Analysis | Israel Will Be Unable to Ignore Hostage Deal With Hamas if Mediation Efforts Succeed
Meetings are scheduled on Thursday between Qatari ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad, and German Chancellor Olaf Schulz. It’s supposed to be a business meeting, dealing mostly with expansion of German purchases of Qatari gas, after a deal between the two countries was signed last November stipulating the German purchase of 15 million tons of gas per year for 15 years.
But now another item, one very significant to Israel, has been added to the meeting’s agenda. When Schulz spoke on Saturday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expressing his government’s solidarity with Israel in the face of Hamas’ murderous attack, he also offered his mediation services in freeing the Israeli hostages. It’s not known how Netanyahu responded to the offer, but Germany has experience and a long history in negotiating with Hamas and other organizations, and the meeting with the Qatari leader may lend momentum to the new effort.
According to reports in Arab media, Qatar is already busy in mediation efforts to advance a deal that would include the return of at least some of the abducted Israelis. Since Saturday Egypt has been conducting intensive talks with Hamas and with Israel, in efforts to stave off further escalation and bring about a prisoner exchange.
Hamas sources said on Monday that the organization is willing to negotiate an exchange that includes at least the return of Israeli women and children, in return for the release of Palestinian women and children held in Israel. The official Israeli response, inasmuch as Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar represents it, maintains that “there will be no negotiations with the terror organization.”
We may treat this strident declaration with skepticism. Israel has held several negotiations with Hamas, albeit indirectly, mostly through Egyptian intelligence under its director, Abbas Kamel. After each round of fighting such talks were held concerning a cease-fire, the return of soldiers’ bodies and captives, restoration of the Gaza Strip, arrangements for passage from the Strip to abroad, and on the transfer of tens of millions of dollars from Qatar to the Strip. The scope of the recent attack, the Israeli military response, and the continued fighting to be expected, should not impede a humanitarian negotiation to remove at least some of the severe anxiety currently felt by the captives and their families in Israel. If Arab and international mediation manages to create a window of opportunity for a hostage and POW exchange, the government won’t be able to reject it in the name of an ideological slogan that was never true.
The question now is the feasibility and cost of such a deal. Egypt holds a powerful and influential lever, being in control of the Rafah Crossing, through which Gazans leave to go abroad and can bring in goods, and which also provides an important source of income for Hamas, which collects tolls and customs at the crossing. The crossing has been closed since the war broke out, but Egypt allows passage of medical supplies and necessities. It is already preparing for the possibility that tens of thousands of Gazans will seek refuge from Israeli bombardments in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.
The governor of the North Sinai district issued orders to erect tent camps for those residents, provide them with food rations, blankets and any other vital equipment. But he also issued a ban barring Palestinians from entering the city of Al-Arish, which is surrounded by a high fence on all sides, and only three gates of entry. Hamas very much needs this escape route both for its militants and for residents, but at the same time it may try to turn those residents into hostages and human shields against a massive Israeli strike, and place Israel under heavy international pressure should it turn out that these attacks cause an intolerable number of civilian casualties.
The Rafah Crossing is also an asset serving Egypt in its contacts with Israel. Without Egyptian coordination regarding its opening and closure, the siege of Gaza cannot be completely implemented, as was proved in the past when not only goods, but also weapons and militants crossed it to go from the Sinai to the Strip and back. Thus far the Israeli-Egyptian coordination worked efficiently, especially after Egypt joined the fight against the Hamas tunnels, flooded them, flattened the area between the Strip and Sinai, and removed structures and trees that could have been used to hide terrorists leaving the Strip. The last thing either Israel or Egypt needs right now is for Hamas to erect a new base of operations in Sinai, next door to the Gaza Strip. This common interest requires Israel to provide Egypt with realistic answers to allow it to efficiently conduct the mediation to achieve the release of some of the hostages, and to enable it to serve as mediator in the future as well.
