When the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, launched his devastating assault on Israel on 7 October, the militant group’s exiled leadership, like the rest of the world, was apparently caught unawares.
From plush penthouses in Beirut, Doha and Istanbul, they watched the carnage that killed 1,200 Israelis unfold, as well as Israel’s retaliatory campaign on the Gaza Strip. In the past four months Israel has killed an estimated 27,600 people, displaced 85% of the 2.3 million population and razed more than half of the besieged Palestinian territory’s infrastructure.
In the early days of the war, while Sinwar’s cadre was calling on Arab peoples across the Middle East to join the fight against Israel, the Doha-based chair of Hamas’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, appeared to focus on damage control. Talks mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the US resulted in a ceasefire and hostage and prisoner swaps at the end of November that lasted seven days before collapsing.
Now, it seems that those roles have reversed. According to reports, it is Sinwar and his men, exhausted from the fighting, who want to reach a temporary truce deal, and Haniyeh’s office that is demanding more concessions and holding out for a complete Israeli withdrawal.
On Tuesday night, cautious optimism for a deal returned, after fears that negotiations on a second truce were once again falling apart.
Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said in a media conference in the Qatari capital, which formed part of Blinken’s latest whistle-stop diplomatic tour of the region, that Hamas had finally responded to the outlines of the deal.
“Hamas has comments, but in general the reply is positive,” the officials said, adding that the details have been forward to Israel.
It is not a secret that there is no love lost between Hamas’s leaders in Gaza and those outside. Such splits in opinion are not uncommon among militant organisations that are geographically scattered, but conflicting messages from the group in recent weeks regarding the talks have added to a sense that internal obstructions may have played a large role in holding up a deal.
“It may be that the leadership in Doha, because they were not really involved in the planning of 7 October, are trying to reassert dominance and prove that they are the ones who are really in charge,” said Dr HA Hellyer, a senior associate fellow in international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute who is also a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“It is also possible that their positions are not so far apart and the talks are derailing for some other reason. These are very sensitive negotiations, and it doesn’t take much for someone to throw in a wrench if they want to strut about for some personal motivation we don’t know about.”
It also suits the preferred Israeli narrative that Hamas’s top leaders are divided, Hellyer added. “The Israeli government can turn around and say: there’s no political will on the other side, so we can keep prosecuting the war,” he said.
According to al-Aqsa, the Hamas-affiliated television channel, the group is deliberating with “all the representatives from the different factions and organisations in the Palestinian sphere” to promote Palestinian national interests, the first of which is “stopping the [Israeli] aggression, rehabilitating the Gaza Strip, and releasing the prisoners”.
The reported proposal on the table involves an initial six-week-long cessation of hostilities and phased release of the estimated 130 Israelis still held hostage in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Foreign mediators hope that a permanent ceasefire can be negotiated during the pause.
A major sticking point appears to be how many and which Palestinians will be released, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that Hamas’s political wing is asking for almost 3,000 prisoners in exchange for just 36 Israeli civilians.
Unlike the November deal in which 110 Israelis were freed in return for 240 Palestinians, who were mostly women and children held for minor offences or in administrative detention, the new list is also believed to include hardened militants imprisoned for major crimes, such as planning or carrying out terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.
Israeli officials have demanded that all hostages – alive and dead – are released in this exchange, and have refused to consider bringing the war to a complete close. It was reported on Tuesday that Israel has confirmed the deaths of 32 of the remaining hostages and informed their families that it was now seeking the return of their bodies. Israel is also investigating the possible deaths of another 20 hostages.
And comments made last week made by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the war would not end before Israel kills the leaders of Hamas were “not exactly an incentive for the group to sign a deal”, Amos Harel, a columnist, wrote in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
It is possible Netanyahu could be stalling for his own political survival: elements of his far-right coalition are steadfastly opposed to any kind of ceasefire deal, believing it will weaken Israel’s position in the long run, and have threatened to collapse his government.
Ultimately it may serve the leaders of both Hamas and Israel to drag their feet a while longer. While they do, it is the people of Gaza, and the relatives of the Israeli hostages, who are paying an unimaginable price.
