With the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) announcing its approval of the “Egyptian-Qatari” proposal for a ceasefire agreement in Gaza, the movement has crowned its negotiating strategy with its success in containing the objectives of the fierce Israeli war against the Gaza Strip and shifted the direction of international and regional pressure to the occupation government, and preserved On the cards of its military, political and negotiating power.
With this decision, the movement was also able to throw the ball into the court of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist government and put him under tremendous pressure, in a scene that was difficult to imagine at the beginning of the war.
Until this result was reached, the negotiation process between Israel and Hamas witnessed a difficult process and multiple stages, influenced by several factors, most notably the size of the strike that Israel received on the morning of October 7 and its subsequent reaction to that.
The sharp and unprecedented American position also represented a decisive framework in the course of the war in terms of designing its objectives and granting Israel broad political, military and diplomatic cover.
The Israeli declared war goals, namely eliminating Hamas, ending its rule of the Gaza Strip, dismantling its military capabilities, and releasing Israeli prisoners in Gaza, constituted the assumed outcome of the Israeli war and negotiating effort.
On the other hand, Hamas designed its strategy on the basis of containing the Israeli military effort, preserving its political position, and consolidating the goals of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by halting the process of liquidating the Palestinian issue, putting an end to the Judaization plans of the right-wing government in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and reaching an exchange deal through which it would release thousands of Palestinian prisoners in prisons. Occupation.
Negotiation path
The first move in the negotiation process was the adoption of mediators by both sides. Since the first days of the war, many international and regional parties have sought to present themselves as a mediator in a war that is the most severe in the history of the Palestinian issue.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has placed itself in the position of comprehensively managing the escalation and controlling the roles of the parties, in an attempt to design a negotiating path that serves its orientations in resolving Hamas and providing the necessary support to Israel to ensure its cohesion following the October setback.
However, the Biden administration, due to its absolute bias towards Israel, the unprecedented proximity of the military and intelligence efforts to the war, and the fact that a number of its citizens were captured by the resistance in Gaza, found itself a party to the conflict and negotiations more than being a sponsor of them.
Identify brokers
The first results of the negotiations with Hamas constituted the main entrance to an extended negotiating track, in which the main mediation parties represented by Qatar and Egypt were identified.
Hamas had released two American detainees through Qatari mediation. The movement said at the time that it had released them for humanitarian reasons. Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Ubaida said – in a brief statement on October 21 – that “in response to Qatari efforts, the Brigades today released two American detainees.” They are a mother and her daughter, from the Gaza Strip “for humanitarian reasons.”
Since then, Hamas took its first steps to pave the way towards the negotiation process when it announced the presence of a group of prisoners of foreign nationalities, stressing its keenness to protect and secure them and considering them as “guests,” and that the Al-Qassam Brigades “will release the various nationalities” when field conditions permit this.
The circumstances of that stage indicate that Hamas aimed to contain the campaign sponsored by the Biden administration and Israel at the international level to condemn the Palestinian resistance, demonize it, and attach terrorism charges to it.
Through a series of releases for humanitarian reasons – including female Israeli civilian prisoners – Hamas was able to reduce the pressure on it, vent the campaign against it, and focus on the conflict, its causes, and the repercussions of the aggression against the Gaza Strip.
On November 22, 2023, Qatar announced the success of joint mediation efforts with Egypt and the United States between Israel and Hamas, and the efforts then resulted in reaching an agreement on a humanitarian truce in the Gaza Strip that lasted nearly a week.
The first agreement between the two sides resulted in a limited prisoner exchange deal, and also allowed the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs.
Party strategies
This deal outlined the main trends for both sides, as it demonstrated the Netanyahu government’s negotiating strategy, which is based on its effort to release its prisoners held by the resistance in Gaza in exchange for specific days of calm and limited amounts of aid.
This strategy aims to withdraw the basic power card from the hands of the resistance, and to continue its war on the Gaza Strip until its declared goals are achieved. It is interpreted as a clear position of rejecting the ceasefire and withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and continuing the policy of starvation with the aim of displacing Palestinian citizens from Gaza.