In this regard Egypt operates in cooperation with Qatar, which with Israeli coordination and concurrence has become the Hamas’s ATM. But the Qatari financial aid, which to a large extent helped calm the turmoil in Gaza and the violent protests along the separation fence, is not the be-all and end-all. Qatar may have been the first Arab country to place the full blame and responsibility for the war with Israel, but severe disagreements have developed between Qatar and Hamas over the latter’s intention to renew its relations with Syria, a move opposed by Qatar, which sponsors anti-Assad Syrian militias.
Qatar, which did not oppose Syria’s reinstatement in the Arab League, mostly so as not to scuttle the move initiated by Saudi Arabia, explicitly stressed that it has not changed its position regarding Syria. The Qatari rage at Hamas caused a severe reduction of the financial aid it sends to the Strip, and according to reports from Gaza, it recently stood at only three million dollars a month, instead of 10 million. At the same time, and despite the glaring dispute with Hamas, Qatar is still hosting part of the Hamas leadership. In so doing, it serves a vital function for the organization’s leadership, after Turkey stopped hosting them, and with life in Lebanon not as convenient as life in Turkey or Qatar.
Qatar has another lever, the weight of which is hard to predict. Due to its tight financial and diplomatic ties with Iran on the one hand, and the U.S. on the other, it is now offering its services in advancing a new nuclear deal. On the face of it, there is no connection between its mediation aspirations with the U.S. and events in Gaza, but it is not out of the question that it will test Iran’s willingness to convince – mostly the Islamic Jihad, but also Hamas – to reach a prisoner exchange deal. Iran seemingly has no interest in advancing such a deal, but at the same time one cannot ignore its tight ties with Qatar, its desire to renew diplomatic ties with Egypt, and the fact that Iran itself held prisoner exchange negotiations with the U.S., which were successfully concluded with Qatari mediation.
The mediation scenarios and concrete mediation efforts are still embryonic, but they already behoove Benjamin Netanyahu to decide whether to adopt the fanatic ideology of his minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who demanded to “strike Hamas brutally and not take the matter of prisoners as a significant consideration,” or to advance the mediation efforts whose success is so vital in order to give the Israeli public even a modicum of solace.
Israel Will Be Unable to Ignore Hostage Deal With Hamas if Mediation Efforts Succeed - Israel News - Haaretz.com
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Destroying Hamas a priority for Israel, ambassador says, after militant group threatens hostages
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Analysis: Hamas violently forces detour from Saudi-Israel momentum
AFP , Monday 9 Oct 2023
With its surprise attack against Israel, Hamas has violently shifted the world's eyes back to the Palestinians and dealt a severe blow to momentum to secure a landmark US-brokered deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The Hamas resistance group which?rules over?the impoverished,?blockaded Gaza Strip on Saturday fired thousands of rockets and infiltrated forces into Israel, 50 years after the 1973?Arab-Israeli War, known to Israelis as?Yom Kippur and to Arabs?as the October War.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was at war. Just weeks earlier he had brushed aside the Palestinian issue during a speech at the United Nations and said normalization in 2020 with three other Arab nations in the so-called Abraham Accords had "heralded a new age of peace."
Netanyahu also said Israel was on the cusp of a bigger prize -- recognition by Saudi Arabia, guardian of Islam's two holiest sites.
President Joe Biden, eager before next year's US election for a major diplomatic win, has pushed for a deal, and more talks were expected in coming weeks -- despite skepticism from some of Biden's fellow Democrats about the proposed security guarantees to the Saudi Kingdom.
"It was always a tough hill to climb, and that hill just got a lot steeper," said Brian Katulis, vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
The violence spotlights disputes between Israel and the Palestinians and "makes it harder to sweep those complicated issues under the rug the way the 2020 Abraham Accords did," he said.
Saudi Arabia's leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has spoken recently of progress with Israel but also insisted on movement on the Palestinian cause, seen as a priority for King Salman.
Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry returned to familiar language Saturday, saying in a statement that the kingdom had been warning of an "explosive situation as a result of the continued occupation and deprivation of the Palestinian people's legitimate rights."
Aziz Alghashian, a Saudi expert on Saudi-Israeli relations, said the statement was intended to dispel any notion that the kingdom would prioritize normalization at the expense of supporting the Palestinians.
"This kind of situation has made Saudi Arabia go back to its traditional role," he said.
