Freed -off Israeli hostages keep emotional reunits and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians try to restart their life in wiped gaza strips, as the armistice passes on on January 15. But whether the difficult calm will come to a standstill will depend on important discussions in Washington from Tuesday.
Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with US President Donald Trump, and the result will be crucial whether the almost 16-month war between Hamas and Israel will switch to the next phase of the ceasefire or whether the fight against life is back to life awakened.
“I think that the pressure from DC on Netanyahu is actually exerted to get in phase 2,” said Hellyer, an analyst to the Middle East at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) Great Britain.
“The question will be how much lever.”
Some Israeli families with relatives, who were still held hostage in Gaza, do not fear the pressure that the US President prepares.
And they fear that Netanyahu could deliberately set up the ceasefire negotiations in order not to appease the right -wing extremist parties who keep him in power.
“Netanyahu and his employees did not stop saboting the deal,” Dani Elgarat was quoted by the Israeli media and spoke over the weekend at a rally by Tel Aviv. His brother Itzik is one of the dozens of prisoners who were still held by the militant group, even though he said he believes that his brother is dead.
The families have reason to worry, said Hellyer.
“I don’t think the Israelis want to end the war,” he told CBC News.
Helfer said that maintaining the status quo leaves a weakened Hamas under the control of the Gaza Strip, but it also sets up that it has to make difficult decisions on how the territory will be ruled in the future.
In his public statements, Netanyahu said that saboting the ceasefire or submitting the remaining Israeli hostages is nonsense.
When he went to Washington, the Israel’s Prime Minister said that his meetings with the US President will concentrate on getting the “victory over the Hamas”, the publication of “all our hostages” and the map of the Middle East “new” to draw “.
Trump, who was busy starting trade wars against his closest neighbors Canada and Mexico, may have something different in the Middle East.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak spoke with CBC News about some of the considerations in the Israel-Hamas ceasefire negotiations.
Saudi normalization
The US President has long tried to convey a deal to normalize the relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and two weeks after his term in office, he stated that he quickly get to advance. The attack on Israel led by Hamas on October 7, 2023 derived an earlier attempt by the bidet management to drive such a deal.
Last week, his envoy of the Middle East Steve Witkoff visited both Israel and Saudi Arabia and at the same time made a short stopover in Gaza.
Wikoff became the decisive player when securing the first ceasefire business in January and reported reported to both Hamas and Israel to make concessions to achieve this.
Saudi’s Crown Prince Prime Mohammed Bin Salman has repeatedly said that there will be no approach to Israel without signing for a Palestinian state. Representatives of several Arabic nations made a similar explanation last weekend as part of a common communique.
While the Palestinians and their Arab supporters see a solution for the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a existential topic for Trump, the main prize is to consolidate the relationship between Saudi Arabia Israel.
“Gaza is a stumbling block for it,” says Hellyer. “But I don’t think he sees Gaza as a problem.”
Among the Israelis, support for a “two-state solution” as a means of termination of the 70-year conflict had already slipped for years before the attack on October 7, 2023 led by Hamas, in which around 1,200 people were killed.
Since then, most surveys have indicated that it is at an all -time low.
An important member of the Netanyahu cabinet, right-wing extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, said that although he supports a normalization contract with Saudi Arabia, he cannot depend on the creation of a Palestinian state.
Difficult compromises
Nevertheless, prominent Israeli supporters of the concept say that Trump’s unpredictability in connection with the price of the Saudi normalization could urge both Israel and Hamas to create compromises for which they may otherwise not be prepared.
While Hamas has been poorly weakened by Israel’s incessant bombing raids in the past few years and a half, it will have been in control in Gaza, and his fighters organized the brazen public appearances during the handover of the Israeli hostages in the past few weeks.
“After my best judgment, he (Trump) is not looking for a new war. I think he looks at a much broader picture” -state solution with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Camp David in 2000.
“With Netanyahu or Israel, he may not be very hard in relation to details, but he may be quite rigid about the process that he wants to lead.”
In an interview with CBC News in his house in Tel Aviv, Barak said – a long -time political rival of Netanyahu – that he believes that Israel has to make concessions on how Gaza will be ruled in the future.
The Palestinian authority, which is currently serving as a form of the urban government in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has declared that it wanted to take over Hamas in Gaza-an agreement Netanyahu has relentlessly refused.
Replace Hamas
Barak says Netanyahu may only have no choice but to accept the PA in Gaza if it means to get rid of Hamas. The Palestinian author led by Fatah lost control of Gaza against Hamas in the 2006 parliamentary elections. In contrast to the militant group, she continues to work for non -violent confrontations and negotiations with Israel to secure a state.
“You have to replace Hamas with another unit, another unit that is legitimate by our Arabic neighbors and Palestinians themselves. And this unit can only be a version of the Palestinian authority,” said CBC News .
Instead, many in the Netanyahu government urged to expand the military occupation of the Israeli Palestinian areas by setting up settlements in Gaza and officially contested large parts of the West Bank.
Barak says that Israel, with either “non -Jewish” or “not democratic”, becomes “non -Jewish” because it is not a democracy to permanently refuse the Palestinians the same rights as Israeli Jews.
“For our own future, our own fate, our own identity we have to find a way to solve the Palestinians – it is not a topic that we can talk about in Hebrew, but it does not stop being the basic truth . “
Depending on the result of Trump-Netanyahu’s discussions, negotiations on the details of phase 2 later in Qatar were able to begin this week.
The goal is to have a deal about the future of the Gaza Strip, together with the publication of all remaining Israeli hostages until the 42nd day, about 25 days.
In a comment, the British Rusi monkey factory made a positive note.
“With Saudi Normalization with Israel high on the US wish list and the ability of Saudi Arabia to finance the reconstruction of the Gaza, Saudi Arabia has what Trump longs in every deal.”