On the other hand, the position of the Hamas movement confused Israeli and American calculations, by halting the negotiation process at that time after the failure of the mediations to reach a comprehensive agreement that would stop the war. It also paved the way for a new negotiating path. It can be said that Hamas established its basic rules, defined its goals, and halted the negotiating strategy of the Netanyahu government. .
Following the cessation of the truce agreement process, Hamas defined its objectives for the negotiations with its five demands that became the criterion for the success of reaching an agreement, which are a ceasefire, the withdrawal of the occupation army from the Gaza Strip, the return of all displaced persons to their homes and property, relief for the Palestinian people in Gaza and reconstruction, and an exchange deal. To the prisoners are due.
With the clarity of the objectives of the negotiating parties, the war fever in the Gaza Strip increased, and the Israeli occupation government tried to impose its objectives by force by targeting and killing the largest possible number of civilians, starving citizens, and bombing hospitals, to put pressure on the Palestinian negotiator and force him to accept a deal that would allow the release of Israeli prisoners without a pledge to stop. Fighting.
On the other hand, the resistance was able to absorb the Israeli war effort and continue to confront and carry out lightning operations and inflict losses on the ranks of the Israeli occupation soldiers.
The resistance maintained its combat capabilities and prevented the occupation army from exhausting its military strength in open battles in which the occupation used large and unprecedented air firepower.
However, the main failure in the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip was its inability to release Israeli prisoners by force, and its inability to reach the main leadership of the Hamas movement, represented by the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Al-Sinwar, the commander-in-chief of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Muhammad Al-Deif, and a number of the movement’s main leaders. With Netanyahu’s insistence on repeatedly announcing the war’s goals, he doubled the pressure on him as the war progressed without achieving them.
The centrality of the Paris proposal
After that, the United States came to the conclusion that Israel was unable to achieve its goals in Gaza, that the cost of the humanitarian and political war was no longer bearable, and that the repercussions of the Western position in support of the Israeli war on Gaza were threatening the deterioration of the regional security environment in the Middle East and affecting global security, and this was accompanied by The expanding level of global popular rejection and in Western countries in particular.
Accordingly, CIA Director William Burns, along with Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian security and political officials, held talks in Paris to reach an agreement on the Gaza truce.
After shuttle rounds, a paper called “A General Framework for a Comprehensive Agreement between the Parties” was reached, in 3 stages, and from this moment, the “Paris Framework” became the governing framework for the negotiation path between the two sides, so that the negotiations – for the first time – entered a serious path approved by them. Both sides.
The key word in the “Paris Framework”, which allowed it to form the basis of a negotiating path that began in early February of this year and continued until the preparation of this report, is that it included at the end a “ceasefire”, which is what Hamas’ negotiating strategy sought.
This is a direct indication that the movement maintains its political status and that it is a Palestinian party that represents a national liberation movement, and that it has thus surpassed the American and Israeli attempt to frame it and deal with it as a “flash group.”
Given that Israeli officials participated in drafting the “Paris Proposal,” the Biden administration bet on the efforts of the Arab mediators to obtain direct approval from the Hamas movement for the proposal. However, the Hamas movement preferred to begin from that moment on with its negotiating approach by avoiding acceptance and rejection and keeping the door open for negotiation. It is open to making amendments to the “Paris Proposal”.
Hamas’s first response to the Paris proposal carried a set of key negotiating implications that demonstrate Hamas’ negotiating strategy. By accepting the negotiating framework and commenting on it, Hamas avoided holding international and regional parties responsible for any failure that might affect the negotiations.
Since then, it has reversed the course of pressure by gradually shifting it towards the Netanyahu government. At the same time, Hamas’s response to regional and international initiatives aimed at stopping the Israeli aggression on Gaza was determined by the movement – as stated in its response – in the central goal of a “comprehensive ceasefire.”
Netanyahu loses his negotiating cards
A shift in the direction of escalating pressure on the Netanyahu government can be observed since the start of the Paris negotiating process, as this coincided with several factors that contributed to strengthening Hamas’ position and a decline in the Netanyahu government’s negotiating position.
