You can also listen to the interview in the audio version.
Israel on Monday called on civilians in the Gaza Strip to evacuate parts of the city of Rafah. The Israeli military has been talking for weeks about a plan to launch a ground offensive on the city, which is the only one in the region it has not yet entered, and where 1.4 million civilians are sheltering from war. Without this action, according to Israel, the defeat of terrorists from the Palestinian movement Hamas is impossible.
A few hours later, Hamas announced that it was accepting a ceasefire proposal presented by Egypt and Qatar. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded that the proposal did not match what his country had agreed to and did not meet Israel’s demands. But he is ready to continue negotiations.
Jan Daniel from the Institute of International Relations believes that Israel is pursuing mutually incompatible goals in the negotiations – on the one hand, it wants to free the hostages and on the other, to destroy Hamas, and therefore refuses to commit to a long-term ceasefire.
“Which makes no sense from Hamas’ point of view. In this way, he would get rid of the last negotiating cards he has and would only delay the next military operation that is supposed to destroy him,” says an expert on the Middle East in an interview with Seznam Zprávy.
Meanwhile, Israel continued its strikes on Rafah. On Tuesday morning, his troops occupied the Rafah border crossing, the only official link between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, through which most humanitarian aid flows into the region.
Despite Israel’s impending Rafah offensive, Hamas announced on Monday evening that it was accepting a ceasefire proposal. The Israeli government wants to continue negotiating the agreement. What does this development mean?
Hamas’ statement must be seen in several dimensions. They thus increase the pressure on Israel and the agreement by actually saying that they are willing to end the war and release the hostages. Which – as we could see – the Palestinians in Gaza were celebrating because they could potentially return to their homes.
Public opinion in Gaza and pressure on Hamas is another variable. In recent weeks, there have also been increasing reports of criticism of Hamas in Rafah itself and of protests by Palestinians. So this may be a tactic by Hamas to try to end the conflict and score some points with the civilians.
We have heard from Israel that the proposal that Hamas has accepted is not one that the Israeli government is willing to agree to. She didn’t comment very specifically, but it seems that she disagreed with the shape of the proposal regarding the future of the Gaza Strip after the initial cease-fire period, as well as with specific numbers of hostages alive or bodies already deceased.
This may be a delaying tactic and an attempt to please the extremist parts of Netanyahu’s coalition and their voters. So the Israeli government is declaring here that its foreign partners are not playing a fair game with it, a story that suits these political forces. Just like the mistake of the Israeli government, which did not send its negotiators to Cairo earlier and which signaled in recent days that it would carry out the operation in Rafah regardless of the negotiations.
John Daniel
He graduated from the international relations doctoral program at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the UK, and currently works as a researcher at the Institute of International Relations and head of the Center for the Study of Global Regions there. The subject of his professional interest is international intervention, changes in ideas about security and its role in society, and political and security relations in the Middle East and North Africa.
Photo: Archive of Jan Daniel
John Daniel.
So negotiations are underway today (Tuesday). What can be expected?
In the long run, basically nothing. However, Israel said it would send its negotiators to discuss the proposal directly. But it is a big question to what extent the Israeli position is believable.
The problem is that Israel pursues mutually incompatible goals in negotiations and in military operations. According to his words, he is striving to destroy Hamas in Gaza, but at the same time he wants to free the hostages.
On the one hand, Israel says it is willing to negotiate a truce that would see the release of some hostages, but at the same time refuses to commit to a longer-term, or even permanent, truce. Which makes no sense from Hamas’ point of view. This would get rid of the last bargaining chips he has and only delay the next military operation to destroy him. All this under conditions where it is not clear what should actually happen to Gaza after the end of the conflict.
At the same time, Israel continues its military operation in the territory of Gaza. What does it mean?
It’s a continuation of that trend where Israel says it’s willing to act, and we’re hearing from the Israeli side that some type of deal is on the table, but at the same time they’re signaling that they’re going to continue the military operation. We don’t know exactly why that is. Do they want Hamas to agree to their demands and thus increase the pressure on them, or do they really want to carry out a large-scale military operation.
