THREAD: On Monday 10 February Abu Ubaida, spokesperson of the Martyr Izz-al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, announced that the movement was indefinitely suspending further Israeli-Palestinian exchanges of captives on account of repeated and continued Israeli violations of the agreement reached between the two in January of this year.
While Israel has indeed been violating the agreement in various ways, there is also more to the story. Most importantly this concerns Israel’s refusal to commence negotiations on the the agreement’s second phase, and US President Donald Trump’s recent proposal for the forcible mass expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to the Arab world.
The January agreement between Israel and Hamas is about more than an exchange of captives. At Israel’s insistence, it comprises three phases rather than one. During the first phase, scheduled to last 42 days (until the beginning of March) a limited exchange of captives and suspension of hostilities will be accompanied by a partial Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, freedom of movement within the territory for displaced Palestinians, and surge of urgently-needed humanitarian supplies.
Although the objectives of the second phase are identified as a conclusion of the exchange of captives, a durable ceasefire, and completion of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the details have yet to be worked out. Rather, the parties agreed that negotiations for the second phase would commence on the 16th day of the first phase, and that the suspension of hostilities would persist while negotiations continue, even if these are not concluded by the end of the first phase. The third phase of the agreement, which primarily concerns reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, also remains to be negotiated.
Since concluding the agreement, Israel has continued with periodic attacks within the Gaza Strip, killing approximately 25 Palestinians since 19 January. While these violations are on a considerably smaller scale than Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement reached with Lebanon late last year, they are needless to say calling Israel’s commitment to its obligations into question nonetheless.
On the humanitarian file Israel has been obstructing and dragging its feet in a more systematic fashion. While there has indeed been a surge in supplies since the agreement came into force, Israel has been consistently preventing the entry of tents and caravans, particularly to the northern Gaza Strip. A significant issue under any circumstances given Israel’s systematic destruction of the Gaza Strip’s housing stock and the inclement weather in mid-winter, the issue has taken on clear political dimensions as well in the context of Trump’s proposal to permanently empty the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian inhabitants.
With respect to the scheduled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the second phase of the agreement mediated by Egypt and Qatar, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin recently dispatched his negotiating team to the Qatari capital, Doha, but with clear instructions not to engage in discussions on the conclusion of the second phase of the agreement. Rather, he is proposing to extend the first stage of the agreement so that it includes additional exchanges of captives. In other words, he wants to complete the captive exchange during the first phase and thus retrieve all remaining Israelis being held in the Gaza Strip, without having to complete the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory or commit to a durable ceasefire as envisioned during the second phase.
Netanyahu’s attempted sleight of hand, while slightly different, echoes the criticism he received last year from senior Israeli officers in response to his refusal to conclude a ceasefire agreement. Sign the agreement, they advised him, retrieve the captives, and we can then very easily manufacture a pretext to resume the military campaign.
Netanyahu additionally put forward a proposal whose elements are nowhere to be found in the January agreement and constitute an attempt to comprehensively rewrite it: in exchange for an Israeli commitment to not resume its genocidal military campaign, the Hamas leadership would be required to depart the Gaza Strip, dismantle its military capabilities, and terminate any role in its governance and administration. Needless to say, the Palestinians are not going to concede to Israel around the negotiating table what it failed to achieve on the battlefield. In other words, a non-starter.
As for Trump’s harebrained Gaza Riviera proposal, it needless to say renders the January agreement’s third phase on reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, and for that matter much else, thoroughly moot and irrelevant.
It is in this context that Hamas decided it needed to demonstrate it had its limits and was not going to be further intimidated or taken for a ride. Its military spokesperson Abu Ubaida announced the suspension of any additional exchange of captives until further notice, while also pointing out that the announcement is being made on Monday while no exchanges are scheduled before Saturday. If the violations cease, he indicated, the exchange of captives can resume according to schedule.
As has been concluded by virtually every serious observer and analyst since mid-January, Netanyahu was dragged kicking and screaming into this agreement by the incoming Trump administration, and has from the outset been determined to avoid entering into its second phase for a variety of personal, ideological, and strategic reasons. The Hamas announcement was therefore music to Netanyahu’s ears, and Israel immediately placed its military on alert, cancelled leaves, and resumed intensive jet and drone overflights of the Gaza Strip.
Responding to the announcement in Washington, Trump raised the stakes yet further: if “all” the “remaining [Israeli] hostages” are not released by High Noon this coming Saturday, he would “let all hell break loose” and “Hamas will find out what I mean”.
Given Trump’s erratic and often self-contradictory pronouncements, which makes understanding his agenda akin to conducting a political analysis of yogurt, it’s unclear if he means all remaining Israeli captives, the limited number scheduled for release this week, or indeed anything at all. If he does indeed mean that all remaining Israeli captives should be released this week, it renders the entire January agreement, including its first phase, irrelevant and transforms it into ink blots on shredded paper.
As I have noted previously, a key question regarding the Trump administration and the January agreement is whether the new US president was merely in search of an easy diplomatic victory in order to bask in its refracted light during his inauguration, and would thereafter lose interest or line up solidly behind his Israeli proxy, or whether in contrast to the Biden administration Trump wanted to launch a serious Middle East diplomatic initiative.
What we can conclude are two things: the decision on a resumption of Israel's genocidal military campaign will be made not by the Israeli government but by the United States. If the January agreement is placed back on track, it will be because Israel has been instructed to comply with its obligations by the White House. If it resumes hostilities, it will be because Israel has received a green light from Washington to derail it.
Should the latter be the case, it’s entirely possible and even probable that Israel will not wait until Saturday to resume its aggression, and could well extend its geographical scope well beyond the occupied Palestinian territories.
Hamas is unlikely to be cowed by Trump’s cowboy talk. From its perspective there is little if anything Israel and the US can do that has not already been tried and failed during the Biden years. More importantly, its leadership felt compelled to act to prevent the January agreement, and with it what prospects remain for a durable ceasefire, from disintegrating.
Hamas appears to also be banking on pressure upon from two directions that have played an only minor role so far. The first is the Israeli public, which appears to be mobilizing more energetically than previously in order to sustain an agreement already being implemented. The second is Arab governments. Largely inert in response to genocide within the borders of Palestine, they are now being confronted with a US initiative that affects them directly and is intended to be implemented within their own borders. The ramifications this can have on their security and stability appears to already be having an impact on their willingness to act. END
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