US President Joe Biden said – in a speech at the White House – that Israel presented a comprehensive proposal regarding a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all prisoners, but analysts who spoke to Tel Aviv Tribune questioned the proposal and called on the Palestinian side to deal with it with extreme caution.
In his speech, Biden presented the details of the proposal, the most important of which are a sustainable ceasefire, the release of Israeli detainees, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas in Gaza, and the entry of aid.
While stressing that the speech is an admission of Israel’s failure to achieve the goals of the war, the Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, warned of what he called a dangerous trap that Israel is trying to set for the Palestinian side in cooperation with parties in the American administration.
He stressed that Biden said that the proposal was from Israel and did not say that it was from the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Therefore, the ball now is not in the court of the Palestinian resistance, but rather in the court of Netanyahu, who must officially announce his and his government’s acceptance of the proposal.
He explained that the proposal that Biden spoke about included demands for the resistance, including the withdrawal of the Israeli army, although the proposal did not clarify where their withdrawal would be, highlighting that the issue of a ceasefire in Gaza has not been resolved, as talk about a sustainable end to the fighting in the second phase does not achieve the demands. The Palestinian resistance is in a comprehensive and complete ceasefire.
Barghouti also criticized Biden’s talk about normalization without mentioning the Palestinians’ right to establish their state.
Regarding how the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) dealt with the proposal put forward by Biden, writer and political researcher Sari Orabi said that Hamas had announced its refusal to receive the Israeli proposal because it had agreed to a previous proposal presented to it by the mediators.
He added that the proposal proposed by Biden is consistent with Israeli leaks that said that Israel would make concessions regarding the mechanisms, methods, and numbers of prisoner exchange in the first phase, and would accept to negotiate a ceasefire until the second phase.
Orabi said that the American President in his speech did not talk about a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire in the second phase, but rather about a ceasefire as long as negotiations were continuing regarding the second phase with the aim of reaching a cessation of hostilities, which means that this proposal is not based on the principle of stopping the war.
Lifting the lid on Netanyahu
In the opinion of the specialist in Israeli affairs, Ashraf Badr, Biden was addressing Israeli society and the Israeli elite, and his speech is classified under the umbrella of lifting the cover from Netanyahu, pointing out the necessity of linking the speech with the statements of the head of the National Security Council in Israel, Tzachi Hanegbi, in which he stated that Israel could She goes to implement the first stage of the deal, but she is unable to stop the war in exchange for the return of all the prisoners.
For his part, Ihab Jabareen, a writer specializing in Israeli affairs, said that Netanyahu had one plan, which was to resolve the Gaza battle the day after the US elections, something that Biden understood and took proactive steps for.
He added that the two ministers in the Israeli War Council, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, “can exploit the contents of the speech to put pressure on Netanyahu in order to pull the rug of legitimacy from him.”
In the same context, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Khalil Al-Anani, believes that Biden’s speech is linked to his election campaign and to the judicial ruling issued against former US President Donald Trump, as he considered it an internal victory for him. The jury convicted Trump of 34 charges against him in a case of falsifying accounting records to cover up the payment of $130,000 to silence a pornographic film actress.
