Why Have Ceasefire Negotiations Over Gaza Repeatedly Failed? - Analysis

because they keep telling us the Israelis have said yes the only problem is Hamas and it's transparently patently obvious that that's not the case so this is not constructive ambiguity this is deceit this is dishonesty and as such it is not going to move us forward what is making it so hard to reach a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas and what are the factors or people getting in the way and why throughout the war both Hamas and Israel have offered up ceasefire proposals via their intermediaries despite pressure mounting on the two sides none of the proposals so far seem to satisfy both Waring parties so we asked some experts Dr Isam Tamimi a Palestinian academic and political activist and Daniel Levy a former Israeli Peace negotiator on why they think ceasefire negotiations have failed thus far well clearly ceas fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas and of course they are conducted indirectly via the so-called mediators the kataris and the Egyptians keep failing because Netanyahu and his uh governing Coalition uh don't want to end the war accept on their own terms and their terms are impossible from the point of view of the Palestinians they want the Palestinians to surrender they want the Palestinians to succumb to Israeli occupation and give up uh on their right to resist uh this foreign occupation of their land in talks like these there are a lot of complex details but there's also a simple core question here and the talks have consistently failed because they have not successfully addressed the guardian knot where we are stuck and that is between the position on one side a Hamas position but it wouldn't only be a Hamas position that this actually has to be an end to the assault on Gaza this isn't a temporary pause a Haus followed by more death destruction humanitarian crisis but a ceasefire an end versus the Israeli government position which is that we can have a brief pause but then the war must continue and when you have that kind of a clash the question is what will the mediator do where will leverage be placed Hamas knows it cannot get an ironclad guarantee but it needs assurances that there is maximum plausibility to this ceasefire holding Israel has given assurances that the ceasefire won't hold it is given commitments to continuing the war now nanaho in particular uh to some extent also some of his uh generals stand to lose a lot uh if uh this war ends uh without achieving uh what uh they claim to be their objectives that is the destruction complete destruction of Hamas uh and the retrieval of uh of the hostages apparently in exchange for nothing this is not going to happen the Palestinians and not just Hamas the whole Palestinians the entire Palestinian population believe that Israel is an occup is a foreign occupying power they have every legitimate right to resist this power and to free themselves and uh free uh their country the latest ceasefire proposal was called ambiguous as it was allegedly an Israeli deal that was announced by Biden Biden's administration were adamant that Hamas was the only thing getting in the way of the deal going ahead on Monday Hamas and other Palestinian groups announced that they had accepted the deal and Israeli officials are yet to officially confirm their agreement to what is supposed to be their own deal quite simply the US is not acting as a mediator it is is consistently aligning and arming one of the parties and in and in that role it is not facilitating a way out of this and this is what appeared to be changing with the Biden speech of May 31 that maybe the US was getting serious about a permanent cation a sustainable calm but then they walk that back and the US has allowed not constructive ambiguity but allowed Clarity that they are not going to be committed to preventing this from continuing they will not give maximum plausibility to the idea of a ceasefire they are going to pretend that what Israel is telling us every single day is not happening we have a very curious situation where America puts forward what it says as an Israeli proposal America tells us that the Israelis have accepted the proposal so what's going on here this was probably an attempt at constructive ambiguity and the promise the hope that the Biden plan and speech of May 31 the dynamic that maybe could have got us out of this impass because putting a plan on the table is a big deal that seemed to be premised on the idea that finally the US Administration Biden himself was leaning into the idea that this is a permanent ceasefire but what happened as soon as the Israeli side said we'll take the bits we like Biden rode it back and they have not stuck to that and so what you have is an almost orwellian reality in which the US is saying Israel accepts the plan it's an Israeli plan and the Israelis are telling us morning noon and night categorically unequivocally the prime minister other liquid lawmakers and of course the extreme right parties of benav and smotrich they are telling us we will continue the war full stop there is no link to a permanent ceasefire and here you have secretary blinken and other Administration officials I don't know if they assume that we all live in some kind of alternative Universe where the only voices we can hear that we have access to are American officials because they keep telling us the Israelis have said yes the only problem is Hamas and it's transparently patently obvious that that's not the case so this is not constructive ambiguity this is deceit this is dishonesty and as such it is not going to move us forward we asked if they think either side really wants peace and what that may look like now when people talk about peace I think everybody wants peace but what sort of Peace the Israelis want a piece in which the Palestinians are completely uh vanquished uh completely subjugated whereas the Palestinians want peace based on Justice they want their homes back they want their lives back they were they want their dignity and freedom uh back now Netanyahu is the guy who stands to lose more than anybody else if the Zionist declared objectives are not achieved because he has a problem with his own soci Society he has a problem with his own regime uh there are court cases waiting for him he and his generals most likely will be questioned about the failure uh that happened on the 7th of October and the failure uh that has uh kept being seen over the past eight months and until uh this War uh is over peace is quite simply not on the AG genda now there are no winners in war war is horrific that is by War should be prevented that's why we should do everything when a war starts to stop that war there is that Claus vitan statement that war is the continuation of politics by other means so neither side I don't think are trying to achieve peace but they are trying to achieve certain things for Hamas this relies on what is Not Unusual in asymmetric Warfare where you have a very powerful party and a party with much less power Israel is a nuclear armed state it is provided with military assistance by the most powerful country in the world it has its own uh domestic military production capacity it's seen as a regional superpower so against that Hamas which is probably the smallest of the axis of resistance SM fighting forces what it can do is use Israel's