I was thinking of writing a follow-up article on the second round of the American-Iranian talks that took place on 19 April in Rome, one week after the launching of these talks on 12 April in Muscat, Oman. However, the drums of war in Gaza, whether on the part of Israel or beaten by Hamas, led me to ask the following question: are the warring parties in Gaza that have been at war for 18 months now, really interested in reaching a genuine and durable ceasefire down the line, or has the war itself become an instrument of political survival for both?
Ever since Israel violated the ceasefire agreement with Hamas on 18 March and which had gone into effect on 19 January this year, the mediators Egypt, Jordan and the United States advanced certain proposals concerning the number of hostages to be released as well as the number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees to be released from Israeli prisons and detention camps.
These proposals included truces varying in duration from 50 to 70 days, a timeframe considered right to negotiate a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and an agreement on a timetable for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
After a back and forth between the Israelis and the leaders of Hamas, everything came to a standstill, the two sides coming up with almost irreconcilable ideas, knowing in advance, I suppose, that they are non-starters from the standpoint of the other side.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear on 19 April that the war would continue until all the hostages are back home and Hamas is defeated. In other words, keep moving the goalposts time and time again. As far as the hostages are concerned, their number stands at 58, almost half of them confirmed dead by the Israeli army or presumed dead.
On the other hand, the Hamas leadership expressed that it would be willing to release all of the hostages in one go, provided Israel commits to ending the war and withdraws its forces from Gaza. This is something that the Israeli prime minister has brought up for negotiations with Hamas through the mediators.
At the time of writing there are no indications that the mediators would resume their efforts any time soon to bring about a temporary ceasefire that would allow the delivery of urgent humanitarian and medical assistance to the beleaguered Gaza Strip.
The United Nations said this week that the Palestinians in Gaza are facing acute famine. In addition, medical care has become a challenge due to the lack of fuel, medicine and medical supplies to the extent that an American physician who has volunteered to work with the sick and wounded in Gaza, reported that his team decided to reserve what he described as “death rooms” for the extreme cases that can’t be treated or saved. Not to mention the growing number of amputees among children.
The irony is that wars are fought to achieve political ends, and the party or the parties who achieve victories on the battlefield, when they see these ends materialise, thus bring the war to an end. In Gaza the situation is different, for the two sides want to claim complete victory while they are trapped in a stalemate both militarily and politically, and such a stalemate isn’t about to end in the near future.
Accordingly, the lives of the remaining hostages are at great risk, and the chances of annihilating Hamas has proven impractical if not impossible to achieve. Both sides have concluded, at least for the time being, that the option of an open-ended war, apparently, serves their political interests, and that they have nothing more to lose from a military point of view. In the Israeli case, a credible definition of “winning” is lacking.
The Israeli army has been dissecting the geography of Gaza into security buffer zones, and Hamas keeps stressing that it has succeeded in confronting Israeli forces amid leaked reports to the press that it has succeeded in enlisting 30,000 new conscripts. What’s more, they have undergone training in guerrilla warfare. If this is true, then it means Hamas is adapting its military tactics to deal with the recent changes in the Israeli military strategy in Gaza.
Away from the killing fields of Gaza, the Iranians have added another complicating factor in the equation. The adviser to Iran’s Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei laid down certain conditions in order to reach an agreement with the United States concerning the Iranian nuclear programme. One of them was “restraining Israel,” without further elaboration as to what “restraining Israel” actually means.
Such a position could lead to a more hardening in the negotiation strategy of Hamas, and, ironically, would be an added reason for Israel to insist that its war in Gaza won’t come to an end before the total defeat of Hamas, whatever “total” and “defeat” exactly mean militarily and politically on the ground. Unless the Israeli strategy aims, ultimately, at “thinning out” the population of Gaza. Last year, a member of the ruling coalition in Israel had said that the optimum number of Palestinians in Gaza should ideally be — from the Israeli point of view — somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000.
And the rest? Forced or voluntary displacement.
*The writer is a former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 April, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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