With increasing talk about the imminence of a prisoner exchange agreement and a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, analysts’ opinions differ regarding the repercussions of this agreement, which they say is based on inconclusive terms.
Pressure is increasing on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to move forward with the currently proposed deal Which the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation quoted informed American sources as “reasonable to all parties.”
The heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet agencies and the army representative in the negotiations traveled to the Qatari capital, Doha, on Saturday evening, under the direction of Netanyahu, with progress in the negotiations, according to Israeli Channel 13.
According to the channel, there is talk of a multi-stage deal that guarantees the return of all the kidnapped people, with Israel pledging not to return to fighting again.
An Israeli official told Channel 12 that during the past two days, US President-elect Donald Trump began personally intervening in the issue of releasing prisoners.
Zero negotiations
But all of these introductions do not mean that an agreement is close to being reached, as Dr. Hassan Mneimneh, a researcher at the Middle East Institute in Washington, says. Rather, they are an attempt by Trump to show his strength and prestige by saying that he did before officially assuming office what Joe Biden had not done in an entire year.
Mneimneh confirmed – during his participation in the Track of Events program – that the negotiations currently taking place are not as clear as the media talk about, and that they “still revolve around the ambiguity that the United States clings to.”
This ambiguity – in Mneimneh’s opinion – is represented by the fact that the Trump administration is not talking about an agreement that guarantees a clear pledge to stop the war because it knows that this means the defeat of Israel and the victory of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
On the other hand, any agreement that does not include a clear cessation of the war means a defeat for Hamas, and therefore Washington is still practicing the same method it did during an entire year of zero-sum negotiations, says Mneimneh.
In addition, the spokesman adds, the United States does not have a vision for the day after the war in the Gaza Strip, and it partners with Israel in seeking to prevent any self-rule or political independence for any Palestinian group, whether in Gaza or the West Bank.
Even if the war is stopped, Trump is committed to everything Israel wants from the dissolution of the Palestinians and the expansion of normalization, and the most he can offer is a limited reconstruction of the Gaza Strip while facilitating the displacement of the population under humanitarian pretexts, in the opinion of the researcher at the Middle East Institute.
An agreement seems imminent
On the contrary, researcher on Israeli affairs, Dr. Muhannad Mustafa, believes that Netanyahu is facing internal and American pressures that make him serious about reaching an agreement, even if this leads to the removal of the bloc of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir from the government.
But Mustafa pointed out that Netanyahu “will remain committed to the term stopping the fighting and not stopping the war because the latter means the complete collapse of the Israeli right, which believes that absolute victory means resolving the future of the Gaza Strip and not resolving the battle against Hamas.”
Mustafa expected that Netanyahu would accept to withdraw from the Gaza Strip “if he obtains an American guarantee of his right to return to the Gaza Strip whenever he wants, because his withdrawal without this guarantee means his political end.”
The same opinion was shared by political analyst Dr. Ahmed Al-Haila, who said that there is an agreement on a sustainable cessation of fighting and a phased withdrawal from the Netzarim and Philadelphia axes, noting that this matter “represents a shift in Netanyahu’s position, who previously refused to discuss these matters completely.”
The agreement in question also includes a clause regarding Israel not returning to fighting and a commitment to implementing the provisions of the first phase, which includes opening crossings, introducing humanitarian aid, and Israel’s withdrawal from residential areas, even if the mechanism for moving to the second phase is not agreed upon, according to him.
Al-Haila considered that this agreement represents a victory for the resistance in particular and for the Palestinian people in general because it “closes Israel’s right to return militarily to the Gaza Strip because of what happened on October 7, 2023.”
