Netanyahu "Trying to Do Everything to Prevent a Deal," Says Ex-Israeli Peace Negotiator Daniel Levy

this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman with nmin SH The Washington Post is reporting Israel and Hamas have agreed to the framework for a new ceasefire and hostage deal following talks in Cairo and Doha Washington Post columnist David ignacius reports a senior Us official told him that the parties are now quote negotiating details of how it will be implemented but a final deal may not be imminent this comes as Israel intensifies its attacks on Gaza while ordering all civilians in Gaza City to leave the city despite having no safe place to go the Israeli Human Rights group at salum decried the evacuation order of the city as quote absolute Madness on the Diplomatic front the Israeli newspaper harat reports Israel negotiators have returned from Doha for consultations with Israeli leaders in Doha the Israeli negotiators met with Egyptian Cuttery and us officials um on the US side it was CIA director William Burns on the Israeli side it was the head of mad David Bara we're joined Now by Daniel Levy president of the US Middle East project former Israeli Peace negotiator joining us from London thanks so much for being with us again um can you explain what's at stake what is this thre stage deal Daniel yes indeed good to be with you so the idea is that in the initial phase there would be the withdrawal of the troops from large parts of Gaza the Israeli military you would have the release of those Israelis being held who are still alive and are not male soldiers you would allow the real ramping up of humanitarian access of course that should happen anyway and you would have Palestinian prisoners uh being released and then would move on to a second phase where there would be a more significant Palestinian prisoner release a full Israeli military withdrawal the remaining soldiers would be released and a third phas phase in which bodies would be returned and there would be the um start of uh more consumate Rehabilitation efforts but those are supposed to flow one to two to three the big question and it's been the question for months is whether you can just do phase one and then continue with the destruction with everything you've been reporting on for months now 21,000 children unaccounted for 38,000 Dead uh in Gaza and Counting and that's without knowing what's under the rubble does that continue or are there serious commitments that this will be a permanent cessation of this kind of hostility and here's the rub the document is trying to create a degree of constructive ambiguity I think and Hamas have said look we know there's nothing Ironclad I'm paraphrasing okay we know there's nothing Ironclad but we need to know with maximum plausibility that there is a commitment to this being a permanent cessation and what you have on every occasion is the Israeli Prime Minister stepping forward and say whoa no I am committing to continuing the war until its objectives are realized those objectives are unrealizable the military know that the families of the hostages know that and therefore he is trying to do everything to prevent a deal and what we are seeing in the reportage is unfortunately still a lot of unsubstantiated optimism and from the US Administration continued deception So Daniel if you could talk about I mean there was renewed hope that a deal could be reached after Hamas last week uh reportedly uh gave up on its initial demand uh that a permanent ceasefire be part of the first phase of a any agreement if you could talk about the significance of Hamas doing that why you think that they took that step and the fact that there's such I mean increasing opposition within Israel to netanyahu's stance not just from hostage families uh but this latest move that he made saying that uh you know that Israel one of the the the conditions should be that Israel can resume uh fighting until until conditions are met that people were so widely critical within Israel of Netanyahu taking that position do you think that might make any difference in the short term okay so on the Hamas side of things I think there has been a deliberate misinterpretation of the Hamas position the permanent ceasefire was never locked into phase one it was always part of the transition from phase one to phase two and there is constantly been this question of how to make that as reasonable as likely as possible now Hamas may be looking at this I'm not privy to their internal conversations of course Hamas may be looking at this and saying we're still here we will be here if the Israelis resume their actions after a six week Hiatus we now have a situation where in order to dial down the escalation on the Northern Israel Lebanon Israel hisbah front you very clearly need our situation to be dialed down maybe we can get the kind of humanitarian relief in that all of these things will make it increasingly difficult for Israel even if that's what they intend to resume these kinds of actions after 6 weeks and we have a more desperate Administration in the US that might suggest where some additional wiggle room has been created however that wiggle room I don't think can be sufficient enough to sustain what you mentioned in the second part of your question which is to sustain a very vocal very transparent and insistent Israeli forcing the issue that no there can be no permanent ceasefire nanyu put out four conditions one of them was um any deal will allow Israel to resume figh until all of the objectives of the war have been achieved so that doesn't give you an ability to work now what about what's going on inside Israel your question regarding is the pressure now at a place where Netanyahu simply has to accept this the unfortunate answer and I so hope I'm wrong with all of this the unfortunate answer is no you do have greater protests you do have the families more mobilized you do have a military that is more clearly saying again I'm par phasing if we want a chance to deal with the situation in the north whether deescalation or having uh the attention span to deal militarily then you need a ceasefire and Gaza the military by the way prefers a deal they prefer a ceasefire deal in Gaza because they know that's the only way they'll get a significant cohort of the hostages out and they know that their reservists their troops have been on the front line for an awfully long time and are rather exhausted so the military more transparently has said that you do have the parliament going into a summer