Armed Peace in Gaza
Armed Peace in Gaza
Israel Hamas with Held Breath
After overcoming last-minute obstacles, the path to reaching a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas should be clear.
The crisis should have ended, according to an American source quoted by Axios, unresolved issues in the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel were resolved on the evening of January 16. The agreement is now ready to be announced, awaiting its formalization.
The agreement was announced on January 15 by both parties as well as by the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, but the next morning, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement accusing Hamas of retracting from some details of the agreement, which created a crisis in completing the agreement. The Israeli war cabinet is likely to meet on January 17 to vote on the ceasefire agreement. According to informed sources, the disputes are over the identity of Palestinian prisoners that Israel does not want to disclose, while Hamas wants to know their identities before their release.
The Palestinian Islamist movement, in turn, rejected these accusations and announced its commitment to adhere to the agreement announced by mediators on Wednesday.
White House National Security spokesman John Kirby previously told NBC News that the United States is confident that the issues preventing the agreement’s approval can be resolved in time for the start as planned on Sunday.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, at least 70 people have lost their lives in recent airstrikes.
The war cabinet’s vote, initially scheduled for 11 o’clock, has been postponed, and consequently, hopes for ending the 15-month war that has devastated Gaza and sparked an unprecedented humanitarian crisis are on hold.
A Completely Israeli Crisis
Following statements made by the Qatari Prime Minister, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, the timing introduced by Israel the morning after the agreement’s announcement to slow down the excitement has raised many doubts. This retraction actually occurred immediately after one of the members of the far-right religious party, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, announced that he would leave the government if the agreement was approved.
Smotrich, who repeatedly called the agreement bad and dangerous, clarified that his condition for remaining in the government is that Israel can resume the war in Gaza with full force after the hostages are released.
According to some reports, the Finance Minister has requested Netanyahu to provide a written guarantee on this matter.
This request could undermine the foundation of negotiations for the second phase of the agreement, a phase in which Hamas will release other hostages who are still alive in exchange for more prisoners’ release and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
The Times of Israel writes that this motivation, and not minor changes in the agreement by Hamas, has been the root of the last-minute crisis among Israelis.
Netanyahu Between Two Fires
For a long time, Netanyahu, due to fear for his political survival, was reluctant to accept an agreement with Hamas. In the months he rejected a plan previously proposed in May by the Biden administration, Netanyahu was particularly concerned that his extremist allies Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir would dismantle his coalition.
Therefore, according to his critics, it is not unusual that today, even at the cost of jeopardizing peace negotiations, he is trying to maintain this coalition.
Even if Netanyahu loses his majority in parliament, this will not automatically mean his downfall. Israel’s political system does not actually reject minority governments. Minority governments refer to a government that does not have a majority in parliament but can govern with the support of smaller parties or opposition parties, and opposition parties have already announced that they are ready to provide the necessary support to the government to reach an agreement on the hostages. However, losing his two extremist allies could weaken Netanyahu’s power and push the country towards early elections, forcing the Prime Minister to face political accountability, something he has managed to avoid so far.
The Ceasefire Could Continue
However, it seems that the entry of Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff, who is a real estate developer and a personal friend, has given the negotiations a sudden momentum and enabled the mediators to reach an agreement that had eluded the Biden administration for over a year. Trump, when he sounded the alarm in December, was as outspoken as ever. He said that if the Israeli hostages in Gaza were not released before his inauguration, hell would break loose in the Middle East.
Regardless of any last-minute surprises, ignoring this deadline will be difficult.
However, the key question is whether the ceasefire can continue or not.
Will this be a temporary pause or will it lead to a permanent ceasefire that mediators, Palestinians, and the region desperately wish for? There is no certainty about this, just as there is no certainty about who will govern the Gaza Strip after the conflict ends.
Neither Israel, the United States, nor Arab countries want Hamas, which has been in power since 2007, to regain control, but Netanyahu has not presented any practical plan for the day after.
With the rise of the Prime Minister and his far-right allies, Israel has become more focused on annexing the West Bank or escalating tensions with weakened Iran rather than conceding to the Palestinians. The Financial Times noted today that nearly a year of negotiation was required to stop the war, but compared to the daunting task of rebuilding Gaza and even more challenging, achieving lasting peace in the region, this may be the easier part.
While the world waits with bated breath for the Israeli war cabinet meeting, which must decide on the expected ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, lives continue to be lost in Gaza.
And in Israel, many people are asking themselves how many hostages are still alive and how many more could have returned home alive if Netanyahu were not a hostage to his extremist allies and if there had been the political will to reach a ceasefire more quickly.
The content of the document these days is actually very similar to the draft rejected in previous rounds of negotiations. What has changed today is the new tenant of the White House with whom Israel must interact for the next four years, and it is important not to start off on the wrong foot.
