Alwaght- Five weeks after the barbaric Israeli attacks on Gaza that have reduced the besieged enclave to ruins and killed over ten thousands people and injured many more, the regional efforts to stop the conflict have been stepped up, with Qatar and Egypt playing the key role. On Thursday, Hamas Political Office chief Ismail Haniyeh led a delegation including the movement’s other leaders Khaled Mashal and Khalil al-Haya to Egypt, where they met Egyptian intelligence chief General Abbas Kamel with whom they discussed Gaza situation.
An Egyptian source told Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed news outlet that Kamel discussed the release of a number of foreign prisoners in exchange for a temporary ceasefire for two days. The source noted that the Hamas delegation confirmed that the way was open to Egypt’s mediation efforts, and that the Hamas delegation stressed to Egypt’s intelligence chief the need to deliver fuel to Gaza as soon as possible within a humanitarian framework.
According to the source, Haniyeh underscored Hamas adherence to rejection of relocation of the displaced people of Gaza to anywhere outside the enclave and warned that continuation of the current security situation amid ongoing attacks on Gaza infrastructure will force a large part of Gaza population to move to the border with Egypt to meet their immediate needs. The source also said that Egypt’s officials rejected Western proposal for Egyptian administration of Gaza post-war, drawing Hamas welcome.
The visit of Hamas officials to Cairo came after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi discussed developments in Gaza with CIA Director William Burns on Tuesday, emphasizing Egypt’s opposition to Israeli presence in Gaza. According to Sky News, Egypt also rejected the proposal of the administration of the Gaza Strip by this country and opposed deployment of NATO or other foreign forces to Gaza in any form or under any title.
In recent decades, Egypt has been the main player in the negotiations between the Israeli regime and the Palestinian resistance, and many times during Gaza conflicts, it managed to defuse the tensions through mediation. Even now, as the biggest conflict between the two sides is going on, Cairo is trying to play its central role once again and prevent a crisis spillover to its borders and the region, but it is not poised to accept the unilateral demands of Tel Aviv and Washington that serve the Israeli interests.
The Egyptian officials have repeatedly voiced their opposition to Israeli crimes in Gaza and the forced relocation of Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai desert, warning that continuation of the crisis can seriously damage the relations between Cairo and Tel Aviv. El-Sisi emphasized in his conversation with the head of the CIA that Cairo will never play a role in destroying Hamas because it needs Hamas to maintain security at the borders.
Mossad and CIA heads touring the region to free the Israeli prisoners
Simultaneous to the presence of Hamas leaders in Egypt, Israeli and American security officials have also visited Qatar to find a way out of the self-made swamp. An American official confirmed that the head of the CIA discussed in Doha the release of prisoners held by Hamas on Thursday with Mossad chief David Barnia and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. A source with knowledge of the negotiations told AFP that “negotiations are underway with the mediation of Qatar and the coordination of the United States to release 15 prisoners, half of whom are Americans, in return for a one or two-day ceasefire in Gaza.”
As part of the process, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Friday visited Cairo and discussed Gaza with the Egyptian president.
“The visit of the emir of Qatar takes place as part of the coordination process they carried out earlier and brought together Cairo, Doha, and active parties in this conflict, at a time the main agenda of the negotiations is to press for a ceasefire to end this war and to end the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza,” said the head of Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs Ali al-Hafny.
The diplomatic activism comes as the White House announced on Thursday that Israel had agreed to a four-hour daily ceasefire in northern Gaza to allow northern residents to move south. Although it is said that humanitarian aid will be sent through the Rafah crossing, the Israelis have not yet taken any action to facilitate aid delivery.
A several-hour truce for the people of Gaza, who are in the worst health and humanitarian conditions, cannot do much to them, as the UN and the International Red Cross have repeatedly warned that the humanitarian conditions in Gaza are so dire that such small amount of aids is far from enough. The UN on Thursday announced the full collapse of Gaza’s health network due to Israeli bombing of hospitals and the prevention of medical aids delivery.
The claims of short stops in Gaza war and continuation of the diplomatic negotiations in Doha before the fifth UN Security Council meeting on Gaza war were only meant to ease the international pressures on Tel Aviv and step up pressures on Hamas as a resolution calling for end of war was likely to be approved.
