The Deal: A Guide for the Perplexed by Seth Mandel
https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/the-deal-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=
The emerging ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is a perplexing document, because the strongest argument in its favor is that the agreement will earn Israel President-elect Trump’s gratitude. Since the value of that goodwill is by definition unknowable, the deal should be judged on its own terms.
Here’s what to expect, barring last-minute changes, and what it means for the future of the conflict.
The ceasefire would begin with Hamas releasing three Israeli hostages (likely to be American citizens) and Israel beginning to remove its troops from populated areas of Gaza. A week later, Hamas is expected to release four more hostages—at which point Israel will begin allowing Gazans to return to north of the Strip. According to the BBC, cars, animal carts and trucks would pass through an Egyptian-Qatari-operated scanner, while the people would go on foot.
The rest of the first phase would see, over the course of about a month, Hamas release another 25 or 26 hostages, most of whom are believed to be alive. Israel would continue facilitating the return of Gazans to the north of the strip while redeploying its troops out of Gaza—save for a half-mile buffer zone on its eastern and northern borders and in the Philadelphi Corridor in the south. Israel would also release about 1,000 Palestinian security inmates in Israeli jails. Of those, nearly 200 are in prison for murder or serving long-term sentences for violence. These would be sent to live outside of the Palestinian territories.
Israel and Hamas are supposed to negotiate the second phase of the deal as they implement the first phase. In the second phase, Hamas would release the remaining hostages in return for another to-be-determined number of Palestinian inmates in Israeli jails. Israel would withdraw from the rest of Gaza. A third phase would see Israel trade the bodies of deceased Hamas fighters in return for the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages.
What’s good about this for Israel:
—The reunions of more than two dozen hostages with their families is obviously top-of-mind. The country has been tormented for fifteen months over its missing, during which time Hamas’s cruelty has been boundless. Hostages have been tortured, abused, starved and humiliated—children and adults alike—and many of their families have been left to wonder if they are even still alive. Unlike Hamas, Israelis so value the lives of their fellows that every returned captive brings some relief to a suffering country.
—Israel will also have delivered for Donald Trump, whose envoys bulldozed all Israeli concerns so that he could begin his second term with a win. Delivering for an incoming president rather than an outgoing president means Israeli leaders believe (or live in hopes) that their concerns on other regional issues will be heard. That could mean an improvement in the flow of U.S. arms and aid, cooperation on limiting or destroying Iran’s nuclear program, support for Israel’s operations in Syria and Lebanon, Saudi normalization, and a suitably aggressive posture toward the ICC and the UN as well as any countries that are tempted to join their extrajudicial harassment of Israel and Israelis.
—Retaining some control over the Philadelphi Corridor is crucial to preventing the resumption of smuggling routes underneath Rafah and into Egyptian territory. Holding buffer zones along the rest of the border means the Israeli communities in the “Gaza envelope” will be better protected and will facilitate the deployment of troops back into Gaza hotspots. So long as Israeli troops control both sides of all Israel-Gaza borders, those borders will be more secure than they have been, arguably since 1948.
—Any significant reduction in fighting, even if temporary, will boost Israel’s economy and relieve some of the strain on its 300,000 reservists.
What’s bad about this for Israel:
—The withdrawal of troops to a buffer zone will guarantee Hamas survives for now and coalesces support and recruits while it has the chance. In turn, that means the IDF will be back in the parts of Gaza it is currently leaving. The war goes on under the façade of “peace.”
—The honeymoon from conventional Western policy toward the Middle East is over. In Trump’s first term, he put together a team of envoys that questioned stale thinking and thereby facilitated perhaps the most important regional diplomatic breakthroughs since the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace deal. This team featured US Ambassador David Friedman, Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and others. This time, Trump’s envoy is Steve Witkoff, who is content to carry the outgoing Biden administration’s policies across the finish line, which are based on the age-old—and failed—protection of Hamas’s legitimacy and a bias toward the status quo.
—Israel has agreed to leave the Netzarim Corridor, a road that bisects Gaza and enables the IDF to contain recurring spurts of violence from spilling over into the rest of the enclave. That corridor begins right near Kibbutz Be’eri, where Hamas terrorists slaughtered over 100 civilians and took thirty hostages in the early hours of its Oct. 7 invasion. Israel’s disengagement from the corridor will mean it is facilitating the return of Gazans to their homes in the north before many of Israel’s own citizens can safely return to their homes near Gaza.
—The release of violent Palestinian terrorists and inmates will represent security threats, boost loyalty to Hamas and in some cases Hamas’s manpower, and incentivize the taking of future hostages. Hostage-taking, in fact, will be seen as the only successful method of Palestinian “resistance” and the only consistent advantage that terrorist groups have over the West.
—Qatar, the longtime patron of Hamas, facilitated this deal, and in doing so, displayed the considerable influence it will have over a Trump White House.
What’s good about the deal for the Palestinians:
—The ability for many to return to their homes amid a reprieve in Gaza’s longest war. Israel will continue providing the strip with humanitarian aid.
What’s bad about it for the Palestinians:
—Hamas was the reason for the devastation in Gaza, and Hamas is being left in power, which means any reprieve is temporary.
~The survival of Hamas, even in a greatly weakened state, means Mahmoud Abbas will die without seeing the return of the Palestinian Authority to the territory it lost to Hamas. This means Hamas’s influence in the West Bank will surge despite Israel’s devastation of it. The Hamasification of the West Bank, in turn, would sound the death knell for Palestinian self-determination, since there will be no Palestinian party to negotiate with Israel and both Palestinian territories will slide into Iranian satrapy.
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