President Joe Biden has for the first time set a date for the possibility of a second ceasefire in Gaza: “My hope is that we have a ceasefire by next Monday.” The United States is one of the mediating countries in the negotiations, which have gained momentum in recent days and which have resulted in a proposal that Hamas is currently considering: a six-week ceasefire to exchange 40 (most of 130) hostages in the Gaza Strip due to the release of 400 Palestinian prisoners and an increase in humanitarian aid to the starving Gaza Strip. Mayed al Ansari, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, where the dialogue is taking place this Tuesday, said he was “optimistic”. Israel and Hamas, not so much.
“My national security advisor [Jake Sullivan] It tells me we're close. “We’re close, even if we’re not done yet,” Biden told a group of journalists in New York on Monday. The statements confirm that the parties are gradually reducing their differences over a second ceasefire after the one that lasted a week last November, contrary to the public statements of their leaders, which are of great importance in the Israeli elections expected this year will take place. Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as “insane” claims that Hamas had demanded a 135-day ceasefire, the release of up to 1,500 Palestinian prisoners and the indirect negotiation of a final end to the war in exchange for the supply of weapons. all hostages. In fact, two weeks ago he ordered the negotiating delegation to stay in the country because Hamas stuck to its demands.
More information
Since then, both sides have blamed each other for the stagnation. On Sunday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniye emphasized the “seriousness and great flexibility” they are displaying and regretted that Israel was “moving on later.” Netanyahu, on the other hand, gave the ball to the Islamists and pointed out that their demands were “on another planet.” In fact, this Monday he issued a statement “in which he announced the presentation of a military plan for the evacuation of the population of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, in the face of the invasion,” apparently aimed more at They could not pressure them to make concessions than to inform the public.
Far from the microphones, however, a meeting last Friday in Paris between the Israeli side and the three mediators (Qatar, Egypt and the United States) shed light on the proposal that Hamas is currently analyzing. It consists of a six-week ceasefire to exchange 40 civilian hostages: women, children under 19, over 50 and the sick. In return, Israel would release 400 Palestinian prisoners (a ratio three times higher than the first exchange but well below previous ones), allow more humanitarian aid to Gaza, relocate troops, and allow Israel to return to look at the condition of their prisoners Houses to residents of evacuated areas who are not of fighting age, reports the Portal agency. An official Israeli source has told Channel 12 television that he expects Hamas to reject the proposal, speaking only of “slow progress,” while an Islamist official made it clear that “many positions still need to be addressed.”
In any case, the current dialogue format, the so-called proximity conversation, is usually only used if there is fundamental agreement and further progress is made in detail. The representatives of Israel and Hamas are not meeting directly, but are meeting separately with mediators in the same city, speeding up the process.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
Subscribe to
The meaning of Ramadan
One of the elements driving the dialogue is the proximity of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when tensions in the Middle East usually come to the fore. This year it starts on March 10th. Last year there was already an escalation of violence after the police entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem twice. This year there is a feeling that it could be the perfect storm to bring out all the tensions that have been building up among Palestinians due to the total of 30,000 deaths in Gaza, an unprecedented death toll due to raids and attacks by settlers in the West Bank. and the loss of economic livelihoods for tens of thousands of construction and agricultural workers who have had permits to work in Israel and the frozen Jewish settlements since Hamas' massive attack on October 7.
This is all the more true since, according to Israeli media, Netanyahu supports the proposal of his head of national security, the right-wing extremist Itamar Ben Gvir, to largely restrict access to the esplanade of mosques, even for Israelis of the Muslim denomination, to around 20% of the population. There is no official decision on this yet. Ramadan is already a month of celebration in Islam, so the United States is pushing for it to be accompanied by a ceasefire and meetings with released prisoners.
Washington wants to first achieve a temporary cessation of hostilities and then negotiate a permanent cessation and persuade Israel not to continue the bombing. “There is agreement that the month-and-a-half break should be used not only to regulate life in Gaza, but also for talks on a global agreement that the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel want,” they noted. Israeli sources familiar with the negotiations told the Maariv newspaper on Tuesday. These sources spoke of a permanent pact to end the war in which Hamas ceases control of Gaza, its leaders and commanders go into exile in another country and the militants hand over their weapons. In fact, the resignation of the Palestinian Authority government on the eve paves the way for the formation of an executive branch of technocrats that can regain control of Gaza, which has been exclusively in the hands of Hamas since 2007. This is what the United States rejects Israel.
Netanyahu publicly insists that no ceasefire, no matter how long, will mean the end of the war, but rather a pause toward a “total victory” that includes the invasion of Rafah after the forced evacuation of more than a million Palestinians displaced there . On Sunday, he ventured that the “intense fighting phase” after troops enter Rafah will last “several weeks, not months.”
Follow all international information on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_