Experts and analysts said that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) provided an intelligent response to the ceasefire proposal, and that the ball is now in the court of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was counting on the resistance’s rejection of any agreement so that he could move forward in continuing his war.

During an interview on Al Jazeera, Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, said that Hamas’ response was expected and threw the ball in Israel’s court, which failed to achieve any of its goals.

Barghouti added, "The resistance provided a response that combines an absolute cessation of aggression and taking into account the needs of the residents of the Gaza Strip, that is, it combines the political and the humanitarian."

He said that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's speech from Doha confirms the clear bias towards Israel, because he "did not mention a single word about the aggression, occupation, settlement, or Palestinian rights."

Trying to achieve gains for Israel

Barghouti pointed out that Blinken "tried to transform what was going on from a battle between the Palestinians and the occupation into a battle between the United States and the rest of the world and Iran, as if Iran was the problem and not Israel."

Barghouti believes that the US Secretary of State is "determined to ignore the main disease represented by aggression and focus on the symptoms that resulted from it in order to absolve Israel from bearing responsibility for its crimes."

In addition, Blinken has returned to talking about immediate normalization with Israel in exchange for an unspecified time path to establish a Palestinian state without sovereignty, as Al-Barghouti says, who believes that the United States is “trying to impose a new Oslo, and all its focus is on using this path to achieve normalization at the expense of the Palestinians.” .

In the end, Israel failed and was eventually forced to negotiate with the resistance, which it vowed to eliminate, even though there are dangerous trends inside Israel, according to Barghouti.

In turn, political analyst Dr. Muhammad Halsa said, “The resistance returned the ball of fire to the feet of Netanyahu, who was waiting for Hamas’ rejection of the agreement proposal in order to move forward with his war.”

Halasa believes that Netanyahu "will market to the Israeli street that the resistance's positive response, which the State of Qatar said called for optimism, is a rejection and that accepting it means Israel's defeat and surrender."

Halasa believes that Netanyahu “will increase the internal division and disagreement with America, which offers him a major gift by normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia.”

Washington is tired of Netanyahu's games

As for former US State Department official William Lawrence, he said that Netanyahu leans toward the extreme right, but at the same time he believes that Washington is “tired of these games and wants to end the matter.”

Also, in Lawrence's opinion, the Qataris and Egyptians played an important role in recovering the "hostages" (prisoners), which became part of the American strategy, as he put it.

Lawrence believes that the focus on the internal Israeli position is “excessive,” because ending the fighting - in his opinion - depends on America telling Israel that continuing the war is harmful to its interests.

Washington is also talking seriously about a Palestinian state, and this is happening for the first time in decades, which means there may be an interest in establishing this state that the Israelis do not want, according to Lawrence.

For his part, political analyst Iyad Al-Qara said that Hamas had overcome the pressures exerted on it during the last period, and responded intelligently after it thwarted the most important goal of the war, which was to crush the resistance after 4 months of devastating war, adding, “We are in a stage of biting fingers and Hamas has given the mediators a greater opportunity.” "to move."

Source: Al Jazeera