Over and over, Netanyahu has wrecked chances for a ceasefire deal
By Milan Rai. PN 2673 (September 2024)
Throughout the last six months, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ‘repeatedly torpedoed’ the progress of ceasefire talks in the Gaza War – ‘particularly when it came to decisive moments’ – according to Haaretz, the left-liberal Israeli newspaper.
As we go to press, Netanyahu is continuing this pattern, undermining the latest attempted ‘breakthrough’ in the ceasefire talks with impossible demands designed to drive Hamas out of the negotiations.
Netanyahu’s latest demands came because, on 4 July, the US announced that Hamas had made a ‘breakthrough’ ceasefire proposal, with one major concession from the Palestinian group.
The Times of Israel (often described as politically ‘centrist’) reported: ‘The renewed negotiations in both Egypt and Qatar come after the Hamas terror group said on Saturday that it was ready to discuss a hostage deal and an end to the war in Gaza without an upfront commitment by Israel to a “complete and permanent ceasefire.” That statement constitutes a shift in the position Hamas has held in all previous negotiations since November.’
There was a real risk of peace breaking out.
Netanyahu did his best to destroy this possibility three days later.
‘Ahead of the Israeli negotiating team’s departure for further hostage deal talks in Cairo and Doha later this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented a list on Sunday evening [7 July] of what he said were four nonnegotiable Israeli demands, including a guarantee that Israel could resume fighting, which would need to be met in any hostage release and ceasefire deal with Hamas.’ (Times of Israel)
To be clear, the first ‘non-negotiable’ demand, as reported by the Times of Israel, was: ‘Any deal will allow Israel to return to fighting until its war aims are achieved.’
What are Israel’s war aims? On 29 October last year, Netanyahu said the aims of the Israeli campaign were ‘to destroy Hamas’s governing and military capabilities and to bring the hostages home’.
On 1 June this year, Netanyahu added a third goal. His office said that the war aims were: ‘the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.’
When Netanyahu said, on 7 July, that Israel’s ‘non-negotiable’ demand was for the peace deal to guarantee that Israel would be allowed to continue pursuing its war aims, he was asking Hamas to sign a deal guaranteeing that the Israeli defence forces (IDF) would be allowed to continue smashing Gaza into pieces until Hamas had been utterly destroyed.
Netanyahu was clearly trying to provoke Hamas into walking away from the peace talks so that the Palestinians would be blamed for the continuation of the war.
After Hamas refused to play the role he had given them, Netanyahu tightened the screws even further on 11 July. He hardened the ‘non-negotiable’ conditions even further, including by specifying that any deal must, ‘already in the first stage of the framework, maximize the number of living hostages that will be freed’.
The Times of Israel commented: ‘He had not specified the “first stage” when declaring this demand on Sunday.’
In other words, Netanyahu was demanding that Hamas agree to hand over virtually all the Israeli hostages who are still alive, in return for a six-week pause in the war, after which the IDF would have Hamas’s blessing to restart the levelling of Gaza and the destruction of its people.
Six months
Why is he sabotaging hostage-release/ceasefire talks?
‘Netanyahu believes that an agreement on a hostage deal will most likely lead to his government’s collapse – which he seeks to avoid at all costs,’ according to Haaretz.
Netanyahu’s coalition has a majority of just four seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. His government cannot survive without the support of two ultra-right parties: Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have six seats; and the Mafdal-Religious Zionism party, led by Bezalel Smotrich, who have seven.
On 2 June, Ben-Gvir said (again) that he would ‘dissolve’ the government rather than agree to a peace deal ending the Gaza War. Smotrich posted on social media the same day that he had told Netanyahu that he would ‘not be part of a government that agrees to the proposed outline and ends the war without destroying Hamas and bringing back all the hostages’.
This is the factor that counts.
Haaretz has put together a timeline of Netanyahu’s wrecking tactics over the last six months.
Let’s look in detail at the beginning of the year, when the Israeli government was officially trying to negotiate another hostage release deal.
According to Haaretz: ‘A central part of the negotiating team’s strategy – approved by the war cabinet, which has since been disbanded – was to refrain from discussing the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released for every hostage. It was assumed that this volatile issue could derail the negotiations, and negotiators sought to first create the appropriate conditions to discuss it.’
