Is this yet another version of the Hamas Hokey Pokey? Or has the threat of a popular uprising in Gaza convinced Hamas to look for the least humiliating option short of Götterdämmerung?
Hamas has agreed to a Gaza ceasefire proposal it attributed to US special envoy Steve Witkoff for a Gaza ceasefire, a Palestinian official close to the group told Reuters on Monday.
The new proposal, which sees the release of 10 hostages and 70 days of truce, was reportedly received by Hamas through mediators.
“The proposal includes the release of ten living Israeli hostages held by Hamas in two groups in return for a 70-day ceasefire and a partial withdrawal from the Gaza Strip,” the source said.
That doesn’t sound like the kind of deal that Israel would accept. At this point, the Benjamin Netanyahu wants all of the hostages back in any trade, not half of those left alive in a deal that ties his hands for more than two months. And Netanyahu isn’t going to give back any ground without getting all of the hostages back this time.
And lo and behold, it appears that Witkoff may have cowboyed his way into this proposal. Not only is the government rejecting it, so are the hostage families, according to a new Times of Israel report:
Responding to a Lebanese report that a new outline for a hostage and ceasefire proposal had been agreed upon in principle by Israel, a senior Israeli official said Monday the deal has been rejected.
“The proposal received by Israel cannot be accepted by any responsible government,” the official told the media, without giving any further details.
“Hamas is setting impossible conditions that mean a complete failure to meet the war goals, and an inability to release the hostages,” he said.
The main organization representing the families of hostages also rejected the reported deal, saying it would not include the return of all of the captives and a final end to the war.
The Israelis may come around on this, but the fact that both the government and the hostage families oppose it is significant. Those two entities have been at sharp loggerheads over the government’s determination to focus on security ahead of the hostages, and it has cost Netanyahu’s coalition plenty in terms of political support, both domestically and internationally. If this proposal doesn’t satisfy either of those two parties, then it’s No Sale in Israel.
And it’s not hard to see why. Any proposal that doesn’t release all hostages and force an end to Hamas’ war at this late stage is relatively pointless. A 70-day pause, complete with Hamas’ demands for 1,000 aid trucks a day supplied by Israel, is nothing more than a desperate attempt to reorganize and to reassert their control over Gaza. Supposedly, the agreement includes a Hamas promise not to build new armaments or smuggle them into Gaza, which might sound good if one doesn’t recall that Hamas violated these same terms in earlier agreements over and over again.
All this will do is force Israel to recapture the same ground a third time, starting in early August when Hamas refuses to give up the last of their living leverage.
Hamas does have its problems in Gaza at the moment, though, and this deal might alleviate them at the expense of Palestinian competitors for power. The IDF’s security has allowed a Rafah clan to rise to a position of importance, and Hamas wants to stamp them out:
Hamas has executed four men for looting some of the aid trucks that have begun entering Gaza, sources familiar with the incident said on Monday, as a clan leader in southern Gaza issued a challenge to the militant group over guarding the convoys. …
Yasser Abu Shabab, a leader of a large clan in the Rafah area, now under full Israeli army control, said he was building up a force to secure aid deliveries into some parts of the enclave. He published images of his armed men receiving and organizing the traffic of aid trucks.
Hamas, which is unable to operate in the Rafah area where Abu Shabab has some control, has accused him of looting international aid trucks in previous months and maintaining connections with Israel.
This kind of popular, native resistance to Hamas is exactly what Gaza and the world need to foster and encourage. If Israel has to pull out of Rafah as part of a 70-day cease-fire while only getting less than half of the hostages back, then Shabab and his clan will be eliminated by Hamas terrorists. Why would we want that — let alone the Israelis?
Perhaps this proposal will serve as a basis for a better deal, or at least a smarter one. However, as long as both Netanyahu and the hostage families oppose this, one has to wonder who Witkoff is consulting while negotiating on their behalf.
