‘Major contradiction’ from the US and Israel on latest truce proposal

well I'm joined by Abdullah Al arayan who is a professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar thank you for your time sir so positive noises coming from both Hamas and Israel to this ceasefire proposal which is still quite sketchy on the details the speech itself though by President uh Biden that seemed to be quite a significant intervention it was I mean we haven't seen this kind of highlevel intervention on the part of of this uh Administration to come from the president to basically be outlying the details of what a uh ceasefire agreement might look like I think was significant at the same time the US suffers from a tremendous credibility problem as the this Chief partner of Israel's genocide against Palestinians and as a country that has continually denied um all of the atrocities that have taken place that's vetoed multiple un Security Council resolutions that has obviously led the rearmament of of Israeli forces throughout the entire last eight months um so I think there's still very much a long way to go here but at the same time I think it's it's certainly clear what a resolution would look like and so what's been suggested here is very much the outlines of what we've always known would be necessary to see uh you know this this bring brought to an end and uh did you get the impression at all uh when listening uh to President Biden that this proposal had been forced on the Israelis well certainly what we're seeing is is that there is a lack of political will and the leadership and the Israeli leadership which of course is trying to prosecute a war uh and in fact the genocide side in a way to preserve its own political fortunes going forward and at the same time I think there is a recognition among some segments of the Israeli political Elites particularly those in the military and and uh intelligence kind of establishment who see that there is no military solution here and that in the last eight months they've actually not achieved any of those stated goals and in fact that the only real meaningful uh you know solution here is to reach this agreement and in in a negotiated sense and so there certainly does seem to be that recognition among some segments of the Israeli Elite um and I think this is certainly what the US Administration is tapping into so when Biden references that he's really speaking about certain figures who've kind of alluded to this going forward and and have uh actually put together many of the terms that we've seen in terms of what this agreement looks like we heard from our correspondent earlier that it is of course Shabbat today which is why we're not hearing very much from the Israelis but we may start hearing from them tonight and and tomorrow how how do you expect them to respond well certainly we've already seen some rejection of this right from the prime minister to many of the most uh extremist Fringe members of his cabinet and at the same time I think you know depending on whether we see that there's a real political will on the American side to finally pressure Israel again something that hasn't been there in eight months and and there's been a sort of historic level of complete uh support and and basically acquiescence to anything that Israel has done so far whether we're seeing a real significant shift in a material shift from the US perspective I think remains to be seen again we've heard a lot of words over these months coming out of Biden we've never seen any actual action taking place and so depending on what happens on the US side we can see potentially a response on the Israeli side and looking at uh how Hamas might respond uh there were two things that stood out for me uh one that the uh outline didn't contain any mention of a permanent ceasefire in page page one uh phase one which is what Hamas has always been calling for and secondly I don't know if if if if this was quite interesting to you uh Biden President Biden talked about Israel withdrawing from all populated areas of Gaza what did do you mean by that well again I mean the this is uh this is what they mean when they say the devil is in the details right is we don't know necessarily if uh there's some kind of acknowledgement on the US side that Israel will remain occupying parts of of Raza even after um you know the the ceasefire is reached and so I think this is a major sticking point and certainly one that Palestinians have continuously rejected that any part of Gaza should remain occupied um and in terms of whether there's a permanent ceasefire I think the idea of a six- week long pause or let's say you know a temporary ceasefire is meant to lead to negotiations toward a a full ceasefire again a lot of questions around what that would entail I think there's a major contradiction here in the fact that both the US and uh the Israeli side have said on the one hand that they don't want a future in Gaza that in which Hamas has any kind of political role uh left and at the same time this is an agreement that would have to be reached through negotiations with Hamas so how do you do that right how do you eliminate them as a political force and at the same time are reaching negotiated solution that is agreed upon by all parties so there's still very much a lot to work out in terms of the details and a lot of contradictions in terms of what the US Israeli side is saying which is why we can see that no one in Gaza is getting excited about this there a lot still to come okay thank you for that abdulla Al Aran a professor of history at Georgetown University

Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 122,737

Keywords: strikes, Gaza bombardment, Gaza hospitals, Gaza humanitarian aid, Gaza humanitarian crisis, Israel, Israel Hamas war, Israeli army, Palestine, gaza blockade, gaza healthcare system, gaza shortages, gaza under attack, gaza war, hamas

Id: uidyJYo8ryQ

Length: 4min 58sec (298 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2024