Cairo will need to continue mediating between Hamas and Fatah to reach an agreement on the parameters of managing Gaza post-war, said an informed Egyptian source. The latest round included “no less than 18 hours” of on-and-off talks but made only partial progress even “with a lot of pushing” from Egyptian mediators.

“I can say that we are moving forward but I cannot say we are very close,” the source said. He explained that the talks that Cairo hosted on Saturday and Sunday for senior delegations from Fatah and Hamas managed to iron out differences on some details related to matters of civil administration and there was “clear Hamas recognition that the [Fatah-dominated] Palestinian Authority [PA] will have to be directly involved in making decisions and observing administration.”

According to this and other sources, Israel will not countenance a return to the pre-6 October 2023 situation with Hamas in full control of administering Gaza. Israel, they say, is determined to see new civil and security management of Gaza before agreeing to a deal that includes the withdrawal — at least partially — of its troops from Gaza and allows for the start of the long process of reconstruction.

Extensive talks involving the three mediators — Egypt, Qatar, and the US — concluded that the best formula is to secure the return of the PA to Gaza after a close to 20-year absence. But settling on the details of this return, and the nature of any post-war power-sharing between Hamas and Fatah, is proving far from easy.

This week, according to the informed source, details relating to security management, especially in relation to the borders with both Israel and Egypt, proved a major stumbling block, though during the talks Hamas, which had previously opposed any significant PA role in Gaza’s security architecture “due to the PA security coordination process with Israel”, did appear to shift its position.

What Hamas agreed to, according to several sources who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly, was that PA security personnel should mostly take charge of the Philadelphi Corridor on the border between Egypt and Gaza, and of the border between north Gaza and Israel. Unlike the PA, Hamas is opposed to having an Arab or international peacekeeping force installed on either border.

Border security arrangements are crucial for the day after the war. Egypt is determined that there can be no reopening of the Rafah Crossing before Israeli troops withdraw, at least from the immediate vicinity of the border. Israel, for its part, is determined there can be no vacuum along the north Gaza border.

Hamas has demanded that it must approve security arrangements in Gaza’s urban areas and that there can be “no reporting to the PA security leadership in Gaza or the PA headquarters in Ramallah” in the West Bank given the “detailed security coordination between the PA and Israel that continued uninterrupted even as Israel was heavily bombarding Gaza and conducting raids against PA-run neighbourhoods in the West Bank.”

According to the same sources, while the Hamas delegation appeared willing to work on compromise solutions, this was not the case with the Fatah delegation —  and certainly not with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and PA chief who arrived in Cairo on Sunday, as the talks were coming to an end, to review the situation with the Fatah delegation before talking to Egyptian officials.

“Abbas knows that Hamas is really weakened, and he wants to use the moment to re-impose PA clout in Gaza. While Hamas knows that it is weakened and is perceived as such it does not want to be forced into maximal concessions,” said a source close to Hamas.

To secure agreement in the Palestinian dialogue it is crucial to move forward with a ceasefire deal since the details of any ceasefire deal will inevitably be reflected in the post-war management of Gaza.

“If Israel does not withdraw fully from Gaza, including the north, for a long time to come it becomes pointless to talk of the day after because for Hamas a full Israeli withdrawal is essential for a ceasefire deal,” said the source close to Hamas.

In parallel to the Hamas-Fatah talks, Cairo hosted talks with security delegations from Hamas and Israel to keep up some kind of momentum towards a ceasefire. The failure of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA Chief William Burns to secure a deal on a truce means any hope of a ceasefire must now wait until the new US president is announced.

Egyptian sources say a Kamala Harris victory might encourage Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to move towards a deal, beginning with a temporary truce before the inauguration of the new president in January. Should Donald Trump win, the same sources argue, Netanyahu may opt to use the weeks leading to the inauguration to inflict more damage and bloodshed on Gaza.

According to Karim Hagag, professor of practice at the American University in Cairo’s Department of Public Policy and Administration, “this is a particularly crucial moment” for the Israeli war on Gaza. He argued that Netanyahu will try to use the weeks leading to the inauguration of the new US president to impose some difficulty to reverse reality on the ground.

Speaking at an AUC-hosted seminar to discuss the future of the Middle East under the next US president, Hagag argued that while Netanyahu is certainly hoping for Trump to win in order to resume the push for Arab-Israeli normalisation, especially with Saudi Arabia, it is hard to tell whether or not Trump’s political choices for a new presidency will be similar to those of 2016-2020 when he pushed for the Abraham Accords.

Hagag argued that whether it is Harris or Trump that is elected, the next US president will be very calculating when it comes to making decisions about the Middle East that involve Israel, a country which he says has become a lot more dependent on the US in terms of military aid and finance. No American president will want to expand this situation because while supporting Israel will continue to be crucial to US foreign policy, the US does not want to see Israel turning into a burden, especially when it comes to international public opinion.

Hagag also argued that the ability of Arab countries to press the next US president to pressure Israel to move away from its aggressive military policy could prove important. On 11 November, Saudi Arabia is planning to host a summit for leaders of the League of Arab States and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation which will call for an immediate end to the Israel wars on Gaza and south Lebanon, access for humanitarian aid and a political process that could lead to Palestinian statehood.

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