One of two issues will decide the fate of both the war in Gaza and the Netanyahu government in the coming weeks. Which of them it is will be decided in either Cairo or Washington. From one of those capitals of countries which are essential to Israel’s strategic priorities will come an offer that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will try and resist.
In Cairo the talks are ongoing on a major agreement to release all the hostages remaining in Gaza, whose official number is 136, but 27 of whom are already believed to be dead. The Egyptians are not brokering the talks, going between rooms in which teams of Israeli and Hamas representatives are sitting, out of the goodness of their hearts. They are losing hundreds of millions of dollars each month with shipping in the Red Sea under fire from Houthi rockets and the major cargo companies routing their fleets around Africa, bypassing the Suez Canal, Egypt’s main source of income.
The Egyptians don’t believe that the airstrikes on Houthi bases by American and British fighter-jets will change the situation anytime soon. Their solution is a ceasefire in Gaza and they are applying pressure on both sides. Towards Hamas they have direct means of coercion: the Rafah crossing (and the tunnels under the border) are the only lifeline Hamas’s military wing have out of Gaza. Egypt, when it chooses, can decide who and what will go in or out. Their levers of influence over Israel are more subtle.
As one veteran negotiator in the Middle East once said: “Some deals are made in the market, where there many things on sale for any price. And then there are boutique deals, where you know exactly what you are going to get and how much it will cost. You just have to decide if you’re prepared to pay the price.” Unlike the previous hostage release agreement, where it was unclear until the last moment how many hostages would eventually be freed, the deal on the table in Cairo is a boutique one.
All the hostages are to be released in return for thousands of Palestinian prisoners and a comprehensive ceasefire. And on both sides there are disagreements on whether to pay the price. The political wing of Hamas is in favour. The military chiefs and especially Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, are insisting that Israel also release its fighters who were captured during this war, including the perpetrators of the massacres on October 7. Since there is no way Israel will accept that, and the Egyptians aren’t about to present such a deal, Sinwar for now is prepared only to release some of the prisoners. In addition, he demanded a ceasefire as a precondition of the talks, but the Egyptians ignored that and invited a Hamas negotiating team to Cairo anyway.
In the Israeli case, the Egyptians are relying on a factor that doesn’t exist in Gaza: the pressure of public opinion and parliamentary politics. The Israeli public, at least according to the polls, is split almost evenly on the question of whether the return of the hostages is a price worth paying for ending the war before Israel has achieved its objective of destroying Hamas’s capabilities in Gaza. Likewise in the war cabinet, Netanyahu and his defence minister Yoav Gallant are opposed to such a deal, while Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot are prepared to discuss it.
Beyond the tactical and strategic considerations, Netanyahu also has political calculations. He knows without a doubt that if he accepted such a deal, the far-right parties in his coalition, Religious Zionism and Jewish Power, would quit the government, leaving him at the mercy of Gantz, who is way ahead of him in the polls and could then force an early election at the time of his choosing.
He faces a similar conundrum with the proposal coming from Washington. The Biden administration has continued to support Israel and defended it from the calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. But it is increasingly focused on what will happen on the day after. The administration’s plan is that the Saudis and Emiratis, who are on board, will underwrite the multi-billion dollar costs of rebuilding Gaza, but only if the work is carried out on the ground by a ”revitalised” Palestinian Authority and the diplomatic process towards a two-state solution, which will include the prospect of diplomatic ties between Israel and the Saudis, is relaunched.
On this, Netanyahu is all but isolated in the war cabinet, with the exception of Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, who supports him on nearly everything. Gantz, Gallant and Eisenkot are not necessarily enamoured of the Palestinian Authority or the two-state solution. They believe that it is far from inevitable, and, as has happened so many times in the past, that the process will be scuppered at some point by the Palestinians. But meanwhile they’re against saying an outright no to the Americans.
In other circumstances, Netanyahu might also have been prepared to go along with that approach. After all, he stood by the Oslo Agreements as prime minister, met both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, and even accepted in principle the two-state solution in his Bar-Ilan University speech in 2009. But he wasn’t dependent then on far-right coalition partners. He is so worried about them bolting that so far he has prevented any discussion of the American proposal at cabinet level.
But Gantz’s patience is running out as well. With the military campaign in Gaza starting to transition to the next stage, in which fewer soldiers will be involved on the ground, and it looking increasingly as if Hezbollah (and Iran) are not interested in escalating the situation on the Lebanese border, beyond the current short-range daily missile strikes, his calculations are changing as well. His presence in the war cabinet, along with Eisenkot, may soon no longer outweigh what he sees as the risk to Israel of Netanyahu’s coalition remaining in power.
The deal being brokered by the Egyptians is not formally on the table quite yet, and President Joe Biden has so far displayed almost infinite patience with Netanyahu’s prevarications. But even that will at some point, in the not-too-distant future, run out. Whatever happen first, an Egyptian deal or serious American pressure, will be the moment Netanyahu has to make the call that will decide the fate of the hostages, how the war ends, what happens in Gaza on the day after, and what kind of government Israel will have, at least until an early election is almost certainly called.
