US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wound up his ninth visit to the Middle East since 7 October last week, during which he visited Israel, Egypt, and Qatar from 18 to 20 August. On 19 August, he met President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi in Cairo, and on 20 August he was in Qatar.
The purpose of the talks was to push for an agreement on the part of Israel and Hamas based on the US “comprehensive bridging proposal” that gained the support of Egypt and Qatar two weeks ago. The proposal is based on the three-phase roadmap that US President Joe Biden unveiled on 31 May and that was later adopted by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2735.
In Doha, where he ended his tour, Blinken stressed that his message was simple, clear, and urgent. It was urgent to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal, he said, and it was important to get it to the “finishing line.”
Time was of essence both in terms of releasing the hostages in captivity in Gaza and saving the lives of Palestinian civilians, he said. Furthermore, time was also of the essence to spare the region a major escalation that the US and some of the Arab countries have been working to avoid.
Biden said that the US with Egypt and Qatar were united in purpose and united in action. He said that there was now a “fierce urgency” to reach a deal.
On 25 August, Cairo hosted negotiations with the aim of reaching an agreement. Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) William Burns took part as did Director of the Israeli Mossad David Barnea, Director of the Israeli Shin Bet, and Director of the Egyptian Intelligence Service Abbas Kamel.
Hamas sent a delegation to Cairo, but it decided not to participate in the negotiations, limiting contacts to coordinating with the Egyptian and Qatari delegations.
While the ceasefire negotiations were taking place in the Egyptian capital, Israel and Hizbullah traded cross-border attacks that raised fears of a major conflagration between the two sides. They then made it clear that they were more interested in de-escalation, at least for now.
Hizbullah Secretary - General Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech later in the day, saying that the retaliation for the assassination of Hizbullah military commander Fouad Shukr on 31 July, claimed by Israel, had taken time for two reasons. The first had to do with coordinating the response to the assassination with the group’s allies, he said, implicitly meaning Iran, and the second was related to the ceasefire talks lest the retaliation scuppered the chances of a deal.
While the US administration is pushing hard for a deal before the presidential elections on 5 November, and to de-escalate regional tensions, both Israel and Hamas seem to be intent on procrastinating, hoping for a better deal that would allow each of them to claim victory in a war that has no clear political objectives either at present or in the future.
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert wrote in an opinion piece published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on 25 August that when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sabotages the ongoing ceasefire negotiations the four heads of Israel’s security establishment must speak up. He said that the negotiations could continue “indefinitely” or could “blow up” at some stage and end with a renewed military offensive in Gaza and perhaps also in the north of Israel against Hizbullah.
Some of Olmert’s predictions came true on the very day his piece was published.
As Blinken said in Doha on 20 August, there is now a “fierce urgency” for a ceasefire deal in order to create new facts on the ground, release the Israeli and foreign hostages, free the Palestinian detainees and prisoners, and achieve regional de-escalation.
The time has come for the Middle East to move on, draw proper lessons from the devastating ten-month war in Gaza, and contain the sources of insecurity and instability in the region, which are mainly due to the forever war mentality on all fronts espoused by Netanyahu and his extremist far-right Coalition Government.
The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 29 August, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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