Egyptian intelligence quietly changed the terms of a ceasefire proposal that Israel had already signed off on earlier this month, ultimately scuttling a deal that could have released Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and set a pathway to temporarily end the fighting in Gaza, according to three people familiar with the discussions.
The ceasefire agreement that Hamas ended up announcing on May 6 was not what the Qataris or the Americans believed had been submitted to Hamas for a potential final review, the sources said.
The changes made by Egyptian intelligence, the details of which have not been previously reported, led to a wave of anger and recrimination among officials from the US, Qatar and Israel, and left ceasefire talks at an impasse.
Well, specifically what do you mean by that?
As a strategy, I’d say that it hasn’t worked. I haven’t been following the conflict closely, but the only use of outside hard power that I off-the-cuff recall seeing has been:
Some rockets out of Lebanon.
Some long-range weapons that Iran fired – some of which were shot down by the US, France, UK, Jordan, and Israel.
Like, Israel’s caught some negative press, sure, but if you’re Hamas, you aren’t gonna start a war that you’re gonna lose in hard power terms with the goal of getting some words.
And a lot of that criticism, I believe, isn’t related to what Hamas would probably want to see. Hamas wants Israel to stop existing. That’s not what is being talked about.
In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Arab residents of the region tried to eject Jewish settlers, and Jews took the opportunity to kick Arabs out from a lot of the territory entirely. I think that the meaningful criticism mostly surrounds the potential for Israel doing something like a repeat, but involving the Gaza Strip – if you’ve got a war that the other guy kicked off, you’ve got some political impetus to rewrite the situation to be more to your liking. I mean, Hamas doesn’t want the conversation to be over whether it’s acceptable for Israel to force Gaza residents out into Egypt. That’s not a situation where Hamas stands to gain in terms of having the war at all. They want to win something, not have pressure limiting how badly they wind up losing.
Actually it has been working. Everyone is calling Israel evil and calling for recognition of genocide. ICC is summoning Netanyahu and number of countries are recognizing Palestine as a country. This has not happened so far. I know Hamas has only one goal which is destruction of Israel, but am not sure others realize this.
So in summary world is sending a message where terrorizing people, killing hundreds of innocents will get you what you want. More money, recognition and legitimacy. I dread to see what is coming in future.
The ICC is summoning no one. The prosecutor in the case has requested a warrant for Netanyahu, some of his cabinet and Hamas leaders.
So I’m not sure how that shows it’s working. You just seem to want Israel to face no repercussions.
I mean, there are some vocal people out there, but I’d give reasonable odds that a lot of them weren’t too keen on Israel in the first place. Getting them more worked up doesn’t change the situation.
I don’t think that the meaningful parties here, the ones who could change the situation, have shown much interest in doing what Hamas would like to see.
What Hamas would need for this to be a successful strategy, I think, is concrete action from outside countries aiming to produce a situation not only more-favorable to Hamas than the pre-war situation, but one so much more favorable that it’s worth the costs of the war for Gaza. I haven’t seen anything that looks to me like that.
Indeed there are a lot of vocal people here who weren’t keen o Israel to begin with. But that shouldn’t justify calling deaths of civilians on either side.
I think this is mostly due to Israel’s insistence that Hamas must perish. Which is why I guess every ceasefire talks are falling through constantly. There’s no future in which Hamas exists that Israel is willing to accept. Sadly a lot of innocent will pay the cost. So whatever happens Israel will double-down on eradicating Hamas while trying to minimize civilian casualties and Hamas will try to survive by doing the opposite.