recess and so the hope I think was that Netanyahu could tell his right-wing even more extreme than himself Coalition allies guys don't leave me during the summer recess there's no urgency here I promise you that by the time the parliament is back after the Jewish holidays in October I'll be killing Palestinians just like I've done and just like you like me to do we'll be fighting a war in Gaza in the meantime you can have fun in the West Bank causing provocation causing Mayhem displacing Palestinians don't rush to do anything crazy and they are saying no we're going to bring you down and nanyu is looking around and he sees that the domestic pressure inside Israel is not a threat to his Coalition stability and crucially he is seeing that the US Administration will continue when push comes to sha to say up it's hamas's fault and they will continue to send the weapons without which Israel could not be causing this death and destruction the 500b bombs released again and he knows he has a nice little date with Congress following the invitation by the Republican and Democratic Congressional leadership on the 2th July let's talk about July 24th uh yes Netanyahu is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on July 24th a number of prominent Israelis including a former head of mad a former prime minister and a Nobel Prize winner have written a joint oped in the New York times headlined we are Israelis calling on Congress to disinvite Netanyahu they argued the invitation will make a ceasefire agreement more unlikely they write netanyahu's supporters in Israel will be emboldened by his appearance in Congress to insist the war continue which will further distance any deal to secure the release of the hostages including several US citizens giving Mr Netanyahu the stage in Washington will all but dismiss the rage and pain of his people has expressed in the demonstrations throughout the country American lawmakers should not let this happen they should ask Mr Netanyahu to stay home your response to this I don't like giving onew responses but it would be amen so if you're looking at it from the Israeli perspective then absolutely the way that the Congressional leadership but I would argue the way the Administration has behaved has cut off at the knees any Prospect of the the shift in Israel that's necessary to end this war that led to the ICC and the icj those International courts taking those measures by the way if I was looking at this from the perspective of international law in general and the perspective of the Palestinians living under these conditions I would say how the hell can you invite Netanyahu but let me just say this because you referenced that piece by Ignatius in the Washington Post and here's what most concerns me this morning Ignatius is is not writing as as his own opinion here he's a consumate Insider he is being a faithful stenographer of the spin being given to him by the administration and Ignatius writes the following that it would be a ringing validation of President Biden's patient diplomacy and a potential validatory moment if he got this ceasefire now just pause what the spin that the administration is telling us is wow we could get it through our patient diplomacy can I translate the term patient diplomacy patient diplomacy means that after 9 months you have tens of thousand who are dead nine out of 10 people who are displaced starvation humanitarian catastrophe Scholastic side this is patient diplomacy that you should be proud of the hostages are still there America's International reputation that which was still remaining as an upholder of international law has been thoroughly taken to the cleaners and of course there's the internal situation on the Democrat side and I would simply say because I listened to your earlier segment that you have a real problem if you think you can sell this Spin and if you treat your voters with contempt you do that at your own risk I'm sitting here in the UK and I've just come back from Paris I'll tell you what happened in our elections here in our elections here Labour won a stunning majority in Parliament but lost and only received 34% in the popular vote 6% less than Corbin in 2017 why because voters deserted labor over Gaza and then in France you saw a new left Alliance come together closed the enthusiasm Gap with the right yes it was about keeping the extreme right out but it was also because one of the things that new left Alliance did was to come up with a credible position on Gaza and I would simply ask the question is this stunning validation of your approach what you're going to be selling people and you still haven't got the ceasefire you're still sending the weapons you are still in violation of international law and finally Daniel I wanted to ask you about the position of the Israeli military which are becoming as you've pointed out more and more public in their opposition to the war what is the significance of that and could that make a difference wow it's a big issue so what's going on here is the military knows they have no political plan they're being sent on a mission that is unachievable that have actually openly said you cannot defeat Hamas in the way Natan who talks about this deradicalization agenda in in Gaza it's for the birds so I think the military is saying is we need a different approach the problem here in addition to of course what the military has been conducting in Gaza is that these are the same guys in the military who were in charge on October 7th and there is a fight there is a blame game between the military leadership and natany we 20 seconds Daniel was it political failure or was it military failure you have blame games when there is a failure that's what it is and nanyu may replace some of this military and that could be even more dangerous by Daniel Ley want to thank you for being with us that's president of the US Middle East project former Israeli Peace negotiator under Israeli Prime Minister Z Barak and Yak Rin that does it for our show uh Democrats now will be broadcasting live from the Milwaukee Republican convention and the Chicago Democratic Convention expanding to two hours every day and we have a development director position opening to lead our fundraising efforts you can check it out at democracynow.org I'm Amy Goodman with Nur sh thanks so much for joining us

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 12,842

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: 0pfJzZ2xAkU

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 11 2024