"Netanyahu put another obstacle to these normalization talks because he said this is now a war. I don't anticipate normalization is going to take place against the backdrop of war," Alghashian said.
On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN that disrupting Saudi-Israel normalization efforts may have partly motivated the Hamas attack.
"Look, who opposes normalization? Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran. So it wouldn't be a surprise that part of the motivation may have been to disrupt efforts to bring Saudi Arabia and Israel together," Blinken said. "So that's certainly a factor."
A US official said it was "premature" to discuss the violence's effect on normalization.
Blinken discussed the conflict with his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, by telephone.
A Saudi readout of the call said Prince Faisal stressed "the kingdom's rejection of targeting civilians in any way and the need for all parties to respect international humanitarian law."
Public opposition ?
Netanyahu has cast diplomacy with the Palestinians as antiquated and described a future of friendship with Gulf Arabs, who share Israel's hostility toward Iran.
Netanyahu's government, the most right-wing in Israeli history, has continued to pursue settlements illegal under international law, although the prime minister backtracked in 2020 on annexation in the West Bank as he sought to woo the United Arab Emirates, the lead country in the Abraham Accords.
Joost Hiltermann, Middle East director of the International Crisis Group, which looks to resolve conflicts, said Hamas may have acted in part due to fear of a "looming further marginalization of the Palestinian cause in Palestinian eyes" if Saudi Arabia recognizes Israel.
With Israel expected to respond forcefully to Saturday's attacks, Arab states will likely feel obliged to take a harder stance in line with public sentiment, he said.
"If that all happens, then I would foresee a scenario where, just like we have a cold peace between Israel and Jordan, between Israel and Egypt, we end up with a cooling of the relationship between Israel and the Emirates and probably a delay, at least, of any sort of deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia," he said.
Steven Cook, a senior fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations, pointed to a survey that showed just two percent of Saudis backed normalizing ties with Israel.
"It wasn't that long ago," he noted, "that there were telethons happening in Saudi Arabia" in support of Hamas militant fighters.
Iran opposes normalization ?
The Biden administration has largely sought to lessen US involvement in the Middle East, also by easing tensions with Iran.
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Iran's clerical leadership, which since last year has suppressed major protests led by women, supports Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah and hailed the offensive.
"This is about Iran's priorities in the Middle East," said Danielle Pletka of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said the attack appeared "designed to stop peace efforts between Saudi Arabia and Israel." A peace agreement between them, he said, "would be a nightmare for Iran and Hamas."
*This story was edited by Ahram Online
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Middle East crisis exposes limits of China's diplomatic ambitions
By JAMES POMFRET, JOE CASH , CHEN LIN - REUTERS
When China announced a surprise deal restoring ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran this year, it signaled Beijing's desire to be a diplomatic heavyweight in the Middle East.
The crisis in Israel and Gaza threatens to expose the limits of that ambition.
After the March Saudi-Iran agreement, which China brokered, Chinese media hailed Beijing's rising profile in a region long dominated by Washington. Wang Yi, China's top diplomat, said the country would continue to play a constructive role in handling global "hotspot issues."
But after the killings of more than 900 Israelis in coordinated assaults by the Islamic group Hamas, China's response was muted.
A foreign ministry spokeswoman repeatedly stopped short of condemning Hamas, instead calling for de-escalation and for Israel and Palestine to pursue a "two-state solution" for an independent Palestine. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been silent on the issue.
"Certainly it does poke a hole in the type of propaganda ... of China being this kind of massive player in the Middle East," said Bill Figueroa, an assistant professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and an expert on China-Middle East relations.
China's neutrality has drawn criticism from U.S. and Israeli officials, with some saying it undermines Beijing's claims to be an unbiased peace broker in the region.
That should not come as a surprise, say analysts. Chinese diplomacy has long been risk-averse, and the spiraling conflict between Israel and Hamas puts its diplomats in a difficult spot, given China's historic support for the Palestinians and its rivalry with the United States.