excess of power against Israel itself but for that to work Israel has to fall into that trap and I would argue Israel has fallen into that trap at horrendous cost to the Palestinians in Gaza but by using its force in this indiscriminate way from day one saying it would cut as it is able to all food fuel water and electricity from the civilian population in Gaza this is a huge self-inflicted defeat for Israel reputational moral legal economic this doesn't happen overnight but this is going to shift the Power Balance and we see on the battlefield that the destruction is in fact a failure because it means Israel hasn't achieved a realizable war aim it instead has pursued wholesale destruction and Hamas has remained resilient so the balance of forces on the battlefield has also not worked to Israel's Advantage so what is Israel trying to achieve here Israel is pursuing a maximalist goal where inside the Israeli cabinet the division is not between those who want peace and those who want more war forget about that the division is between one group who are openly eradication in favor of ethnic cleansing again after the first NBA displacing the Palestinians from Gaza and one imagines from the West Bank next and resettling Gaza versus uh another Camp inside the government who aren't necessarily against those things but have said the goal right now is the permanent reoccupation and what they call deradicalization in Gaza if you've seen the images coming you would think that applies to the Israeli side they're going to deradicalize their own Society but no that's not what they're talking about Israeli officials have repeatedly said that nothing will stop them and it was recently written that Hamas is far from beaten and are as committed as ever to the fight that they picked on October 7th many believe that both sides are fighting for their existence I think this war is increasingly becoming an existential War both sides realize that they have completely opposite projects the Palestinians want their freedom and they want their homes they want their sovereignty their independence they want their dignity and the zionists want to consolidate this colonial Outpost that was created by uh Western Europe and is today uh provided with uh protection both military political as well as diplomatic by the United States of America and its uh allies Henry Kissinger once said that in this kind of as symetrical Warfare and he was an expert at this having pursued enough war crimes himself that the Guerilla resistance force wins if it does not lose and we are seeing that here Hamas is going to come out of this stronger that is already the case Israel is going to come out of this weaker there is a shift in the balance of power regionally and globally and this is of Israel's own making when you conduct the kinds of actions that it has done which is not to justify October the 7th what happened before in terms of the permanent occupation or what has happened since Israel seems to have set a goal which is not only unachievable but scarily is something they may continue to pursue in terms of the permanent displacement and deepening the aggression against Palestinians and that has to be prevented now historically since Hamas came into existence there have been numerous um Seas fire uh attempts uh most of these were negotiated uh indirectly uh and as I document in my book Hamas Unwritten chapters in every single case uh of those trues uh that were negotiated between the two sides it was Israel who violated the truth not Hamas not a single time that's the nature of uh colonialism the colonialists until they are completely defeated uh and the land is liberated from them will continue to Aspire to consolidate uh their uh colonialism is a negotiated outcome possible Israel is not going to destroy Hamas Israel itself is not going to collapse so isn't negotia an outcome possible at least to bring an end to this Devastation and here the question has to be about the cost benefit calculation Hamas has made clear that it is willing to accept the ceasefire under conditions that I think would not only be put forward by Hamas and and the other groups that have signed up to this conditions of a ceasefire on both sides the hostages would be released Palestinians held in Israeli jails often in detention without trial often political prisoners uh would some would be released you would have the withdrawal of the Israeli military you would have finally the ramping up of humanitarian assistance Israel has rejected this position and has said the war will continue until it reaches aims that I think it has intentionally defined as a bar that one can never reach that's not how these things happen so the cost benefit equation is primarily what's the cost benefit equation for Israel the party that is refusing under any circumstances other than the capitulation of the other side which doesn't happen to end this war I wrote about the concept of uh hudna or long long-term truth in my book uh in detail and how I imagined it uh it could work and I think it could have worked at a certain moment uh in this conflict yet the Israelis never really recognized the potential they never accepted the um because the uh uh truth long-term truth or hudna uh from the point of view of most Palestinians as represented uh by Hamas is the only way you can have a disengagement you can have a real ceasefire uh the the notion here is that this is a def facto recognition uh of the status quo but it's not uh a thej recognition of that status quo the status quo is not acceptable for the Palestinians I will take in my case for instance I'll never ever recognize the legitimacy of the uh occupation of my mother's house in BBA the same applies to millions of uh the descendants of the Palestinians who were dispossessed in 1948 but I would accept and I believe believe most Palestinians would accept uh the idea that this conflict uh is not uh delivering uh what either side is expecting and therefore it's not a bad idea to disengage to stop fighting for a while for 10 years 15 years or 30 years as Ahmed Yin once proposed to the Israelis uh and during that period uh people can have a respite people then there will be a new generation emerging and let future Generations decide what they want to do about this conflict um and a longterm truth does not mean surrender does not mean uh subjugation it means an end of occupation um yet in the current climate and with Zionism becoming increasingly uh fanatic and in religious terms justifying it more and more in religious terms uh it is now in government in Israel uh it is highly unlikely that this formula will work it could have worked when there were uh people like ra Rabin maybe but and that's why Rabin was assassinated uh but it can never work with the likes of Bing or SMR or netan and whoever is uh working with him but the idea of a long-term truth in theory is a brilliant idea idea uh and uh I I believe if Hamas uh all the Palestinians were to enter into such uh an understanding they are uh obliged uh by the religion of Islam uh to keep the word and to fulfill the terms of the agreement

Channel: Middle East Eye

Views: 66,999

Keywords: middle east eye, mee, mee news, news, middle east eye news, Blinken, USA, America, Israel, negotiations, Ceasefire, Netanyahu, Hamas, Sinwar, Biden

Id: u1TOaSeI-QQ

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 15 2024