2/2/2024 0 Comments Roadblocks war game![]() Even with Israel locked in what it sees as an existential battle with Hamas, the door isn’t, and can’t be, totally closed to diplomacy. The old paradigm of ceasefires between Israel and Hamas appears to have been broken, but that doesn’t mean that the many examples of the two parties engaging in talks and upholding agreements are not relevant. What it shows is that Israel just doesn’t want one, period, and the US has largely followed Israel’s lead. The fact that nearly everyone powerful in the US is also rejecting a ceasefire now doesn’t mean one is impossible. They want something much more radical than what happened in the past.” “The technique before was to convince the Israelis that Hamas can be under control,” Nabeel Khoury, a career US diplomat focused on the Middle East who retired as a minister-counselor, told me. Israel’s existential catastrophe has changed its approach to security, as we’re seeing through its intensive bombardment of Gaza and its ongoing ground incursion, with more than 9,000 Palestinians killed, including 3,000 children. That has fundamentally altered Israel’s security thinking: It now wants to eliminate Hamas entirely. ![]() Historically, these ceasefires have worked for both Israel and Hamas, until they haven’t.īut the previous logic of Israel-Hamas wars no longer holds after the October 7 attacks on Israel, in which 1,400 people were killed and 242 people were taken hostage. “It would be such a gift to Hamas, because they would spend whatever time there was a ceasefire in effect rebuilding their armaments, creating stronger positions to be able to fend off an eventual assault by the Israelis.” “People who are calling for a ceasefire now do not understand Hamas. So I found it revealing about where this war currently stands, and how different it is from the past, when Clinton dismissed any possibility of a ceasefire while speaking last week at Rice University’s Baker Institute. He drew from his own experience: In November 2012, as an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he and his Egyptian counterparts had locked in a ceasefire after a different outburst of conflict. ![]() At the time, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan flew to Cairo and worked with Egyptian officials to negotiate a ceasefire. The last time that Israel and Hamas engaged in hostilities that had the potential to ignite a larger war was in May 2021. ![]()
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