Going against the decision made by the war cabinet, Netanyahu began leaking information about prisoner releases, and putting out a hardline position, in order to strengthen public opposition to a deal.
On 17 January, the war cabinet agreed the Israeli negotiating team’s mandate: ‘the issues Mossad Chief David Barnea is authorized to discuss in the upcoming Paris summit, and the points he is allowed to compromise on’.
A senior member of Israel’s negotiating team tells Haaretz that Netanyahu’s comments about accepting only a partial deal (repeated in a television interview) are ‘a terror attack’.
After the meeting, Netanyahu toughened Israel’s stance without further discussion, overruling the war cabinet’s decision.
He then delayed giving Barnea his new mandate, delaying the first Paris talks by two weeks.
After the head of Mossad, Israel’s equivalent of the CIA, returned from the Paris negotiations with significant progress, ‘Netanyahu published a series of five press releases, in which he emphasized the gaps that remain between the sides.’
The prime minister also made speeches undermining the talks. He said: the proposals included ‘conditions that Israel finds unacceptable’; ‘We press on until the total victory’; and ‘We won’t withdraw the Israel Defence Forces from the Gaza Strip and won’t release thousands of terrorists. None of that will happen.’
When Hamas put forward a three-stage ceasefire counter-offer on 6 February, US secretary of state Anthony Blinken said there were ‘nonstarters’ in it, but ‘we also see space in what came back to pursue negotiations’.
Netanyahu had a very different response the next day, calling the Hamas proposal ‘bizarre’ and ‘delusional’: ‘There is no other solution but a complete and final victory’. He added: ‘The day after [the war ends] is the day after Hamas. All of Hamas.’
The BBC reported: ‘The Israeli leader’s comments are a blow to a sustained push by the US to reach a deal that its top diplomat, Antony Blinken, described as “the best path forward”.’
Manmade mandate
Haaretz reports that, in the run-up to the second Paris summit, in February, Netanyahu again changed the mandate for the Israeli negotiating team from what the war cabinet had agreed. When the talks fail, ‘war cabinet members and senior defense officials ask Netanyahu to convene the cabinet and authorize the Israeli team to renew negotiations.’ Netanyahu does not respond.
On 11 April, a senior member of the Israeli negotiating team tells an investigative TV programme Uvda (Fact): ‘Since December, definitely since January, it’s clear to everyone that we’re not conducting negotiations. It happens again and again: You get a mandate during the day, then the prime minister makes phone calls at night, instructs ‘don’t say that’ and ‘I’m not approving this’, thus bypassing both the team leaders and the war cabinet.’
A close shave
Also in early April, according to Haaretz, ‘Israel and Hamas were at the closest they had been to agreeing to a deal.’ The Israeli army announced the end of its Khan Younis operation and a full withdrawal of forces from the area, perhaps creating a positive atmosphere for negotiations.
‘Religious Zionism head and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich holds an emergency party convention, and is summoned to a talk with Netanyahu on that very same day.’
Netanyahu puts out a statement saying that total victory over Hamas requires entering the southern Gazan city of Rafah: ‘It will happen – there’s a date.’
‘In the following days, Netanyahu refrains from convening the war cabinet, despite significant progress reported in talks.’
Later in April, ‘Netanyahu makes several statements, stressing that Israel is intent on entering Rafah and will not agree to stop the war. This position moves Hamas farther away from the negotiating table.’
There is even more in the Haaretz exposé, showing how Netanyahu has repeatedly undermined the work of the US, Egypt and Qatar, overruled the Israeli cabinet and carried out his own, very personal, anti-diplomacy wrecking campaign to undermine and sabotage peace negotiations with Hamas.
On 23 June, when a peace deal seems possible, Netanyahu says in the Knesset that he is ‘ready for a deal that would return some hostages,’ but is ‘committed to continuing the war.’
A source told Haaretz: ‘Netanyahu made clear today he is not interested in releasing all the hostages and is unwilling to take the steps that Hamas seeks in return. In this situation, [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar has no motivation to make progress on a deal.’