{"id":34133,"date":"2024-06-02T12:16:24","date_gmt":"2024-06-02T19:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=34133"},"modified":"2024-06-02T12:16:25","modified_gmt":"2024-06-02T19:16:25","slug":"bidens-bold-gaza-cease-fire-gambit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/06\/02\/bidens-bold-gaza-cease-fire-gambit\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden\u2019s Bold Gaza Cease-Fire Gambit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yair Rosenberg\/The Atlantic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Biden\u2019sPresident Joe Biden. (photo: Patrick Semansky\/AP)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

01 june 24<\/strong> (RSN.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The president has pushed events as far as he can, but even American presidents have their limits.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For weeks, American officials have referred to an \u201cextraordinarily generous<\/a>\u201d offer made by Israel to secure a cease-fire and hostage deal with Hamas in Gaza. Today, President Joe Biden told the world what that offer actually is. Speaking from the White House, Biden laid out<\/a> a multistage \u201cIsraeli proposal\u201d for ending the current war and called on Hamas to accept its terms, and for the Israeli leadership to stand behind the deal despite internal right-wing pressure to fight on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis new proposal has three phases,\u201d the president said. \u201cThe first phase would last for six weeks. Here\u2019s what it would include: a full and complete cease-fire, a withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza, the release of a number of hostages\u2014including women, the elderly, the wounded\u2014in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American hostages, Biden noted, would be freed during this time, while Gazan civilians would return to their homes and humanitarian aid would surge into the Strip. Notably, this latest proposal contains a key Israeli concession. Prior negotiations ran aground after Hamas insisted<\/a> that it be able to include dead hostages, as opposed to just living ones, in the number required by the agreement\u2019s first phase. In his speech, Biden indicated that Israel had now acceded to this previously rejected stipulation. \u201cSome remains of hostages who have been killed will be returned to their families,\u201d he said, \u201cbringing some degree of closure to their terrible grief.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Negotiators, the president continued, would use the six weeks of the deal\u2019s first phase to hammer out its next one, which would serve to secure the release of the remaining living hostages and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Biden made sure to note that the cease-fire would be extended as long as these negotiations were ongoing, even if they were not complete at the six-week mark. The agreement\u2019s third and final phase would couple an international initiative to rebuild Gaza with the release of the bodies of any remaining hostages. \u201cIt\u2019s time for this war to end,\u201d the president concluded, \u201cand for the day after to begin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For close observers, most of the information in Biden\u2019s speech was not new. Many details from the negotiations between Israel and Hamas had already been leaked to the Israeli and international press. But Biden\u2019s remarks are the first time that the terms of the proposed deal have been officially confirmed. By making this material public, Biden clearly hopes to pressure the parties to finally come to an agreement. But the key decisions remain beyond his control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To begin with, contrary to some mistaken reporting<\/a>, Hamas has rejected every Israeli offer to date\u2014and the terrorist group has good reason to think that this strategy is working in its favor. In the past month alone, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, while the International Court of Justice called for Israel to curtail its operation in the southern-Gaza city of Rafah. With global pressure only increasing on Israel, the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar may be content to wait for outside actors to compel Israel to accede to his demands and end the war without his releasing a single hostage. This will lengthen the hostilities, during which Palestinian civilians will pay the price, but Hamas\u2014which embeds itself among civilians and built its war machine out of aid and infrastructure intended for civilians\u2014has openly said<\/a> that it is not responsible for Gaza\u2019s civilians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also has reason to torpedo this proposal\u2014even though he probably authorized it. As Biden said in his remarks, Israel has indeed made far-reaching offers to Hamas to wind down the war. But a proposal made behind closed doors by negotiators is not the same as one that can withstand the public pressures of Israeli politics. Biden made explicit reference to this challenge in his speech: \u201cI know there are those in Israel who will not agree with this plan and will call for the war to continue indefinitely\u2014some are even in the government coalition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Netanyahu has a long history of painstakingly negotiating sensitive agreements only to jettison<\/a> them<\/a> after backlash from his right-wing base. And Netanyahu\u2019s base\u2014to say nothing of his far-right partners\u2014does not want to end this war, believing that the total elimination of Hamas should supersede other war aims. The prime minister\u2019s most hard-line allies also dream of resettling Gaza<\/a>, which any cease-fire deal would preclude. Given this reality, it\u2019s entirely possible that Netanyahu could turn on a proposal that he himself initiated if he thinks it imperils his political standing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For now, the prime minister is characteristically keeping his options open. In response to Biden\u2019s speech, Netanyahu\u2019s office released a short, carefully worded statement: \u201cThe Government of Israel is united in its desire to return the hostages as soon as possible and is working to achieve this goal. The Prime Minister authorized the negotiating team to present a proposal to that end, which would also enable Israel to continue the war until all its objectives are achieved, including the destruction of Hamas\u2019s military and governing capabilities. The actual proposal put forward by Israel, including the conditional transition from one phase to the next, allows Israel to uphold these principles.\u201d Israelis are currently observing Shabbat, so the full contours of the country\u2019s reaction to Biden\u2019s remarks\u2014and the pressures on Netanyahu\u2014won\u2019t be apparent until later in the weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, Hamas released<\/a> a statement to the media declaring that it would not return to the negotiating table unless the fighting stopped beforehand. If the group sticks to this absolutist stance, which would leave all of the hostages under its control, Biden\u2019s appeals will go nowhere. In response to Biden\u2019s speech, however, Hamas appeared<\/a> to indicate greater flexibility without explicitly signaling agreement to the details of the proposed deal, whose fate remains in limbo. The president has pushed events as far as he can, but even American presidents have their limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: https:\/\/www.rsn.org\/001\/bidens-bold-gaza-ceasefire-gambit.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yair Rosenberg\/The Atlantic President Joe Biden. (photo: Patrick Semansky\/AP) 01 june 24 (RSN.org) The president has pushed events as far as he can, but even American presidents have their limits. For weeks, American officials have referred to an \u201cextraordinarily generous\u201d offer made by Israel to secure a cease-fire and hostage… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34134,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34133\/revisions\/34134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}