Diplomats who have worked over the years to resolve the multiple and recurring conflicts in the Middle East often say that nothing is agreed there until everything is agreed and, precisely, this ambiguity that can do anything dominates the negotiations for a halt to the conflict. fire in Gaza. At the moment, the fight between Israel and Hamas over the exchange of hostages for prisoners prevents the agreement.
A Hamas delegation is in Cairo, where it awaits the Israeli side. This meeting, however, will not take place until Hamas provides a list of the hostages who would be released. To do so, the armed group demands compensation that Israeli Prime Minister Beniamin Netanyahu believes is “delusional.”
The framework of the ceasefire was agreed at the end of January in Paris and the day before yesterday a US diplomatic source assured that Israel “more or less” had accepted it. In exchange for a six-month truce, Hamas would release the 130 hostages it has held since the October 7 massacre, starting with the most vulnerable. Israel, for its part, would release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and allow massive humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.
A little over a week ago, the US presented a proposal for the exchange.
The negotiations, however, became complicated starting Thursday, when 112 people died in the north of the strip along with a humanitarian aid convoy. The Israeli army reiterated yesterday that it did not fire on the crowd that rushed towards the aid. Palestinian health sources assure that it is and say that 142 gunshot wounds arrived at the main hospital in the area. Since then, the chances of a truce after five months of war have plummeted.
North American President Joe Biden wanted to announce it today and is now crossing his fingers so that, with the help of Qatar and Egypt, it can be before Ramadan, which begins in just over a week.
Hamas captured about 250 hostages on October 7. He later released 105 in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners. It still holds about 130, of whom around thirty may have died. The pressure from his relatives for Netanyahu to secure his release is enormous.
The prime minister, however, has until now maintained that the best way to achieve this was to defeat Hamas. But weeks go by and he doesn’t get it. The humanitarian crisis, meanwhile, has taken on a dimension that surprises humanitarian aid experts. “I was prepared for a nightmare, but this is worse, much worse,” said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council who has been in Gaza for three days.
Fighting continues in the south of the strip, while chaos takes over the power vacuum in the north, where some 300,000 people barely have food.
His fate and that of all Gazans is linked to Netanyahu’s ambiguity about the future of Gaza. He does not want to decide on “the day after” so as not to break the balance between the hardest wing of his government, which he needs to remain in power, and the United States, which demands a truce. At the moment he has not found a way to accept it without endangering his own political survival.