Tel Aviv’s deceptive role play
By approving few-hour ceasefire and delivering a few trucks of humanitarian aids exclusively to Gaza’s south, Tel Aviv and Washington want to pretend to the world that they care about civilians to guard against the global anger. But this is just a deception game to fool the the public opinion and pacify the Arab world anger at further killing of Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s government is focused on the normalization of relations with the Arab countries, and as long the opposition of pro-compromise Arab rulers does not disrupt the ground offensive in Gaza, it will continue to kill Palestinians, something Tel has achieved so far. But if the Israelis feel the normalization process is jeopardized, they will walk back from their positions to some extent, and a limited suspension of ground offensive will become an option.
Despite the fact that Hamas leaders are making genuine diplomatic efforts to stop the war and even announced they are ready for release of foreign prisoners and also for a prisoner swap with Tel Aviv as a sign of good will, the Israelis, which over the past month mobilized 360,000 reservists and used state-of-the-art weapons in their ground offensive but failed to make gains, are now advancing a scorched earth strategy and only pretend to be open to talks.
The ostensibly diplomatic moves by the Israelis come as they have killed over 11,000 Palestinians in their unceasing bombardment and injured hundreds of thousands. They even continue to bomb the hospitals despite the global backlash, leaving many injured people in the danger of death in the absence of medical supplies.
The four-hour truce, which some Israeli officials consider to be a prelude to the cessation of hostilities in the event of an agreement on the release of prisoners, takes place in a situation where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in a speech on Thursday once again claimed that the ground attack on Gaza is ongoing and temporary suspension of operations is for changing military tactics. Regarding his talks with US President Joe Biden, Netanyahu said that he does not accept a ceasefire in Gaza and that a ceasefire “means surrendering to Hamas” and that there will be no ceasefire without the release of prisoners.
Netanyahu said that they do not seek to completely occupy Gaza or rule it, but statements of Tel Aviv leaders who will not be satisfied with anything less than the destruction of Hamas show that prisoner release is nothing but a trick and once they secure release of their and foreign prisoners, they will powerfully run their war machine in Gaza. As a vindication to this claim, we refer to the previous visit to Doha of the Mossad chief. Despite an agreement to release the prisoners in return for cessation of fire and delivery of humanitarian aids to Gaza, the Israeli military immediately launched its ground offensive, proving that the Israeli occupation can never be trusted.
Buying time to escape ground offensive defeat
What is forcing the Israelis to the negotiating table is the consecutive defeats they have sustained from Hamas. The armed-to-the-teeth Israeli military has not managed to make considerable gains in Gaza’s north, where most of the people have left their homes and the infrastructures and buildings are demolished, and so far, Hamas fighters destroyed over 120 tanks and armored vehicles and killed nearly 40 troops since the ground offensive was launched. With Israeli officials maintaining that Gaza war will be long, further Israeli casualties are certain.
A report by Stratfor think tank suggests that the Israeli gradual approach shifts to designing a plan for administration of post-war Gaza as there is no regional and international consensus on a strategy for a post-occupation Gaza.
The Israelis are trying to work out a new strategy to beat Hamas with short breaks in the ground offensive and to cover up their security failure on the ground. According to media reports, White House officials are very concerned about a lengthy war in Gaza and the defeat of Israel, believing that Tel Aviv has not developed a previous plan to end the war in Gaza. Israeli security officials, too, have warned many times about prolonged war as they admit that the active duty and reserve forces have not been trained for such wars.
Past experiences suggest that the Palestinians and a large part of the international community will view any Israeli security role in Gaza as a form of military occupation, just as there is such an international view concerning the West Bank. Therefore, this issue can complicate any plans for possible handing over of governance of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority or Arab countries, which is being proposed by some analysts these days, and may lead to the risk of immersing Israel into a war of attrition and the eruption of a third intifada.
Some experts believe that despite active negotiations among the US, Israeli regime, Qatar, Egypt, and Hamas, a prisoner deal looks unlikely for the time being. Therefore, if the talks fail and a prisoner agreement remains beyond reach, the resistance groups are likely to step up their attacks on the occupied territories. After all, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have reached the certainty that Tel only knows the language of force and retreat only adds to the enemy’s insolence.
