The president of Egypt has come up with the most modest of proposals to try and end the war in Gaza. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has proposed a forty-eight-hour ceasefire to facilitate the release of just four Israeli hostages in exchange for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel. El-Sisi’s objective is for the two-day truce to then lead to a longer-term ceasefire. He has suggested a ten-day negotiating period following the release of the four hostages.
His proposal has coincided with the arrival in Doha, of the heads of the CIA and Mossad for renewed talks for a ceasefire-and-hostage-release framework.
Washington still wants a deal that will embrace far more than the release of hostages and a long-term ceasefire
The deliberate limitations of the el-Sisi plan underline how challenging it has been for any of the peace negotiators to persuade Hamas, and Israel, to consider compromise. No Hamas representatives will attend the meeting in Doha between Qatar’s prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Mossad chief David Barnea, and CIA director Bill Burns.
Hamas’s red lines were set by Yahya Sinwar: an immediate end to the war and the total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in exchange for more hostage releases. Benjamin Netanyahu has his own red lines but they read very differently. He wants Hamas to lay down its arms and surrender, and to free all the hostages, alive or dead.
At this point there would appear to be no room for compromise on either side. But the dynamics of the war in Gaza have changed dramatically.
Iran, Israel’s primary threat, has suffered some setbacks over the past few months. Hezbollah, its most prized proxy, has suffered near-terminal blows to its leadership hierarchy from Israeli assassination airstrikes in Lebanon. Iran itself has learned on two separate occasions in the last six months that it lacks the capability to protect its military sites — and thus, potentially, its nuclear facilities — from Israeli long-range ballistic-missile airstrikes.
However, will these critical setbacks for Iran lead to a shift in strategy, or will it all spiral into a full-scale regional war?
Ceasefire hopes have come and gone over the past year. In between the negotiations, mostly abortive, the casualty toll in both Gaza and Lebanon has continued to rise relentlessly, as Israel has pressed on with its mission to destroy Hamas and to deal a fatal blow to Hezbollah.
Washington still wants a deal that will embrace far more than the release of hostages and a long-term ceasefire. The US framework for peace in the Middle East includes the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, who was in the Middle East last week, made it clear that the grand vision of a more comprehensive peace framework for the region remained a priority for Washington. If Kamala Harris wins the election next week, it is presumed she would wish to continue pursuing this strategic objective.
However, the immediate efforts are on trying to persuade all parties to agree a ceasefire, however short-lived. There hasn’t been a ceasefire in Gaza since November, when fighting stopped for seven days during which 105 hostages were freed in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. There was also a brief pause in fighting in June along a road in southern Gaza to allow for United Nations food trucks to enter safely. But it wasn’t a ceasefire. Fighting carried on elsewhere.
For President Biden and his foreign policy legacy, any sort of ceasefire that raises hopes of a better and more far-reaching deal in the future will be welcome news. He has less than three months left of his presidency, and the possibility of his successor being Donald Trump, not his vice-president.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.