The Palestinian militia Hamas raised by the mediators Egypt and Qatar to end the war in Gaza. The text that the Palestinian militia has approved is “almost identical” to which Israel gave the green light in July, as the spokesman of the Qatar Foreign Ministry, Majed Al Ansari, reported on Tuesday. At that time, the distance between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators led the Israeli government to end the conversations. Now, according to multiple sources, Hamas has decided to make concessions in almost all matters that supposed an obstacle weeks ago.
The new truce raised by the mediators, to which Israel has not yet responded, would be a first step in the road to the construction of a lasting peace, after 22 months of Israeli offensive that has caused 62,000 fatalities and where more than two million people reside.
The change in Hamas’s strategy coincides with the greatest Israeli protests in almost two years of war. On Sunday, demanding that the executive of Benjamín Netanyahu an agreement that draws the hostages of Gaza and ends with a conflict that interrupts the lives of thousands of reservists and that causes frequent victims between the Israeli ranks. The organizers asked to maintain the mobilization and convened a new general strike for next Sunday, the first day of the work week in Israel.
Hamas’s approval also comes at a time when Israeli troops increase their offensive against Gaza City, from where tens of thousands of civilians have had to flee between bombing in a few days. The Israeli army is expected to approve this week. Israeli political leaders say that invading that city will bring the collapse of Hamas.
“Hamas’s response is positive,” said the Catarí spokesman, a member of a key government in the negotiations. That answer, he added, represents “98% of what the Israelis had already agreed” the previous month. The spokesman has warned that the strip is “at a defining humanitarian moment” and has warned that “if this proposal fails, the crisis [en el enclave] will be aggravated. ”
Cessation of hostilities for 60 days
The bases of the proposal on the table contemplate the cessation of hostilities for 60 days, in which half of the 50 live and dead captives that remain in the enclave would be released. During that period the flow of humanitarian aid would also increase and the passage towards a permanent truce would be negotiated.
The Palestinian militia has reduced its demands regarding the number of Palestinian prisoners that Israel would have to release and in terms of the amount of territory that Israel would maintain under military control during the 60 -day temporal truce.
Voices of different sensibilities locate the ball on the roof of Netanyahu. On Monday, the Families Forum of the Captive and Disappeared pointed out: “The people will not allow Prime Minister to sabote another agreement.” The protests have continued on Tuesday by cutting the Ayalon highway, which takes place between glass skyscrapers in Tel Aviv, to ask the Israel government to release the captives who remain underground in the tunnels of Hamas. “In July we were closer than ever an agreement,” said Einav Zangauker, mother of a captive. But Netanyahu “calculated his political considerations and made the pact fail. The hostages were left behind, but the boss was happy.”
Mahmoud Mardawi, high position of the Palestinian militia, presented on Monday the approval of the proposal as the last gesture to verify Netanyahu’s intentions: “Hamas has opened the door to the possibility of reaching an agreement, but the real test is whether the prime minister will close it again as he has done in the past,” he said in a statement. In parallel, regional newspapers cite unidentified Palestinian sources that ensure that Hamas “is prepared to talk about everything, but Netanyahu is not yet willing to accept any agreement.” Those same sources assure that Israel rejects successive proposals of the mediators and link it to the alleged Israeli interest of continuing with the capture of Gaza.
Ben Caspit, a political commentator in Israel and author of books that analyze the trajectory of Netyahu, has written on Tuesday an article in the Israeli newspaper Maariv in which he links the “exciting” demonstrations of Sunday with the concession of Hamas, rejecting the position of the prime minister, who accused the protesters of strengthening the enemies of Israel and of removing an agreement. “Now the pressure falls on Netanyahu. It is in a trap,” says Caspit, who asks how he will torpedo the conversations this time before the pressure of Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, his most extremist coalition companions.
Both ministers, who in the past have threatened Netanyahu to drop the government if the offensive in Gaza slows, have already expressed their opposition to the pact. “You have no mandate to approve it. The blood of our soldiers is not in vain,” Ben Gvir, head of the Ministry of National Security, objected in a statement. “Hamas is under huge pressure following the occupation of Gaza,” he said, in his social networks: “He understands that this may be its end, so he is trying to stop this.”
The Israeli leaders and American negotiators have affirmed during the last days that they only contemplate a comprehensive agreement that once implies the liberation of all hostages and the permanent purpose of the war, leaving behind the agreements in phases.
The Israeli security cabinet demands several points to finish the war, including the disarmament of Hamas, the safety control of the Strip and the appearance of a civil administration in the enclave separated from Hamas and the Palestinian authority.
According to some information, the Arab mediators have detected that these demands did not leave room for maneuver in the negotiations with Hamas, and have chosen to ensure the first phase of a temporary truce that leads to the final agreement.
In March, when it had to go to the phase that included negotiations for permanent peace and the total withdrawal of the strip troops. On this occasion, Hamas demands that the agreement be accompanied by US guarantees that Israel will not resume the offensive, according to a high position of the group has declared on a cold television.
A partial truce would postpone negotiations on the day after they must exist before final peace. Hamas fears that the international community demands its disarmament without establishing the safe roads towards the creation of a Palestinian State, while Netanyahu fears that the silence of weapons leads to the call for elections, leaving it in a more vulnerable position in the face of the resumption of accountability processes for their corruption cases and for the security failures that led to the massacres of October 7, 2023.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Lanzamisiles continued to point on Tuesday against the neighborhoods of the East of Gaza, where Gazati journalists reported explosions and demolitions, expelling the population towards the south. There were also bombings in the territories of the center and southern of the enclave that must be hosted by those who arrive displaced from the north. The Ministry of Health of Gaza reported in the afternoon of the death of 60 people in 24 hours due to Israeli hostilities, as well as the death of three more people for starvation.
