Walking a tightrope, Netanyahu struggles to maintain his balance
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For Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the Gaza ceasefire
negotiations are an exercise in playing both sides against the middle.
Raising hopes that a durable truce may be on the horizon
nine months into the war, US
and Israeli
officials praised Hamas’ reply to new language put forward by the Biden
administration in the three-stage ceasefire proposal announced in May by the US president.
In response, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister had authorized the Israeli negotiating team to engage in further talks in Qatar with US, Qatari, and Egyptian mediators.
Credit: The
White House
President Joe Biden’s
proposal calls for an initial six-week ceasefire during which Hamas would
swap 33 of the 120 dead or alive Israeli and foreign hostages it holds for
Palestinians incarcerated in Israel.
The ceasefire would be extended into the second phase while
the parties negotiate an end to the war and include the release of the remaining
live Hamas-held hostages. The third phase would involve the reconstruction of
Gaza’s destroyed infrastructure and the return of the remains of hostages who
were killed or died during the war.
The administration’s new language focusses on the terms of
the ceasefire’s second phase. Mr. Biden’s original proposal said the second
phase would remain in place as long as Hamas and Israel were negotiating.
While the proposal’s language gives both Hamas and Israel
the ability to end the second phase at any moment, it, in effect, allows Mr.
Netanyahu to maintain his insistence on resuming the war at a time of his
choice to achieve his goal of destroying Hamas militarily and politically.
Binyamin
Netanyahu talks to Joe Biden. Credit: Israel Government Press Office
Mr. Netanyahu said as much this week in a telephone
conversation with Mr. Biden, his first since May, by insisting that Israel will
end the war "only after meeting all its goals."
The coming days and weeks will clarify whether the Biden
administration has succeeded in bridging the yawning gap that has dogged the
ceasefire efforts for months or whether Mr. Netanyahu and Hamas are going
through the motions to ensure that the other gets the blame if renewed talks
fail.
Hamas has consistently demanded that a ceasefire herald an
end to the war, while Mr. Netanyahu insists on a continuation of the
hostilities after a temporary truce and an initial prisoner exchange.
Privately, some Israeli officials suggested that Hamas had
not dropped its insistence that the ceasefire agreement explicitly
prevent Israel from resuming the war after the truce’s first stage.
Similarly, Hamas officials said they continued to demand a
complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in addition to binding language
regarding an end to the war.
Israeli
media reports suggested that Hamas had opened the door to renewed ceasefire
negotiations by demonstrating flexibility on the timing of a declaration to the
end of the war. The reports said Hamas was no longer insisting that Israel
declare an end in the first phase of the ceasefire.
An Israeli official said Hamas’ position “could allow for a humanitarian
deal and lead to the release of the soldiers, women, the elderly and the sick.
If Hamas violates the conditions, Israel will be able to return and
fight."
For all practical purposes, Mr. Netanyahu, pressured to end
the war by his military,
mass domestic protests demanding his resignation, and the international
community struggles to maintain his balance as he walks a tightrope.
Concern that his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, the
military, and the Biden administration are conspiring to force the prime
minister to acknowledge that the war is coming to an end, may, in part, drive
Mr. Netanyahu’s willingness to reengage in ceasefire talks.
“While there are differences between the Israeli generals
and their American counterparts, they
increasingly share a similar position on the day-after strategy in Gaza,
while Netanyahu and his far-right allies object to even having one,” said
journalist Anschel Pfeffer.
Itamar Ben
Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Credit: Flashpoint
Mr. Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalist and ultra-conservative
coalition partners have threatened to collapse his government if he agrees to
end the war. Interestingly, as of this writing, ultra-nationalists like
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel
Smotrich have yet to respond to the resumption of the ceasefire talks.
Even so, Israel’s far-right has attempted to derail the talks
by seeking to undermine Qatar’s credibility as a mediator because of its
relationship with Hamas and asserting that Mr. Netanyahu is in cohorts with the
Gulf state.
For years, Mr. Netanyahu encouraged Qatar to fund Hamas’
administration of Gaza as a way of keeping the Palestinian polity divided and
incapable of cohesively pushing for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
In the latest far-right maneuver, the Washington-based Middle
East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI) regurgitated documents suggesting
that Qatar had bribed
Mr. Netanyahu with $50 million.
Leaked
document alleges Qatari payment to Binyamin Netanyahu. Credit: MEMRI
To complicate matters, the documents were initially leaked
as part of Project
Raven, implemented by an undercover team
that included former US intelligence operatives recruited to help the United
Arab Emirates engage in surveillance of other governments, militants, and human
rights activists critical of the monarchy.
The leaks occurred during the 3.5-year-long UAE-Saudi-led
diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar that was lifted in 2021.
There is no indication that the UAE was involved in MEMRI’s
current months-long effort to sully Qatar and Mr. Netanyahu’s reputations.
Even so, MEMRI co-founder Yigal Carmon, insisting that he
was anti-Qatar, not anti-Netanyahu, conceded that “the leaking of these
documents stemmed indeed from a counterattack by the Emiratis against the
Qataris after Qatar chose to reveal documents about the UAE… But this doesn’t
mean that the documents are forged.”
A former advisor to Israel’s West Bank and Gaza occupation
authority, and Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin, Mr. Carmon
resigned in 1993 in protest against Mr. Rabin’s signing of the Oslo Accords.
The accords laid the foundation for the establishment of an
independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and created President Mahmoud
Abbas’s West Bank-based, internationally recognised Palestine Authority.
Some analysts believe that Mr. Netanyahu's re-engagement in
ceasefire negotiations may involve more than political maneuvering.
Gazan workers
repair electricity lines. Source X
Middle East analyst Ori Goldberg argues that Israel’s
positive spin on the ceasefire negotiations and its decision this week to
restore electricity for a Gazan desalination and water plant constitutes an attempt at
“walking away from Gaza without admitting (Israel) is walking away from
Gaza.”
Assuming that Mr. Netanyahu cannot afford to admit his
failure to achieve Israel’s war goals – Hamas’ destruction, the release of the
hostages, and pacification of Gaza --, Mr. Goldberg predicted that “the
genocide will end with a whimper. Why? Because it remains politically risky to
call for an end to the ‘war’ and even riskier to claim responsibility.”
Israel’s Coordinator for the Government's Activities in the
Territories (COGAT) described the restoration of electricity as a humanitarian
gesture.
“Israel is beginning to outsource, to step away from its
responsibilities by performing ‘gestures.’ It is not a gesture. It is a sneaky
admission of defeat. Israel has failed to reach any of its stated goals in
Gaza. It is now hoping no one will notice it ambling away,” Mr. Goldberg said.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior
Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.
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