Gaza and Hostages: Groundhog Day

The negotiations for a truce and the release of hostages from Gaza continue to resemble Groundhog Day. Or, if you prefer, a ruthless game, which keeps returning to the starting point. Even now, as details are being discussed in Doha, you can hear the mantra “we’ve never been this close to an agreement” from many sides, and then see things fall apart.

As we know, negotiations are conducted by two people plus mediators. Their failure depends on the positions of both, on their demands. Everyone knows that once a secret goal is set, the stakes in negotiations are raised in order to further negotiate and move closer to that goal and finally accept it.

Israel’s goal is clear and stated in three conditions: the release of all one hundred hostages held in Gaza, both alive and already dead; the removal of Hamas from Gaza; and the elimination of threats by Gaza to the Jewish state.

But what are Hamas’s goals? It’s hard, if not impossible, to say. Leaders of the group that controls Gaza justified the October 7 massacre on the basis of Israeli operations in the West Bank and Jerusalem in previous months. Clearly a facade, given that the operation has been planned and developed over years. In more than a year of war, Hamas’s aims and conditions have changed, not least because its leadership has been removed by Israeli forces. It is no coincidence that news has spread in recent days that the group’s leaders have been guaranteed a kind of security letter for the future that will protect them from attacks by the army. For example, guaranteeing the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons in exchange for hostages (those with multiple terrorism convictions carrying multiple life sentences) to be expelled to third countries.

In recent days, as if it were a new Groundhog Day, Hamas, very sophisticated in media matters, has circulated a list of thirty-four hostages it freed in the first phase of the war. The list, which also includes little Ariel and Kfir Bibas, the latter having spent most of his life as a hostage in Gaza, not only does not specify the health status of the hostages, whether they are alive, dead, or wounded, but is the same list Israel put forward at the talks in July. A round in which Hamas did not even want to sit down at the negotiating table and which followed an offer made in May and announced by President Biden, rejected by Hamas.

Among other things, the name of Bedouin Muslim Youssef Ziyadna, the hostage whose lifeless body was found Tuesday in a tunnel in Rafah in southern Gaza (along with remains raising fears for the fate of his son Hamza), was also on the list published by Hamas the day before. It’s one of two things: either the man was long dead or he was killed during the negotiations. The autopsy will show. It is hard to believe that Hamas wants to end the war when from the beginning it has stated that it wants the blood of women, children, and the elderly.

Hamas says it needs time to verify the status of the hostages, so it is calling for a ceasefire for a few weeks. The agreements also call for a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire. Conditions that Netanyahu rejects. He was frustrated by the November 2023 truce when Hamas agreed to release hostages and then, just a week later, stopped the release and resumed firing missiles into Israel, restarting the war. As in the past few days, missiles were fired, affecting and damaging, among other things, two checkpoints through which humanitarian aid enters, Eretz and Kerem Shalom. The goal is clear: to show that it’s alive, that it’s still combat-ready, and to drive up the price.

So has the Palestinian Authority, which has been conducting the Jenin operation against Hamas and Islamic Jihad for over a month now to demonstrate that it has what it takes to govern the entire West Bank, including the Gaza Strip.

Benjamin Netanyahu, whose administration’s survival clearly depends on the state of war, does not immediately want to leave either the Philadelphi Corridor, the border between Gaza and Egypt through which arms and other supplies enter the Strip (three-quarters of which is closed by Israel, and only part by Egypt) and Netzarim, in the center of Gaza. Residents wishing to return to their homes in the north will have to be screened here. There is also talk of intervention by an international organization along the lines of UNIFIL in Lebanon. Moreover, he wants people to have their hands freed so that they can resume fighting like in the Cedar Country.

But Netanyahu has one problem, and not a small one. Hostage relatives, for some time now, don’t want to hear about lists with names and exact numbers of people to be released, essentially setting priorities, but they want everyone out. This makes negotiations impossible for two reasons: first, because Hamas is using these disagreements to drive up the price; second, because in any negotiation you have to have achievable goals.

Obviously, the survival of Netanyahu’s government also depends on the war, even if cracks appeared in his government after Ben Gvir voted against the budget. The parties he is hostage to and without which he cannot govern, despite bringing someone else to his side, such as the new foreign minister. But it’s even more obvious that without a real step backwards, it will be difficult to come to an agreement. This needs to be done as soon as possible in the interest of the people of Gaza and the hostages.