In the early hours of November 22, Qatar officially announced that an agreement had been reached for an exchange of Israeli-Palestinian captives. Available details suggest that this largely reflects the proposal proposed by Hamas several weeks ago and initially rejected by Israel.
The announcement came just a week after Israeli tanks and soldiers stormed the al-Shifa hospital compound in Gaza City, sparking international outrage. Israel claimed there was a Hamas command center there and repeatedly promised to destroy it. As it happened, the only facility found within the compound was a hospital.
The United States has fully supported Israel’s violation of the sanctity of Al-Shifa and has even claimed that it has independent intelligence on a Palestinian Pentagon, but has produced no evidence to support this claim.
At the time, this led to speculation that these events may have been the product of an informal agreement between the United States and Israel: the Biden administration would support Israel’s capture of al-Shifa and cover up this crime of war politically and diplomatically with its own lies. , thus allowing an Israeli army with little success since October 7 to experience its “Iwo Jima moment” at the top of “Mount Shifa”.
But once it became clear that there was nothing of military significance at the premises, the United States would proceed to finalize an agreement with Hamas and Israel would have to agree to its implementation.
It does indeed appear that in exchange for American support for Israel’s systematic destruction of the health sector in the Gaza Strip, an agreement with Hamas was concluded.
This agreement is significant in several respects. Perhaps more importantly, the United States and Israel, which have repeatedly vowed to eradicate Hamas, are now negotiating with and reaching agreements with the Palestinian movement. Qatari-Egyptian mediation, although essential, is ultimately only a formality. The United States and Israel are not negotiating with Egypt and Qatar but with Yahya Sinwar, leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and architect of the October 7 attacks.
The tenor of Israeli press reports in recent days has been that Hamas is desperate for respite, however brief and at almost any cost, from the ferocious Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip.
Yet available reports on the deal suggest otherwise: Israel pledged to release three times as many imprisoned women and children as Palestinians; no Israeli soldiers are included in the exchange; many more humanitarian supplies, including fuel, will reach the Gaza Strip; the exchange of captives will take place during a continuous four-day truce rather than one in which the killing is interrupted for a brief period each day; and Israeli planes and drones will be prohibited from using the airspace over the Gaza Strip for several hours each day.
This agreement is quite close to the agreement initially proposed by Hamas several weeks ago, and it appears that the bulk of its demands have been accepted by Israel and the United States. If the adage that negotiations reflect the reality on the ground rather than subverting it applies, Hamas – unlike the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip, which has been Israel’s main target – seems far from ‘being desespered. Instead, he seems confident enough to stick to his priorities until they are accepted by the United States and Israel.
Pursuant to this agreement, Hamas also forced the United States and Israel to agree to the provision of large quantities of essential humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip. In other words, Hamas has, in one fell swoop, achieved far more on the humanitarian front than the vaunted US diplomacy in securing humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians in Gaza over the past month.
This confirms that the entire US effort was essentially a circus – a diversionary charade to allow Israel to continue its massacres and turn the Gaza Strip into a wasteland and a battlefield.
It bears repeating that Hamas forced the United States and Israel to allow significant quantities of food, water, medicine and fuel to reach the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. Yet Hamas is the designated terrorist organization in this equation while Israel is the light of nations with the world’s most moral military and the United States – the world’s largest democracy dedicated to the spread of freedom and human rights in the rest of the planet.
What happens next is difficult to assess. According to reports, only Israelis and dual nationals are expected to be released, likely to help Israeli leaders swallow this very bitter pill and to allay Israeli concerns that the release of foreign nationals would be prioritized in negotiations with Hamas. Yet by insisting on this formula, Israel ensured the continuation of negotiations aimed at freeing foreign citizens, which could lead to an extension of the truce.
At the same time, it is difficult to believe that Israeli leaders could agree to a temporary truce that morphs into an indefinite truce. It is clearly in the personal and political interest of the Israeli Prime Minister to maintain this conflict while the security establishment desperately seeks to erase the traces of October 7. Other members of the Israeli government coalition see this war as a golden opportunity to trigger the apocalypse. and I wish the situation would get worse rather than calm down.
Although the Gaza Strip has been largely destroyed, Hamas has not yet been significantly degraded and the Israeli military has not yet killed more Hamas commanders than United Nations personnel.
If Israel is convinced that it can once again ignore American policies without consequences, it will do so. This could take the form of sabotaging the truce or resuming hostilities to ensure that it is not prolonged. Further afield, the Israeli-Lebanese front also appears to be rapidly intensifying.
Further escalation is therefore likely, but it is also possible that the implementation of this agreement could lead to the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government under a combination of public pressure and internal conflicts between leaders who hate each other and each other. distrust each other.
American leadership is also a question mark. Regarding the impact of this crisis on US interests in the region and beyond, and in particular the issue of regional escalation, US President Joe Biden does not seem to care, Secretary of State State Antony Blinken does not seem to know, while CIA Director William Burns and Defense Secretary. Lloyd Austin looks mortified. The question of which faction will gain the upper hand remains open.
The only conclusion that can already be drawn is that the various “day after” scenarios produced by the Washington echo chamber can be safely dismissed because they uniformly demand the eradication of Hamas and not the negotiation of agreements with him.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.