The occupation government does not appear to be in a superior position in the ceasefire and prisoner negotiations (Reuters)
It may be difficult to ascertain the exact outcome of the ceasefire negotiations in Gaza, which have not stopped at the time of writing this analysis, and may not result in any solution in the coming days or weeks, as long as the instinct for revenge that dominates the entity has not yet been satisfied, despite Tens of thousands of Palestinian victims.
As long as the Prime Minister of the occupation, Benjamin Netanyahu, puts his political ambition ahead of any other consideration, in exchange for a resistance that has prioritized trying to provide relief for the Palestinian people in the face of an unprecedented starvation campaign in the conflict.
However, this does not prevent an attempt to examine the course and outcome of the negotiations, which were launched in Paris, and in which the United States participated in addition to Qatar and Egypt, while identifying the features of the disagreement in the negotiations, and the factors affecting their course.
The occupation failed
As the occupation army’s aggression enters its sixth month, it still lacks the image of victory that it defined by eliminating the Hamas movement and liberating the prisoners. Estimates by Israeli military experts confirmed that thousands of resistance fighters from the Al-Qassam Brigades are still fighting in the north and center. Hamas also maintains four brigades in Rafah that did not enter. The war after.
American intelligence estimates indicated that Israel only succeeded in destroying about a third of Hamas' tunnels, and this means that Israel is still far from achieving its first goal, while it failed to free any of its prisoners by force.
It does not appear to be on the path to success in achieving what Netanyahu called complete victory. This explains his insistence on invading Rafah, the last stronghold of resistance in the Gaza Strip.
He may be counting on achieving an image of victory that will facilitate his achievement in the prisoner negotiations, although he has so far been using this to pressure the Hamas leadership to conclude an exchange agreement that is closer to Israeli demands.
Therefore, the occupation government does not appear to be in a superior position in the ceasefire and prisoner negotiations, but the power-hungry Netanyahu continues to obstruct the negotiations, because reaching any truce will pave the way for demanding elections that he does not want, because it means his loss in light of opinion polls, and thus his going to corruption and failure trials on October 7. .
As the war prolonged, Israel's image shifted from a state of defense to that of an entity practicing the worst types of cleansing and genocide, which caused a shift in Western support for the war towards calling for a ceasefire.
This matter embarrassed the administration of President Joe Biden, weakened the president’s position vis-à-vis his Republican rival, Donald Trump, and made the Gaza issue an important topic in the American elections.
Against this background, and in the context of the desire to save its reputation, and even to save the entity that failed to achieve its goals, the American administration focused its efforts to achieve humanitarian truces, but within the framework of its firm and continuous support for continuing the war until it weakens Hamas, and thwarts all the projects presented to the Security Council for a ceasefire. .
Paris negotiations
The Paris negotiations came as an expression of the need to find a political solution, which paves the way for the plan for the day after the war that includes recognition of a Palestinian state, which is still a matter of disagreement with the Netanyahu government.
The Biden administration is seeking to reach this plan and achieve a breakthrough in it that will help the US President improve his position in the presidential elections in November this year.
The Paris negotiations, coordinated by Washington, included Egypt and Qatar as mediators with the participation of occupation intelligence and American intelligence, and resulted in a document of principles that divided the agreement into 3 stages, at the end of which Washington wants to end the war, ensuring that it maintains its position in the region, in addition to preventing the conflict from developing into a regional war. In addition to pushing the occupation to accept a truce that would later develop to stop the war in its current form, a war in which the occupation does not seem to be going to achieve a major achievement with the continued steadfastness of the resistance.
Washington is seeking to reach an understanding with the occupation on a different kind of war that focuses on targeting the resistance, along with a plan for the next day with an agreed-upon Palestinian authority, which will undertake the task of besieging Hamas and trying to weaken it, as is happening now in the West Bank, or even trying to integrate it into the political solution after disarming it. .
In order to pave the way for this, it is necessary to mitigate the issue of targeting civilians, which has so far led to the destabilization of the occupation’s status, leading to damage to American influence in the region and the loss of its allies from the West and even from some Arab regimes.
Rafah invasion
From this standpoint, Washington opposes the occupation attacking Rafah without protecting the civilians, who number about 1.4 million people, as this may cause massacres that will have serious repercussions on the course of the war.
One of the solutions is to return them to the north. This is the demand presented by Hamas in the amendment to the Paris-2 document, and Washington does not oppose it, while Israel rejects it, and sees it as an admission of its failure.
Israel is looking for other solutions, including what was reported by the Wall Street Journal on February 13, 2023, that Israel is considering evacuating the Palestinians there to 15 camps in the southwestern part of the closed coastal area (Al-Mawasi), each of which will include about 25,000 tents. !
In its first version at the end of last January, the Paris Document divided the solution into 3 stages, the first of which, which will last 30 days, leads to Hamas releasing 40 women, children, the elderly, and the sick, without specifying the corresponding number of Palestinians from the same category. The stage will lead to The second entails the release of all captured Israeli soldiers without specifying a percentage for the exchange, provided that the third leads to an agreement leading to the withdrawal of the occupation forces.
