by Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture:
The core issues at the heart of release of hostages held in Gaza were two: A complete cessation to the war and full withdrawal of all Israeli forces.
Netanyahu’s position was that whatever the hostage outcome, the IDF would return to Gaza and that the war there might continue for ten years, he said.
These were the most sensitive words in Israeli politics – with Israeli politics electrically polarised around them. The continuation or fall of the Israeli government could hinge on them: The Right had warned that they would quit the government unless the invasion of Rafah were green-lighted; the Biden position, however, was communicated to Netanyahu by phone as not just ‘no Rafah light’, but rather, ‘Rafah zero’.
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Then these explosive words – cessation of military operations and complete Israeli withdrawal – burst forth in the final text as agreed by the mediators in Cairo; and subsequently in Doha, on Monday, taking Israel by complete surprise. CIA Chief Bill Burns had represented the U.S. in both sessions, but Israel had chosen not to send a negotiations team.
Multiple Israeli sources confirm that the Americans gave no ‘heads up’ of what was coming: Hamas announced the bombshell agreement; Gaza erupted in victory celebrations, and huge protests besieged the government in Jerusalem, demanding acceptance of the Hamas terms. It was tense. There was a whiff of civil war to the huge protests.
The Israeli government alleges that it was ‘played’ by the Americans (i.e. by Bill Burns). It was. But to what end? Biden was adamant that a Rafah incursion must not proceed. Was this Burns’ means to achieving that objective? Using ‘sleight of hand’ in the negotiations (inserting the ‘red-line’ words) into the text without telling Tel Aviv in order to get to ‘yes’ from Hamas? Or was it to precipitate a change of government in Israel? Its policy on Gaza whas beenas imposing a very heavy election campaign toll on the Democratic Party.
In any event – after the Hamas bombshell announcement – the IDF went ‘Rafah light’, taking the empty Philadelphia corridor (in breach of the Camp David Accords), incurring few casualties, but keeping Netanyahu’s government intact.
Maybe the little deception ‘to get Hamas to ‘yes’’ was viewed in Washington as a clever ploy – but its consequences are uncertain: Netanyahu and the Right will share dark suspicions about the U.S. role. Washington has shown itself (in their view) as an adversary. Will this episode make the Right more determined; less ready to compromise?
In this context, the base division within current Israeli politics is salient. A small plurality of Israelis (54%) believe that there is legitimacy in comparisons between the holocaust and the events of 7 October. And we can see that the conflation of Hamas with the Nazi party is increasingly common amongst Israeli (and U.S.) leaders – with Netanyahu describing Hamas as “the new Nazis”.
Whether we agree or not, what is being said here through this categorisation is that a plurality of Israelis harbour existential fears that the gathering storm surrounding them is the start to a ‘new holocaust’ – which, in turn, implies that the ‘Never Again’ amorphism translates into a binary kill or be killed injunction (drawing on Biblical texts for Talmudic validation).
To understand this is to understand why those few words inserted into the negotiation proposal were so explosive. They implied (in the view of half of Israelis) that they would have no option but to ‘live’ or ‘die’ under the threat of renewed holocaust (with Hamas predominant in Gaza and Hizbullah in the north).
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