”We have made it clear that China is highly concerned about the continued escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and urges all parties concerned to immediately cease fire and stop fighting. China is willing to maintain communication with all parties and make unremitting efforts for peace and stability in the Middle East," Wang Wenbin, a foreign ministry spokesperson, said on Tuesday.
Since the end of China's nearly three years of COVID-19 lockdowns, Xi has launched a diplomatic push aimed at countering the United States and its allies, who he says seek to contain and suppress his country.
Beijing has deepened alliances with non-Western led multilateral groups such as the BRICS bloc of nations, while hewing more closely to Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine and strengthening ties with countries in the Middle East and the Global South.
Although there is a chance to build on its Iran-Saudi success, China is unlikely to engage deeply in the current crisis.
One factor is a longstanding policy of non-interference that can sometimes clash with China's aim of acting as a great power on the global stage.
"China under Xi (Jinping) wants to be respected and admired everywhere, including in the Middle East, but it is ultimately unwilling to do what it will take to resolve the really hard regional security issues," said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London. "It goes for the low-hanging fruits and basically stops there."
China has previously worked on Israel-Palestine issues.
China's special envoy on the Middle East, Zhai Jun, has engaged officials from Israel and the Palestinian Authority — which governs in the occupied West Bank — as well as the Arab League and EU in the last year to discuss a two-state solution and recognition for Palestine at the United Nations.
But China's longstanding regional relationships, including with the Palestinians, limit its options.
Some Chinese scholars recently criticized the marginalization of the Palestinians and a U.S.-led deal to normalize ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, as root causes fueling the crisis.
"The most important external factor behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the United States' attempt to enforce the Abraham Accords," wrote Liu Zhongmin, a professor at the Institute for Middle East Studies of Shanghai International Studies University, in an interview published by a Chinese media outlet. "The achievement of peace in the Middle East region and the just settlement of the question of Palestine are inseparable."
Condemning Hamas could also put China at odds with Russia and Iran.
"It is unclear who is behind Hamas, and it very possibly is China’s partner(s)," said Yun Sun, Director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington. "Russia benefits in the sense that the U.S. will be distracted, and Iran is a likely candidate. For China to denounce the attack also means China will be obligated to take actions if and when the culprit is named.”
Although China is one of the few countries with leverage over Iran — it has nearly $400 billion of planned investments in the country in the coming decades — there is skepticism in Israel that Beijing will step up.
"China doesn't use its voice, its heft on the international stage to change things for the better," said Tuvia Gering, a China researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel.
The Asian giant's oil imports and investments in the Middle East, including telecoms and infrastructure as part of Xi's Belt and Road Initiative, means Beijing desires peace, but there are clear limits to Xi's willingness to take risks.
"China is very successful in a stable environment in the Middle East when it's possible to broker reconciliation agreements between Saudi Arabia and Iran," said Jean-Loup Samaan, Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore.
"But when it comes to conflict management, that's a very different situation," Samaan added. "And I don't think China ever wanted to play that role."
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TODAY: NEW PAPER LAUNCH | Protecting US interests: How to defeat Putin and set Ukraine on the path to NATO
Next year’s NATO Summit in Washington, DC, will mark the 75th anniversary of the Alliance. At a time when the world faces the challenge of the increasing alignment between the world’s chief authoritarian powers—Russia and China—the summit provides the opportunity for the US and its NATO allies to confront that challenge by taking steps to defeat Putin in Ukraine, set Ukraine on the path to NATO membership, and deter future aggression from revanchist powers.
Russia’s full-scale invasion spurred the United States and its NATO allies to adopt vigorous measures in support of Ukraine and to safeguard themselves against the Kremlin's expansionist aims. At the NATO Summit in Vilnius in July 2023, the Allies took modest steps toward Ukraine’s NATO membership, settling on a promise to invite it to the Alliance “when Allies agree and conditions are met.”
In advance of the next NATO Summit in Washington in 2024, a new Atlantic Council “Memo to the President,” co-signed by more than 40 national security leaders, presents an array of measures that NATO can implement to help Ukraine win its war against Russian aggression, to guarantee Ukraine’s long-term stability, and to fortify Europe against further Kremlin aggression that directly jeopardizes the interests of the United States and its allies.
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