The head of American diplomacy concluded his visit to Israel on Monday with a message intended for those who advocate for an end to the war in Gaza.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he consulted with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who – the US official said – had agreed to a “transitional proposal” for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The proposal ostensibly aims to bridge unresolved differences between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas in order to end violence in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 40,000 people and uprooted nearly the entire population of 2.3 million in the past 10 months.
Israel’s devastating war on Gaza began shortly after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, in which an estimated 1,139 people were killed and more than 250 captured.
Despite continued efforts this year to reach a ceasefire, and even after a proposal announced by US President Joe Biden, which he said was supported by Israel and was publicly supported by Hamas, the US has now been forced to announce the bridge proposal.
Hamas rejected the proposal, calling it an attempt by the United States to buy time “for Israel to continue its genocide,” and called for a return to the previous proposal.
As Blinken tours the Middle East and a potential new round of talks takes place in Cairo this week, let’s take a closer look at the latest proposal and what the focus of the dispute between Israel and Hamas is now.
Permanent ceasefire?
Israel does not want a permanent ceasefire, although it is engaged in “ceasefire” talks.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to reserve the right to resume attacks on Gaza after the release of Israeli prisoners.
This fits with a long-standing Israeli military doctrine of carrying out “preemptive strikes” in the occupied Palestinian territories to ostensibly weaken the threat from Palestinian fighters, as is often the case in the occupied West Bank.
“Most Israelis cannot dispute what Netanyahu wants to do, which is to destroy Hamas, even if these are empty words,” said Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political affairs commentator.
Israeli security officials, however, have said that Netanyahu’s stated goal of completely destroying Hamas is impossible and amounts to “throwing dust in the eyes of the Israeli public.” Even Netanyahu’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has rejected the idea of a “total victory” against Hamas.
Last July, Hamas said it was prepared to sign a temporary ceasefire and then indirectly continue negotiations that would eventually lead to a permanent ceasefire.
Netanyahu, however, continued to add conditions and showed little willingness to compromise.
Troop withdrawal
Hamas is calling for the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Gaza, starting with a withdrawal from the Philadelphia Corridor, the name used for the land that separates the enclave from Egypt.
Netanyahu, however, insists that Israeli troops must remain in the corridor – and in other parts of the enclave – to preserve Israeli security and derail weapons smuggling to Hamas.
Hamas says this is a departure from the ceasefire proposal backed by Biden in May, which the Americans said Israel had accepted at the time.
Secretary of State Blinken tried to convince Netanyahu to sweeten his new condition – which Egypt also vehemently opposes – by agreeing to keep a minimum number of troops in the Philadelphia corridor, according to Hugh Lovatt, an expert on Israel-Palestine for the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
“It appears, from my perspective, that the United States is accepting the latest Israeli conditions, but is trying to water them down to some extent,” Lovatt said.
“This (proposal) is fundamentally a bridge between the United States and Israel and not between Israel and Hamas,” he added.
Right of return
Israel has insisted that all Palestinians be screened for weapons before allowing them to return to their homes in northern Gaza, a condition that Palestinians see as a pretext to use to prevent families from returning to areas where they were forcibly and deliberately displaced.
Israel has said it wants to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping in the north.
Hamas, for its part, says Palestinians must be given complete freedom of movement and that Israeli forces must withdraw in order to ensure the safety of Gaza residents, tens of thousands of whom have been killed by Israeli forces.
The call for unhindered return to the north is particularly sensitive for Palestinians, who have been repeatedly expelled from their land since Israel’s creation in 1948.
At the time, some 750,000 Palestinians had been uprooted by Zionist militias – a period Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe. About 70 percent of Gaza’s population is made up of refugee families who fled their homes in other parts of Palestine during the Nakba.
Captive exchange
On Tuesday, Israeli families of Gaza prisoners met with Mr. Netanyahu to assess the likelihood of a ceasefire. After the meeting, one of them told local reporters that the prime minister was “not sure there will be an agreement.”
A ceasefire would, in theory, involve three phases, during which all Israeli captives would be released in exchange for a certain number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Hamas wants a deal, but will not release prisoners unless Netanyahu agrees to withdraw troops from Gaza.
The new ceasefire conditions imposed by Netanyahu, however, make the release of Israeli prisoners increasingly unlikely.
“I think the Americans are playing Netanyahu’s game,” ECFR’s Lovatt told Tel Aviv Tribune. “The Americans are not only approving his terms – which have the potential to torpedo the deal – but they are giving him the freedom to do so.”
Humanitarian aid
Palestinians in Gaza are suffering from hunger and are in desperate need of food and medical aid.
Several UN agencies, as well as the United States and other Western countries, have repeatedly called on Israel to increase its aid to besieged civilians. The International Court of Justice also issued a binding order against Israel last January.
Israelis have often ignored these calls. Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said that it might even be “justified” for his country to starve two million Palestinians to death, but that the world would not allow it.
Hamas, however, accuses Israel and the United States of effectively making increased vital aid for hundreds of thousands of people conditional on a ceasefire agreement.
“The Israeli occupation and the American administration are explicitly using the policy of starvation and deprivation of food against civilians in the Gaza Strip, as a means of political pressure, and this constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity,” Hamas said in a press statement.
Are we running out of time?
Short answer: yes.
On Tuesday, Israel recovered the bodies of six prisoners who died in Gaza, raising questions about how many are still alive.
The prisoners, the Israeli army said, were found in a tunnel in Khan Younis following a “complex operation”. No information was given on the circumstances of their deaths.
Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza continue to pay the price for Israel’s devastating war, which many critics say amounts to a campaign of cruel collective punishment.
Most recently, on Tuesday, Israel struck the Mustafa Hafez school in Gaza, killing 12 Palestinians, according to local medics. Israel has fired on several schools housing thousands of displaced people in recent days, including in an attack that killed more than 100 Palestinians on August 10.
After the attack, rescuers found that many of the bodies were dismembered or reduced to fragments of flesh and that they had collected the body parts in garbage bags.
“The longer that time passes, the less likely it is that the Israeli hostages will survive. And of course, without a ceasefire, thousands more Palestinians will continue to die,” Lovatt said.