The most prominent of these factors are:
- The impact of the Israeli military war effort declined after the army withdrew from most cities in the Gaza Strip and limited its presence to the border areas and the Netzarim axis in the center of the Strip, which is subjected to precise operations by the resistance that caused a number of deaths and injuries among the ranks of the Israeli occupation army, which reduced the pressure on the resistance and its popular incubator. Significantly.
- Netanyahu tried to employ the “starvation policy” in order to put pressure on the Palestinian negotiator and influence the popular support, but the repercussions of this humanitarian policy on the American, Western and international position made Netanyahu lose this card, and even led to the opposite effect, as it brought official and popular international pressure on the occupation government and the administration. Biden pushed the latter to force the Netanyahu government to bring aid into the Gaza Strip, especially the cities north of the Strip.
- The crisis between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government deepened during the months of war, as it seemed that Netanyahu’s behavior in the face of American demands and pressure toward a ceasefire agreement was aimed at influencing the Biden administration and its electoral chances.
- Netanyahu’s procrastination on many issues led to an escalation in the amount of pressure facing the Biden administration at the internal level, especially in the corridors of the Democratic Party. With the outbreak of the university movement, the Biden administration felt that its ability to control the repercussions of the war in Gaza and its impact on his electoral chances began to decline significantly.
- Netanyahu tried to use the threat of invading Rafah as a tool to put pressure on the Palestinian negotiator, but the American conviction that the military operation in Rafah would not contribute to achieving the declared war goals and would bring it more embarrassment and damage at the internal and external levels made Netanyahu lose this card.
- The other card that Netanyahu is trying to use is the escalation in southern Lebanon, and in doing so he is trying to blackmail the Biden administration, which made strenuous diplomatic efforts during the seven months of the war to contain the regional escalation.
- The Iranian response to the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus demonstrated the fragility of the regional situation and the willingness of Iran and its allies in the region to change the rules of the game, which complicated Netanyahu’s calculations and called for a decisive American stance to prevent escalation and accommodate the Iranian response. The regional escalation card is a double-edged card in Netanyahu’s hands, and he has no guarantee that it will serve his negotiating path.
- Netanyahu was unable to overcome the internal Israeli dispute that preceded the war. Rather, his management of the war contributed to deepening the crisis between him and the Israeli parties opposed to his government and its policies. The families of Israeli prisoners also became involved in the internal crisis and exerted great pressure on the Netanyahu government, which ended the Israeli internal consensus on continuing the war.
- Recently, the Israeli occupation army made a series of new appointments, including a number of leadership positions, in a move seen as anticipating the investigation committees into the October 7 failure and putting pressure on the Netanyahu government to bear responsibility, just like the military personnel who submitted their resignations.
- In recent weeks, the Palestinian resistance has also been able to send a group of military and political messages demonstrating its ability to command and control the field, which has put great pressure on Netanyahu, who cannot announce the achievement of his declared goals for this war.
- Israel’s failure to establish the infrastructure for any alternative project to manage the Strip after the war has led international and regional parties to the conclusion that the course of the war will be prolonged without moving to the stage of what is called “the day after Hamas in the Gaza Strip.”
Negotiations of the current moment
In extrapolating the negotiating strategy of the parties at the level of objectives and negotiation methodology, we find that the Netanyahu government has entered the current stage of negotiation and is basing its negotiating path on a set of bets and negotiating papers that no longer have a significant impact on the Palestinian side.
On the other hand, since the start of the first rounds of negotiations, the Hamas movement has set a clear title for its negotiating path, which is a ceasefire and an end to all causes of the war, such as the army’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the return of the displaced, ensuring relief for the people, reconstruction, and the completion of an exchange deal.
Accordingly, Netanyahu loses his negotiating cards with the passage of time, and instead brings American and international pressure on him, and his cards have become exposed and their influence is declining, while the resistance’s military and negotiation performance has shown stability at the level of goals and negotiation strategy.