I can imagine that at the moment they have simply decided to do both, whereby the current Israeli government coalition manages to signal to the United States that they are trying to act, but at the same time to extremist voters and parties that they are still capable of invading Rafah. Moreover, if they can claim to have achieved some military success, such as destroying another Hamas cell.
I believe that from the Israeli side, the military operation is also a reaction to Sunday’s attack by Hamas, although the Israeli army refuses to comment officially.
Earlier on Monday, Israel began evacuating Palestinian civilians in Rafah. Could it have forced Hamas to make concessions?
Some Israeli military sources anonymously told the media that the call to leave a specific area in Rafah is part of a negotiation strategy where Israel is trying to show Hamas and everyone else that an intervention can really happen and what the consequences will be.
If this strategy is the goal, I find it extremely cynical because it has a significant impact on the civilians on the ground and their already extremely bad situation. This is further aggravated by the simultaneous closure of the border crossings in Rafah and Kerem Shalom, through which humanitarian aid came to Rafah. It is also good to remember that this is not an evacuation, but a call to go to another part of the Gaza Strip, which is supposed to be safer.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear last week that he will attack Rafah, regardless of whether a ceasefire agreement is reached or not. What will the offensive look like and how long do you think it will last?
We can’t estimate that yet. Again, it depends on the interplay of decision-making by Israeli officials, the form of resistance from Hamas and others on the ground, and international pressure. For now, we see a military operation in the Rafah area, as well as its encirclement and cut off from Egypt, when the Israeli army occupied the border crossing to Egypt in the morning.
However, the Lebanese Hezbollah, which has long threatened to expand its involvement in the conflict if there is an attack on Rafah, can also speak to the offensive.
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What do you think the Israeli military will consider a success? Is it realistic to eliminate Hamas and free the hostages as part of the Rafah offensive?
Israel claims that the goal is to free the hostages and destroy Hamas, but so far the military operation has failed to do so. The first of the objectives, however, does not succeed as part of the entire operation. So far, only the hostage units have been freed by the military action. At the same time, we know that the hostages were also killed by Israeli army fire.
How the Israeli government wants to achieve these goals is the question. While mass protests in Israel are calling for an agreement to release the hostages, the current cabinet is primarily seeking military success and perhaps killing someone from the senior leadership of Hamas. This would finally give some significant result to the effort to completely destroy Hamas by military means, which the Israeli government promises.
Do Palestinian civilians who have been ordered to leave East Rafah after half a year of war, when almost everything in the area is destroyed, have nowhere to return?
In my opinion, the evacuation of all civilians from Rafah is not realistic. As I mentioned above, this is not actually an evacuation, rather the Israeli army has called on civilians to leave a certain sector of the Gaza Strip for another, several kilometers away. How they do that is up to them, it’s not like Israel is evacuating them. But the Israeli army did the same thing earlier when they sent Palestinian civilians to Rafah.
Israel says it has designated zones that are likely to be free of Hamas infrastructure and is urging civilians to relocate there. It must be remembered that the bombing of Rafah and even these marked zones had already taken place before. These are not places that are 100% safe. The trust of Palestinian civilians towards the IDF is thus zero.
Civilians who have been ordered to leave have been in a desperate and hopeless situation for months. It is also a question of whether humanitarian aid will be available where they are moving. Provisional reports indicate that, according to humanitarian organizations, the prepared infrastructure is completely inadequate for the arrival of tens of thousands of exhausted people.
A planned offensive
Israel claims that without a ground offensive into the city of Rafah, a real defeat of the Hamas terrorists is impossible. However, the United States, European countries and humanitarian organizations fear that the attack will end in a massacre of civilians.
Western allies do not support Israel in a possible offensive. Does this attitude continue?
How the international community reacts to this could be crucial. In fact, everyone, including Israel’s close allies, spoke out against the Rafah offensive going ahead. Above all, in the current context, when the protection of civilians is not ensured and when the objectives of the operation and the political future of Gaza are not clearly defined.
We do not hear voices of support, but rather appeals to curtail the operation. Recently, there have even been reports that the United States, according to some sources, has withheld ammunition shipments as a means of pressuring Israel.
