With over 38,000 innocent Palestinian lives lost, the worldwide initiative, led by Egypt, the United States, and Qatar, seeks to bring the murder and suffering of Palestinian civilians to an end.
But only hours before an intensive round of multi-party negotiations in Cairo and Doha was due to start, Netanyahu made an awkward statement listing a number of nonstarter preconditions for accepting a deal with Hamas, including a clause that gives Israel the right to resume its genocide in Gaza after an initial six-week truce. This can only mean that the Israeli premier intended to fail the talks even before they started.
On 24 June, while tensions peaked between Israel and Lebanon’s Hizbullah, Netanyahu started a cabinet meeting by stating that he would only accept a “partial deal” with Hamas to bring back some of the 120 prisoners held in Gaza. He stressed that “we are committed to continuing the war after a pause, in order to complete the goal of eliminating Hamas.”
Knowing in advance there would be no end to the war, or withdrawal of the occupation army from Gaza, there can be no deal remotely acceptable to Hamas. Only a day later — after facing sharp criticism from his political opponents, the Israeli security establishment and the families of the prisoners held in Gaza — Netanyahu backtracked, confirming his commitment to the plan declared by US President Joe Biden in late May.
Like the Houthis in Yemen, Hizbullah have repeatedly declared that they would not stop what they call as their “support front” to aid Hamas in Gaza until Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people came to an end. Netanyahu’s statements on 24 June and on Sunday not only undermine efforts to end the ongoing disaster in Gaza but also poses the threat of an open war with Lebanon.
Despite Netanyahu’s extremely disappointing statements, Egypt has continued to exert tremendous effort to revive the stalling talks. Before Netanyahu’s statements on Sunday, this had culminated in an important compromise offered by Hamas late last week: accepting ambiguous language that would allow both sides to reach a deal without giving up their key demands.
Hamas agreed to give up its demand for an upfront Israeli commitment to stop the war and withdraw from Gaza as soon as a truce is reached. In return, Hamas received assurances that talks on a final ceasefire deal, due to start during the first stage of the truce, would continue until an agreement is reached. Meanwhile, Netanyahu can claim he did not give up his goal of continuing the war until all Israeli prisoners held in Gaza have been released, and thereby avert the pressure of his extremist partners in government he is always using as a pretext.
However, Sunday’s preconditions could bring the entire process back to square one, squandering hard-won progress. Besides his absurd demand that any potential deal must “allow Israel to return and fight until all the goals of the war are achieved,” Netanyahu claimed that any deal must also ensure that no weapons should be smuggled from Egypt into Gaza, nor allow “the return of thousands of armed terrorists to the north of the Gaza Strip.”
The fallacious claim that weapons are being smuggled from Egypt into Gaza is of course an attempt to cover up the utter failure of the Israeli government to prevent the 7 October attacks. Since 2014, Egypt has resolutely prevented any smuggling of weapons in either direction across the border, a measure aimed at protecting the country’s own national security.
By making this claim, however, Netanyahu is trying to justify Israel’s continued, illegal occupation of the Rafah crossing and the border between Egypt and Gaza. This is something Egypt will never accept because it violates both agreements signed between the two countries since Camp David in 1979, and the deal reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the administration of crossing points in the mid-1990s.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s demand that no “terrorists” should be allowed to return to their homes in the northern parts of Gaza is another obstacle in the way of a deal with Hamas. The Israeli army wants to keep Palestinians in Gaza under tight control, inspecting every single displaced person aiming to legitimately return to their home. Those innocent civilians should not have been forced to flee their homes several times already, and controlling the flow of people returning to northern Gaza is a demand neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority can accept.
Netanyahu’s latest statement was not only rejected by Hamas, it was also met with anger by Israeli security officials and mediators who again accused the prime minister of placing his political interest first by seeking to prolong the war.
Ironically, Netanyahu should be heading to Washington in two weeks to deliver a speech in Congress and meet with US President Joe Biden. But, instead of showing good-will ahead of the trip by reaching a deal to end the war, he is working to torpedo it. Given the human disaster in Gaza, mediators cannot allow Netanyahu to continue to play his political games. Already, a complete ceasefire is long overdue.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 July, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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