April 26: Gaza ceasefire: For real this time?

In which, Mid East combatants reassess their options, Ukraine replenishes its stocks, and the US economy teeters on the brink of… something.

Gaza ceasefire: For real this time?

Last week, it was an open question if we Israel and Iran would be able to deescalate after trading missile salvos. That deescalation appears to have been achieved, but that’s about all the good news on the Gaza war front. 

Aside from the de-escalation, the week looked “normal” as the main combatants returned to the grinding ground war in Gaza while Iran licked its wounds and sought to reestablish a rapprochement with Pakistan.

However, the “normal” week of war in Gaza turned up some tantalizing anecdotes that may hint at some real movement on the diplomatic front. That may seem hard to believe after a week that saw US-Palestinian Authority relations hit a new low after a US veto on Palestinian membership in the UN. 

However, Hamas is now hinting at the possibility of a hostage release and five year ceasefire with the possibility of eventually disarming and joining a Palestinian state as a political party. If that sounds hard to believe, that’s because it is. So what’s going on? Is Hamas really ready to lay down its arms, or is this just another effort to buy time by manipulating the US (who’s hungry for any kind of exit to this mess) to put pressure on Israel to back off its impending Rafah offensive?

Could be a little of “all of the above”. Hamas may be an jihadist terrorist organization, but they’re not a suicidal cult bent on martyrdom, nor or they dumb. After the events of the last week, it's clear that Iran, faithful ally that it is, doesn’t have the reach to get Israel to back off of Gaza (Tehran can’t even protect its Lebanese and Syrian proxies), Israel is grinding Hamas’ warfighting capabilities down, and the UN Security Council is stymied on how to pull the two combatants apart. Activists on American college campuses may bring some pressure to bear on Democrats and the Biden administration, but it wasn’t enough to stop the passage of a fresh round of military aid to Israel. In other words, Hamas really is on the ropes and must now try the ol’ “pivot to politics” play followed by its cousins in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s and, more recently, the Taliban in Afghanistan to ensure its place at the table of Palestinian politics.

The question for American diplomats now is, do you give Hamas the breathing room its looking for or do you let Israel finish the job? Straight question, tough options, and the Biden administration appears to be doing everything it can to avoid making a tough choice, balancing aid to Israel with humanitarian aid to Gaza, and placing limited sanctions on IDF units accused of war crimes. The Biden administration’s policy still tilts pretty heavily towards Israel, but as I’ve noted in previous newsletters, Biden may try to swing for a final two-state settlement if he thinks he can get it. Hamas appears to have recognized this and is hoping that Biden’s desire to nail down a two-state solution, any two-state solution, will outweigh his “ironclad” support for Israel.