Once again, for the seventh time since December, peace mediators from the US, Egypt and Qatar are gathering with Israel in Doha for what is being described as a last chance to prevent the Middle East’s regional conflagration turning into all-out war. US president Joe Biden has spoken of his “expectation” that a ceasefire and hostage-release deal would allow Iran to pull back from its threat of massive retaliation for the Israeli killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Hanniyeh on its soil and of Hizbullah’s military chief Fuad Shukr in Beirut. Retaliation by Iran would inevitably trigger attacks by Israel on Lebanon and possibly Iran.
The framework of a ceasefire deal is all but agreed, diplomats suggest. Importantly, a month ago Hamas agreed to soften its position on the timing of talks on how the war would end, accepting that these wider negotiations could not start until the ceasefire was under way and holding. Israel had vehemently rejected the idea that the end of the war would be guaranteed, insisting it wanted to pursue the final elimination of Hamas.
Post-ceasefire talks would address the fraught issue of the future administration of Gaza and Israel’s contested insistence on maintaining a security presence. Progress towards the desired Palestinian end of a two-state solution is likely to be long-drawn-out, and any attempt to make the ceasefire conditional on agreement on those issues would be impossible.
But Israel also added its own new terms for agreeing a ceasefire. It would not, it has said, withdraw from the Gaza-Egypt border region or allow the “unvetted” movement of displaced Palestinians back to the strip’s north.
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Whether the delegation Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has sent to Doha will have the authority to negotiate on these questions is unclear. His main preoccupation appears to be his own political survival and holding together his extremist coalition. His far-right coalition partners are threatening to bring down the government if he makes any “concessions to Hamas”.
The cabinet is far from united, however. Defence minister Yoav Gallant is reported to have the support of the heads of the army and intelligence service to support a deal. Senior US military sources are reportedly saying that Israel had achieved all it could in crushing Hamas. Families of the 115 hostages still held by Hamas are also putting pressure on Netanyahu to do a deal.
The time has come for the Israeli prime minister to listen to his country’s friends, to put his country’s interests before his own, and to confront his extremist allies. It is the only way to test Hamas’s good faith and willingness to accept a peace deal. And it is the only route to end the suffering in Gaza– where the Palestinian death toll is now estimated to exceed 40,000 – and stop the slide into all-out regional war.