The Israeli government has no desire to reach a ceasefire/hostage-release agreement with Hamas and is leading the Middle East into ‘a comprehensive, multi-front confrontation with no reasonable timetable for ending it’. That’s not some Western peace activist’s view; that’s the opinion of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, writing in an Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, on 25 August.
Olmert wrote: ‘Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want the hostages back. There is no chance of reaching agreements in the negotiations going on in the last few days and that are expected to continue into the coming week.... [W]e must shake off the illusion that the negotiations for a deal to free the hostages under Netanyahu’s guidance are being held in good faith.’
Two days earlier, a Haaretz editorial called Netanyahu ‘a master of faking negotiations’: he has been carrying out ‘sham negotiations’ which ‘abandon the hostages’, provoke war and ‘prepare the ground for territorial expansion in the form of “Israeli security control” in the Gaza Strip’.
After Hamas agreed on 2 July to a ceasefire based on a US plan and a UN security council resolution, Netanyahu imposed new conditions to kill off the possibility of peace breaking out.
One new demand was permanent Israeli occupation of the Gaza-Egypt border, a stretch of land known in Israel as the ‘Philadelphi Corridor’.
Yehuda Cohen, father of hostage Nimrod Cohen, told Haaretz: ‘The Philadelphi route is cruel propaganda by Netanyahu that is meant to torpedo’ a ceasefire agreement.
Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, told Haaretz, also on 24 August: ‘We are on the eve of a summit in Cairo, and it looks like this is the final opportunity. There will either be a deal or creating escalation [with Hezbollah and Iran].... It’s important to stress that, since the beginning of July, there has been a deal that is ready to be signed, only the new conditions Netanyahu inserted, most notably the Philadelphi route, are preventing it.’
Netanyahu has also made permanent Israeli control of another part of Gaza into a major obstacle for ceasefire negotiations. The ‘Netzarim Corridor’ is a 2.5-mile-wide belt that cuts Gaza City and northern Gaza off from the southern part of the Gaza Strip. It stretches from Israeli territory to the sea.
Netanyahu says publicly that the Philadelphi and Netzarim Corridors are vital ‘security assets’ which must be held onto.
However, when the heads of the Israeli army and the Shin Bet intelligence agency suggested to him that physically occupying the Philadelphi Corridor was not essential to security, Netanyahu changed his tune to tell them: ‘Philadelphi is a political-strategic issue, not a security one’ (emphases added).
As for the Netzarim Corridor, the long-term plan may be to turn this into a new Israeli-Palestinian border: ‘Israel will control the northern Gaza Strip and drive out the 300,000 Palestinians still there.... The Israeli right envisions a Jewish settlement of the area, with vast real estate potential of convenient topography, a sea view, and proximity to central Israel.... No large Jewish city will be built in Gaza tomorrow, but progress will be made acre by acre, mobile home by mobile home, outpost by outpost – just like in Hebron, Elon Moreh, and Gilad Farm.’
That’s the view of Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn, who adds: ‘Do not get confused: occupation is the goal Netanyahu is fighting for, even at the price of the remaining hostages dying, and at the risk of a regional war.’
Provocation/disruption
Netanyahu derailed negotiations for some weeks at the end of July by assassinating the chief Hamas negotiator (and the leader of the pro-ceasefire faction in Hamas) Ismail Haniyeh.
This follows other Israeli military attacks that have made ceasefire negotiations more difficult, including the invasion of Rafah on 6 May, designed to destroy the ceasefire deal that Hamas had agreed to, hours earlier.
The latest sabotage effort came hours after Hamas negotiators headed to Cairo for ceasefire talks on 24 August: 100 Israeli jets fired on 40 areas of southern Lebanon, triggering 320 rocket and drone attacks by Hezbollah, the heavily-armed Lebanese movement sponsored by Iran (like Hamas). There was a risk of all-out war.
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert suggested in Haaretz that Netanyahu hopes that: ‘in the end, Iran will enter into a direct confrontation with Israel.... This is the worst-case scenario: The war will continue, broaden, and seal the hostages’ fate.... Netanyahu is leading Israel to this abyss together with his partners, the terror criminals Itamar Ben-Gvir and “Gaza starver” Bezalel Smotrich.’ (Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition government.)
Israeli journalist Amos Harel wrote on 23 August: ‘Some Haaretz columnists are convinced that Netanyahu is determined to drag the United States into a large-scale regional war, during which he will sic Iran’s nuclear program on them.’
Israel isn’t strong enough to defeat Iran, its main enemy in the region, but it might be able to provoke Iran into attacks on a scale that will bring about a US-Iranian war and therefore the destruction of Iranian power, is the thinking.
Haaretz has been documenting how Netanyahu has been sabotaging ceasefire talks from the beginning: restricting what negotiators are allowed to say in talks; leaking information to harm the negotiations; and making demands publicly that Netanyahu knows will make an agreement impossible and which are calculated to drive Hamas away from the negotiating table (PN 2673).
If there is a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, this would open the door to peace and stability with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with the Houthis in Yemen, and possibly with the government of Iran.
Unfortunately, this option is not acceptable to Netanyahu because it would also mean that his government might be brought down by the ultra-nationalists who Olmert calls ‘terror criminals’: Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.
This would lead to Netanyahu losing power and finally being put on trial for bribery, breach of trust and fraud – as well as facing an inquiry into the security failures that led to the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October.
It has been suggested in the Israeli press that, if there is somehow a ceasefire/hostage-release deal, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich might only step down as ministers but not pull their parties out of Netanyahu’s coalition.
In this scenario, which might just be wishful thinking by Netanyahu, the far right would prop up his government on the understanding that, once the first phase of the deal is complete, and a significant number of live hostages have been extracted from Gaza, the war of destruction will be restarted, and the two ‘terror criminals’ can return as ministers.
British arms sales
On 23 August, four major NGOs issued a joint statement on UK arms supplies to Israel, saying: ‘On Labour’s 50th day in office, our organisations condemn the government’s failure to suspend export licences for arms transfers to Israel. Every day that this government fails to take action, the UK is materially and politically supporting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.’
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) and War on Want wrote: ‘In this past week alone, massacres have been committed by Israel through airstrikes on schools and tent encampments sheltering displaced civilians and on one of the last functioning markets, a site essential for civilian survival, in Deir al-Balah. Such scenes, of intolerable suffering and inhumanity, are ensured by each day of governmental inaction.’
British arms sales to Israel break the government’s own strategic export licensing criteria, which say that that exports should not be allowed if there is a ‘clear risk’ that the weapons sold might be used in a ‘serious violation of international humanitarian law’.
The NGOs said it was ‘implausible’ that the new Labour government had not completed its review of possible Israeli crimes in the current war on Gaza, given the ‘overwhelming evidence of the most egregious violations of international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide’.
Earlier, on 6 August, CAAT warned against misleading media reports that an arms embargo had been put in place.
Export licensing officials might have stopped processing new applications for arms exports to Israel, but there are plenty of licences already in place.
There is an existing ‘open’ licence that ‘allows unlimited deliveries of components for Israel’s F-35 combat aircraft, which they are using on a daily basis to bomb Gaza, including with 2000lb bombs.’
Unlike a standard export licence, an ‘open’ licence allows an arms company to export an unlimited quantity of a particular weapon or component.