Negotiators in Paris are close to inking a deal that would free most of the remaining Israeli hostages taken on October 7 in exchange for an extended halt to the fighting in Gaza, perhaps as long as two months.
The outline of the deal appears to be set. But filling in the details remains, and there's no guarantee that the agreement won't fall apart.
The United States, Egypt, and Qatar are working out the deal. They've taken proposals from both Israel and Hamas and blended them into a "basic framework" that will be discussed on Sunday.
Biden spoke with Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Qatar’s prime minister, about the emerging deal and will send CIA Director William Burns to Paris to help finalize the discussions. If Burns is able to make progress, Biden will send his Middle East troubleshooter Brett McGurk back to the region to finalize the deal.
Is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looking for an honorable exit ramp? If he is, this might be the best opportunity. Netanyahu is suffering politically from the conflict and, most especially, the continued ordeal for the 200 or so hostages still being held by Hamas.
Can Israel realistically restart the war after a two-month halt to the fighting? The challenges would be immense and Netanyahu may not consider further gains worth the effort. He has surely realized now that he will be unable to"destroy" Hamas. However, Israel has certainly crippled the terrorists, scrambled their command and control operations by killing many top Hamas commanders, and destroyed many tons of weapons and ammunition.
While the agreement would not be the permanent cease-fire that Hamas has demanded for the release of all hostages, officials close to the talks believe that if Israel halts the war for two months, it would likely not resume it in the same way that it has waged it until now. The truce would provide a window for further diplomacy that could lead to a broader resolution of the conflict.
Such a deal would provide welcome breathing space for Mr. Biden, who has taken a great deal of heat from the left wing of his own party for supporting Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attack. Mr. Netanyahu too has come under considerable pressure to secure the hostages’ release, even as he has vowed to press the military operation to destroy Hamas.
It's likely that the two-month pause in fighting would ease tensions in the rest of the Middle East. That's what happened last November when the seven-day pause saw attacks by Iran's proxies halt. Iran doesn't want to be seen as the cause for the end to the pause in fighting and made an effort to restrain their terrorist armies.
A huge stumbling block to the end of the conflict is the unbridgeable gap between Israel's demand that Hamas quit Gaza and the terrorists' insistence they won't.
“We hope we will manage to reach a breakthrough, one that will jumpstart real negotiations with a will to reach an agreement,” an unnamed Israeli source told Israel's Channel 12 on Saturday. “Currently, the conditions do not enable that because there is no agreement on the general framework. That is the purpose of the summit. To break the stalemate and find creative formulas.”
Hamas is insisting not only that Israel completely stop fighting but also that it pull its forces out of Gaza, along with international guarantees that the terror group can remain in power in the coastal enclave, sources said, whereas Israel sees ending its offensive as a “red line.” Sources said Egypt and Qatar need to be “more creative” in resolving the issues rather than just acting as a conduit to pass information between the various parties.
Gaza is a pile of rubble with no running water and no gas, and its economy is in a state of collapse. The Palestinian housing authority says it will take $15 billion to just rebuild the housing in Gaza. Israelis may not be in the mood to help Gazans rebuild but they have little choice if they don't want a humanitarian crisis in their midst.
The trick will be to rebuild Gaza without empowering Hamas. Other nations like the U.S. should remember that before giving the other billions of dollars to assist the Gazans in digging themselves out of the rubble created by the terrorist attack on Israel.
