In February, Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to the Middle East for meetings in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Israel and the West Bank. The central purpose of that trip was to hammer out a cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which President Joe Biden’s administration hoped would stop the violence and ultimately boost the prospects of a normalization accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The mission failed.
Nearly three months later, Blinken is in the region again to do pretty much the same thing. Much has changed. For one, Israel and Iran have taken shots at each other, with Iran sending attack drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles toward Israel earlier this month in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of an Iranian diplomatic facility in Syria. (Israel responded by striking an Iranian air defense system in central Iran days later.) The tit-for-tat between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon has heated up over the last week, with both increasing the range of their attacks. Israel’s military, meanwhile, is preparing for an offensive in Rafah, a city on the Gaza-Egypt border that is the last refuge for more than 1 million Palestinian refugees displaced from their homes.
One thing that has remained fairly consistent during this time is the lack of formidable progress on the diplomatic track. Israeli and Hamas negotiators, working through the United States, Qatar and Egypt, have spent the last five months trading proposals for a hostage release deal. The talks have been the diplomatic equivalent of a full-mouth root canal. Despite striking a cessation of hostilities in late November that allowed for an exchange prisoners for hostages, the two have no reason whatsoever to trust each other and every reason to stick with their bottom-line demands. For Israel, this means the release of every one of the approximately 130 remaining hostages in Gaza and the total defeat of Hamas as an organization. For the Palestinian militant group, this means Israel stopping the war for good and pulling its troops out of Gaza. Until one or both moderate those demands, the negotiating track will continue to drag out.
It’s easy to blame the mediators for this situation. The Israeli government has pointed the finger at Qatar for not putting enough pressure on the Hamas delegation to agree to terms. Some U.S. foreign policy analysts in Washington aren’t exactly pleased with Doha’s participation either, with some recommending that Qatar threaten to throw Hamas out of the Qatari capital if the group refuses to cooperate.
Yet criticizing the mediators is the coward’s way out. If two belligerents are unable or unwilling to modulate their tone, water down their demands or imagine any scenario beyond the absolute ideal, then it’s hard to see what any mediator could do to move things forward. Even the U.S., a world superpower, has only so much leverage it can use to extract concessions — and what leverage it does have, such as suspending military aid to Israel to compel it to sign a cease-fire, was ruled out by President Joe Biden months ago.
If there is any blame to go around, it lies entirely on the shoulders of Israel and Hamas. Ultimately, the two parties’ objectives are near incomparable. Israel wants Hamas dead and buried. Hamas wants to prevent that outcome, survive long into the future, cement itself as an irreversible component of the broader Palestinian national movement and remain the top dog in Gaza. While Israel and Hamas would love nothing more than to get their people back, any prospective exchange of prisoners and hostages is tied to broader issues such as the length of a potential cease-fire, whether the cease-fire will eventually become permanent and ultimately how Gaza is governed.
Ultimately, it’s those questions that are holding everything up. The last two in particular — the permanence of a cease-fire and the future of Gaza — are especially complicated issues to settle. It defies belief that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would simply call off an Israeli offensive in Rafah after spending weeks telling the Israeli public just how vital it is to conduct such an operation. Netanyahu doesn’t have political room to maneuver either. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, two extremists who are standing in the way of Netanyahu’s governing coalition dissolving and the premier getting booted out of an office in an early election, have threatened to leave the government if a Rafah operation doesn’t proceed. Netanyahu is no Yitzhak Rabin; the man doesn’t take risks, particularly on the Palestinian issue, which he’s spent the last four decades of his political career stonewalling.
It also defies belief that Hamas, whose entire credo is armed resistance against Israel until the state itself ceases to exist, would give up the fight or put itself in the vulnerable position of releasing all of the hostage on a mere promise of Israel ending the war. The last thing Hamas wants to do is hand over all its chips without being reasonably assured that Israel’s air and ground operations will stop indefinitely. But can Hamas ever be reasonably assured on that item? If so, what would it take?
If all of this sounds bleak, that’s because it is. With an Israeli invasion of Rafah looming and Hamas still nowhere near extinguished as a fighting force, the combatants have yet to reach the point where suing for peace is viewed as more beneficial to their respective interests than continuing the war. All we have is hope that, sooner or later, those calculations will change.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.