Earlier this month, I wrote about Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to turn down the Board of Peace’s proposal for Hamas’ disarmament, the decommissioning of weaponry in Gaza, and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
I was incredibly pessimistic about Netanyahu’s positioning. My argument was that by turning down a deal to achieve Israel’s stated war objective in a public way, he was essentially handing Hamas a rhetorical talking point:
I feel like Hamas has outplayed Netanyahu here. And it is in the exact same way that Israeli leaders repeatedly outplayed Yasser Arafat in the 1990s and 2000s.
From every point henceforth, Hamas can say “we agreed to the disarmament deal, but Netanyahu rejected it, so why should we disarm?”
This is precisely why Israelis are able to repeatedly tell Palestinians “we offered you peace, we offered you 2-states at Camp David, and you rejected it! Why should we offer you peace again?”
As a Palestinian who wants peace, I have heard this argument a thousandfold!
Mohammed Shehada in the New York Times made the case last week that Hamas offering such a deal for their own disarmament is a symptom of desperation, and a recognition that Hamas’ previous strategy had failed:
The Oct. 7 attack failed to ignite the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s dream of a multifront war in which Israel would be overwhelmed by assaults from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Yemen along with popular uprisings in the West Bank, inside Israel and in neighboring countries. Instead, it led to an Israeli offensive that killed more than 70,000 people and destroyed most of the Gaza Strip. Some Hamas officials have suggested openly and privately that Oct. 7 was a strategic mistake and that they failed to take into consideration the severity of Israel’s reaction.
Palestinian factions such as Hamas, which defined themselves for decades by the ideology of armed resistance, have been looking for a face-saving way out, figures close to Hamas have told me. Hamas leaders like Khaled Meshaal have been sending the message that Gazans have done their part in contributing to the Palestinian cause and paid the heaviest price, and should now be allowed to recover and heal.
I would be a little cautious of that. While October 7 clearly failed on many levels and in the end did more harm to Palestinians than it did to Israelis, Hamas might still be trying to transition into a Hezbollah-style role menacing from the sidelines: no longer the official government of Gaza, but still a political force working towards the longer-term vision enunciated by Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad of “repeating October 7 again and again until Israel is destroyed.”
But I certainly agree that Hamas has been backed into acceptance of the Board of Peace plan. A group like Hamas that is ideologically disposed to jihadi struggle is not going to easily agree to a deal to take away its weaponry.
Negotiations are continuing. Via AP:
A marathon meeting Monday between U.S. negotiator Jared Kushner and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left the fate of the Gaza ceasefire unclear, with officials signaling moderate optimism but offering no concrete commitment by Israel to the latest U.S.-proposed plan.
Netanyahu’s side later called the talks “deep and constructive”.
The question now is whether Netanyahu will be backed into the same deal or not.
