in Hamas’s court, but later doubled down on demands that make it impossible for Hamas to accept. The result is it looks like Hamas is the reason for the breakdown in the talks, and the Biden-Harris administration is happy to play along. Meanwhile, Israel’s genocide in Gaza rages on.
Qassam Muaddi is the Palestine Staff Writer for Mondoweiss
