Israel is pressing ahead, undeterred, with its drive to forcibly displace the people of northern Gaza while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to weasel out of ceasefire negotiations to buy time for the genocide.

Hamas continues to reject the Israeli ploy to compartmentalise the negotiating issues, knowing that if it makes concessions on releasing the Israeli hostages in the absence of a comprehensive agreement backed with guarantees, Israel will merely resume the slaughter.

Egypt, for its part, continues its efforts to promote de-escalation in Gaza. It has also been meeting with representatives of Hamas and Fatah in Cairo to form a Community Support Committee for Gaza and to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid.

“Egypt is leading these efforts because of its extensive influence with both sides,” political analyst Nidal Khadra told Al-Ahram Weekly.

“Fatah and Hamas have engaged positively with Egypt’s initiatives to promote Palestinian unity and create a Community Support Committee for Gaza, especially given the international support for Egypt’s efforts to broker a ceasefire.”

According to reports in the US and Israeli media, Cairo has proposed a “goodwill initiative” calling for a temporary truce in Gaza. On Sunday, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi unveiled a two-day ceasefire proposal during which four Israeli hostages in Gaza would be exchanged for a number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

During the next ten days, negotiations would aim to turn the truce into a permanent ceasefire. At the same time, humanitarian relief would be allowed to flow into the besieged Strip.

In Khadra’s opinion, the fact that this was a formal proposal by Al-Sisi should have induced both Hamas and Israel to accept it. He felt that Israel would have seized the offer in view of the losses being sustained by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) across Gaza and on the Lebanese front and because of the domestic pressures Netanyahu is under, to secure the release of the hostages.

Instead, however, Egypt’s proposal was met with flat rejection from Israel, which remains committed to what it euphemistically calls its “maximum pressure” approach to release the hostages.

Hamas, through intermediaries, asked to amend the proposal to provide for a comprehensive deal to end the hostilities immediately based on an “all-for-all” formula. By this it meant that all the hostages would be released in exchange for as many prisoners as possible in the framework of a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza.

For weeks, the IOF has been carrying out its third and most intensive military operation against the Jabaliya Refugee Camp in northern Gaza. So far, the IOF has forced 30,000 people to leave their homes. Aerial images show that Israel now controls a three-km-deep strip in northern Gaza. The IOF has once again increased its air strikes, causing immense casualties, displacement, and untold numbers of missing persons beneath the rubble.

A full Israeli armoured brigade with 5,000 troops has been tasked with implementing this scorched-earth policy. Bombs, missiles, and explosive barrel bombs are raining down on Gazans from the air, sea, and land. Fire belts are used to corral them, drones are sent in to destroy all forms of shelter, and food and water have been cut off.

This “Generals’ Plan” is also known as the “Giora Eiland Plan” after the retired Israeli general who previously conceived of another plan involving ethnic cleansing and forceful population transfer. That one called for extending Gaza into the Egyptian Sinai to form a Palestinian “state” there so Israel could annex all or most of the West Bank.

The Giora Eiland Plan, unveiled in September, aims to “cleanse” large parts of northern Gaza by forcibly displacing the population through a total blockade, the severing of food, water and other means of life, and an intensive military assault, so as to convert northern Gaza into a “closed military zone.”

The fact that many residents of Jabaliya and the vicinity are holding out against the Generals’ Plan to drive them from their homes means that the plan is failing, according to experts on Israeli and Palestinian resistance affairs.

Jabaliya has a history of defiance in the face of immense brutality. The militant resistance in the camp continues to inflict severe damage on the invaders, destroying dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles and killing several IOF soldiers and officers, including the commander of the 401st armoured brigade.

The IOF was forced to pull its forces out of the camp to regroup, while some quarters in IOF ranks urged the occupation regime to withdraw from Jabaliya entirely due to the risks of the war of attrition.

“The Israeli Occupation knows no moral or legal bounds. It opens fire on displaced people in shelters, killing dozens, detains hundreds, and displaces thousands by the day. It violates every international and humanitarian law,” writer Mohsen Abu Ramadan told the Weekly.

“After over a year of genocide without achieving his stated goals, Netanyahu needs to claim political victory. So, he took advantage of the media focus on the IOF’s aggression in Lebanon to fight Hizbullah and the intensified negotiations in Doha being led by the US CIA director to implement the Generals’ Plan in Gaza.”

Abu Ramadan added that the ultimate aim of this ethnic cleansing is to annex the territory to Israel and reestablish the Jewish settlements there. “But the plan has failed. When the occupation forces withdraw, people return to their homes despite all the risks. While many have left, hundreds of thousands remain.”

Hani Al-Dali, a specialist in resistance affairs, agrees. “The persistence of the resistance in the camp, its sacrifices, and the painful blows it has delivered to the occupation have strengthened the people’s hope and their resolve to remain in their homes to keep the resistance from being isolated. Despite the death and destruction that they see around them daily, they still refuse to leave,” he said.

The battle for Jabaliya, a bastion of the resistance, is pivotal, Al-Dali said. If the IOF succeeds in breaking the resistance there and taking full control of the camp, the rest of northern Gaza’s inhabitants would be driven from their homes and the resistance would be eliminated. The people understand this, which is why they are so determined to support the resistance.

Al-Dali predicts that the IOF’s operation in Jabaliya will end in failure because of the resistance’s successes in inflicting heavy personnel and material losses on it.

According to political analyst Tamara Haddad, the Generals’ Plan reflects a shift in Israel’s tactical priorities. “For most of the time since the beginning of the aggression on Gaza, the occupying power prioritised the stated objectives of eliminating Hamas and freeing the hostages. However, because of the battlefield outcomes, these objectives have become secondary. Now the occupation is focused on rehabilitating its national security system by eliminating the security threats coming from Gaza and southern Lebanon, while addressing the question of the Iranian nuclear programme.”

Towards this end, Israel is “reengineering Gaza and Southern Lebanon to accord with its long-term strategic goals as opposed to short-term security goals.” This entails implementing a series of buffer zones, “a protective belt to ward off any future ‘floods’ such as the one Hamas caused last year.”

In Haddad’s opinion, the Generals’ Plan has partially succeeded, in that the massive destruction of buildings and infrastructure, and the sieges of hospitals and making human habitation impossible have forcibly displaced a large portion of the population.

Thus, “on the ground, Israel has achieved its unstated objective of carving out part of Gaza to serve as a buffer zone preparatory to reoccupying the whole of the Strip. It is not interested in deals that would reverse such military achievements.”

This, she explained, is why Israel deliberately sabotages all mediating efforts. A deal means recognising Hamas, which has no room in the Israeli vision of the “day after.”

“The Israeli logic is clear: as long as Hamas refuses to release the hostages and surrender, the war against Palestinian civilians and the destruction of the rest of Gaza will continue.”

Haddad believes that Hamas should rethink its position. She argues that its defiance without holding any effective cards to wield against the occupation plays into Netanyahu’s hands, giving him time to carry out his reengineering schemes.

Therefore, Hamas should hand over Gaza to the Palestinian Authority (PA) or an Arab government it trusts to find a solution to the conflict and at least put an end to the massacres of Palestinian civilians, she argued.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 7 November, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly