Opinion: Is this the last chance for a cease-fire in Gaza?

Last Friday, the White House released a joint statement with Qatar and Egypt letting the world know that cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas were in their final stage. A so-called bridging proposal was sent to both parties in an attempt to close the remaining gaps and finally bring an agreement to fruition.

It took only a few hours before Hamas, the terrorist group that started the war by attacking Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking another 250 to Gaza as hostages, panned the bridging proposal as biased in Israel’s favor. The group alleged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was yet again making more demands, refusing to budge on withdrawing Israeli troops from Gaza and using the diplomatic process as a smoke screen as the Israeli military continues pummeling the battered Palestinian enclave. Netanyahu, in turn, continues to allege that while there are some items Israel is willing to compromise on — the identities and number of Palestinian prisoners to be released, for example — there are other issues it isn’t willing to negotiate on.

All of this leaves President Joe Biden’s administration between a rock and a hard place. The White House has gone to extraordinary lengths to clinch an agreement that would end the 10-month war that has killed about 40,000 Palestinians, damaged more than 70% of Gaza’s housing and sullied Israel’s international reputation. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has traveled to the Middle East nine times since the war started, which includes a trip this week. CIA Director William Burns has been jetting to Cairo, Doha and Jerusalem on countless occasions this year, working with his Qatari and Egyptian counterparts to construct a draft that Israel and Hamas would find acceptable. Biden has a lot riding on this process; the deadliest war in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict started on his watch, and he would love to find a way to end it before vacating the White House in January. Blinken underscored the stakes Monday: “This is a decisive moment, probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a cease-fire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security.”

He isn’t wrong. While we’ve seen Israel-Hamas talks collapse multiple times this year, this round of diplomacy feels eerily different. So much time, attention and political capital have been devoted to the talks since May 31, when Biden pitched a three-stage framework agreement to stop the violence, get the hostages back to their families and begin the long, expensive, arduous process of rebuilding the Gaza strip. The first stage would involve a six-week cease-fire, the release of some hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and the beginning of talks on a comprehensive end to the war.

Finally ready to talk?

Unfortunately for Biden, diplomacy doesn’t fail or succeed on the backs of mediators. If it were up to the mediators, the war would have been over a long time ago. In the real world, the combatants are the final decision-makers, and generally they decide to invest in negotiations only when they are exhausted on the battlefield or come to the conclusion that the benefits of a diplomatic settlement outweigh the costs.

Frankly, it’s difficult to know whether Israel and Hamas have reached that point.

At first glance, one would assume so. The war has divided Israeli society, and the longer the fighting goes on, the more angst there is on the streets over Netanyahu’s strategy. Tens of thousands of Israelis have marched in Tel Aviv to demand Netanyahu sign a cease-fire deal, arguing that this is the only way to save the roughly 115 hostages still in Gaza. The Israeli government seems divided against itself at times, with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the Israeli security establishment frequently sparring with Netanyahu and his far-right nationalist allies about the wisdom of ending the war. Netanyahu is even at odds with his own negotiators, berating them for being weak and ready to capitulate.

Hamas isn’t in a great position either. The movement itself is united internally, but its 17-year reign in Gaza is for all intents and purposes over. It has lost a significant chunk of its tunnel system and military infrastructure, thousands of fighters, and several key commanders and political leaders and is under considerable pressure from Palestinians in Gaza who want to get back to a somewhat normal life.

What about the troops?

And yet the two sides’ bottom-line positions remain irreconcilable. The issue isn’t about whether Palestinian prisoners should be traded for hostages or whether Gaza should be reconstructed — those are noncontroversial items. Rather, the crux of the matter is that when the war should end and whether the Israeli military will retain a ground presence along key corridors in Gaza. The Israelis are insisting on a continuous troop presence along the Philadelphi Corridor, along the Israel-Egypt border, to ensure Hamas isn’t able to smuggle weapons into Gaza like it has in the past; Hamas wants those troops out. The Israelis are also demanding a presence at the Netzarim Corridor, which bisects Gaza into two halves; Hamas wants the Israelis to vacate that area as well.

Israel also wants to reserve the right to restart the war if negotiations on a permanent truce bog down. Hamas, in turn, wants a guarantee that the fighting will stop for as long as negotiations toward a permanent truce continue. This is a nonstarter for the Israelis, who view it as a transparent ploy to drag out the talks in perpetuity.

If all of this sounds frustrating from the outside, just imagine what Blinken, Burns and the rest of them are feeling.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. ©2024 Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.