This document came in the midst of the starvation war launched by the occupation forces on Gaza, which put pressure on the popular incubator of the resistance. Therefore, the latter responded with a document that focused on humanitarian and relief demands in the first phase, which was set for 45 days, with a demand for the release of 1,500 detainees, including 500 of them. Those with high sentences are determined by Hamas, and the occupation forces are withdrawn to buffer zones. The second phase, for the same period, will include a complete exchange of prisoners between the two parties, with Israel pledging to completely stop the war and withdraw from the Gaza Strip, in the third phase, which will include handing over the bodies of Israelis.
However, Netanyahu's response was negative, considering Hamas' demands unrealistic, that is, he said that the balance of the field does not allow Hamas to impose high conditions, which is what launched the Paris II negotiations, which reached at the end of last February a new proposal that attempted to reduce Hamas' demands, even if it adhered to its framework. Especially in the first stage, but he did not agree to commit to the Israeli withdrawal according to Hamas’s demand, neither partially in the first stage nor completely in the third stage.
Hence, Hamas submitted a second response a few days ago within the framework of what it said was high flexibility to allow reaching an agreement that would lead to “a ceasefire and withdrawal, such as the withdrawal of the occupation from crowded places and withdrawal from Al-Rashid and Salah Al-Din Streets for the return of the displaced without conditions and the passage of aid,” according to what Al Jazeera reported. Net from a source in Hamas on March 21.
Relief first
However, it is noted that Hamas returned and made other concessions in the exchange equation, and postponed the ceasefire demand for the second stage, and presented this to the mediators Qatar and Egypt at the same time as the presence of an Israeli delegation in Doha. Al Jazeera Net also quoted a leading source as saying that Hamas “proposed a ratio of 1 to 50 for female recruits (numbering 4-5), including a number of prisoners with high sentences, which Israel rejected, even though Hamas made a concession on this item when it was insisting on the release.” About 1,500 Palestinian prisoners, including 500 of those with high sentences.
The concessions made by Hamas indicate its desire to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians, and to prevent the occupation from exploiting the war of starvation to pressure the resistance and push it to surrender. Therefore, Hamas reduced the exchange equation in favor of emphasizing relief demands.
But the initial response of the Netanyahu government was to continue to refuse to withdraw from the Rasheed and Salah al-Din axes in the first phase, to refuse to withdraw from Gaza within the second phase agreement, and to not agree to the new exchange equation.
Netanyahu's obstacle
Despite this, Doha is supposed to witness a second round of indirect negotiations, while sources confirm that there is a disagreement between Shin Bet head Ronen Bar with Netanyahu and his demand to expand the powers of the negotiating delegation, a position shared by Mossad chief David Barnea.
But it seems that Netanyahu is still holding the lines of the game and is dealing with the negotiations as a game of buying time and stalling to put more pressure on the resistance and push it to reject the Israeli proposals in order to use them as a justification before the families of the prisoners who have escalated their protests in a number of Israeli cities.
Hamas still has the prisoner point, and even with Netanyahu’s attempts to reduce them through focused targeting of the tunnels - where the prisoners are located - the mere fact that the resistance captured dozens of them is enough to put pressure on the occupation government to achieve the equation of exchange and ceasefire, especially if this is accompanied by steadfastness on the ground, and incurring heavy losses. The occupation suffers daily losses that raise the cost of continuing the war against it.
Netanyahu remains a major obstacle to reaching a quick ceasefire agreement, in the face of the US President’s unwillingness to put real pressure on him. Rather, Netanyahu feels that he is able to withstand the possibility of Biden’s loss and the rise of Trump, whose dealings with the occupation government will not be better!
Although it is difficult to predict the course and results of the negotiations, they will continue in one way or another with momentum that depends on the course of the war on the ground, even if its pace is stable between the two parties without the attack on Rafah, which faces opposition from the Biden administration, while the occupation forces need weeks to prepare for that, while arranging the displacement of the Palestinians. For a second area.
The Biden administration remains unwilling to put pressure on Netanyahu, even though it is seeking, in cooperation with some parts of the Jewish lobby, to pressure to change his government and deal with a government that is not dependent on extremists.
Before and after Rafah
But reaching a ceasefire agreement soon, even in its first phase, will be in the interest of the Palestinians, especially since their reliance on the Ramadan card or the success of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem in supporting them and breaking the restrictions of the Authority and the occupation has declined to a large extent, while Iran’s allies in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria continue to preoccupy the occupation at a low rate. It does not affect the brutality of the occupation in Gaza, just as America deals with the Houthi threats and prevents them from causing strategic harm to the entity.
If a ceasefire agreement is not arranged soon, the occupation will most likely launch an aggression against Rafah after Ramadan, but there is great doubt that it will achieve an achievement against the resistance that it did not succeed in achieving in other areas.
Perhaps the failure of the occupation in the final stage of the aggression will create a new environment for the entity that will make it more realistic to accept the demands of the resistance, especially since it will be more willing to accept American demands, if there are no developments before or after Rafah that overthrow the Netanyahu government and produce a government that is more responsive to the Biden administration, including Facilitates a ceasefire.
Therefore, there is no choice for the resistance except to continue accumulating points against the occupation, raise the price of its aggression, and reinforce its internal contradictions.
Source: Al Jazeera