Will there be a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip?
Daniel DePetris
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Will there be a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip?
For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, the answer is a quick and emphatic “no.” Or at least it’s a “no” as long as Hamas, the terrorist organization that committed the worst attack in Israel’s history, continues to hold the approximately 240 or so hostages it captured on Oct. 7. As Netanyahu stressed on U.S. television last week, “there’ll be no ceasefire, general ceasefire, in Gaza without the release of our hostages.”
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Israel’s position has been remarkably consistent on this point. Netanyahu reportedly rejected an offer earlier in the conflict that would have traded a five-day suspension of Israeli airstrikes for the release of some of the hostages. While this firm position has no doubt upset some of the immediate families who have loved ones stored somewhere in Hamas’s tunnel network, Netanyahu’s hawkish line suggests his priority, or at least his higher priority, is the offensive against Hamas. Everything else, including negotiating prisoner releases, is lower on the list.
The Biden administration would like other items to be just as significant. Foremost among them is alleviating a dire humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, where more than 2 million Palestinians are living day to day without some of the most basic needs many of us take for granted. While dozens upon dozens of trucks carrying aid are arriving in the enclave every day, demand still outpaces supply by a hefty margin.
Hospitals and medical clinics in Gaza are running out of the fuel that powers the generators, which in turn power the medical equipment used to treat the injured. The health crisis has reached a point where Palestinian doctors are performing surgeries without anesthesia and clean water. More than 11,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed over the last four weeks, more than three times the number of Palestinians who died during the five-year Second Intifada. The scenes coming out of the enclave have caused large protests throughout the Middle East, Europe, and parts of the United States.
As the fighting has gone on, the White House has felt greater pressure from its allies on Capitol Hill. On Nov. 8, the majority of the Senate Democratic Caucus wrote to President Joe Biden requesting information on the mechanisms in place to ensure Israel is abiding by the laws of war.
There is significant opposition about the Biden administration’s stance on the war from within the State Department, with one dissent memo leaked this week stating that U.S. “tolerance” for a high civilian casualty rate in Gaza undermines Washington’s claims to be a champion of the so-called rules-based international order. According to CBS News, senior State Department officials held a listening session for diplomats in six U.S. embassies in the Middle Eastern region in what was the diplomatic equivalent of a grievance session. The last thing the White House wants is a divided house during a time of war.
A break in the fighting is therefore not only imperative for Palestinians living in Gaza but also for the administration. The U.S. has deferred to Israel on whether a ceasefire is appropriate, yet it hasn’t been shy in pressing the Israelis for short-term pauses to let more humanitarian aid in and more people out of the immediate conflict zone. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stated this position numerous times over the last couple of weeks, as has Biden himself. If the U.S. can’t stop or resolve the war, then it can at least settle for the next best thing: making the war more manageable for the civilians living in it.
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Fortunately, the administration has brought Netanyahu on the same wavelength — at least for now. Israel will now implement daily four-hour pauses in the fighting in northern Gaza, where the bulk of Hamas’s military capabilities is located. Another road will be opened up to allow the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians still in the area to flee to southern Gaza. Biden also asked Netanyahu for a three-day cessation of hostilities in order to accelerate negotiations with Hamas over the hostages, but those requests (as best we can tell) were declined.
How will these daily humanitarian pauses be implemented? And how long will they last? White House national security spokesman John Kirby was asked the second question directly, yet all he could say was that the administration wanted the pauses to stay in place for as long as they’re needed. It wouldn’t be surprising to anyone if the U.S. and Israel had different opinions on how the word “needed” is defined.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.