How To End the War in Gaza and Bring Home the Hostages

The following are axioms:

• The war in Gaza will not end until all of the Israeli and foreign hostages are freed from Gaza.
• The war will not end as long as Hamas continues to rule Gaza.
• Hamas may be willing to give up civil governmental control over Gaza to a professional, non-partisan, technocratic government, but it will not voluntarily give up its weapons.
• The war will not end without a significant release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.
• Hamas wants the war to end and for all Israeli forces to withdrawal from Gaza.
• Hamas will not end the war until all Israeli forces leave Gaza.
• The Sunni Arab states around Israel want a unified Palestinian government which is not Hamas to rule the West Bank and Gaza, but not the current Palestinian Authority leadership.
• Prime Minister Netanyahu does not want to end the war.

I am in regular contact with the people responsible for negotiations in Israel, Egypt, Qatar, the United States and Hamas. I have 18 years of experience negotiating with Hamas. I believe that I am the Israeli citizen with the most hours of discussions with Hamas leaders, except perhaps Israeli prison guards and prison authorities and their discussions with Hamas people are entirely different than mine. From what I have been told by several Hamas leaders over the past two months I believe that Hamas’s primary goal now is to end the war in Gaza and for Israel to withdraw all of its troops from the Strip. Hamas will not make any agreement with Israel to release hostages held in Gaza without the end of the war and the Israeli withdrawal.  Hamas will also demand a significant release of Palestinian prisoners from Israel, especially those serving life sentences for killing Israelis. Hamas is will to have their control over Gaza transferred to a professional, technocratic Palestinian government which is not composed of members of the various political factions, including Hamas and Fatah.  Although Hamas has stated that they are willing to turn over all aspects of government to the new non-Hamas government, including security and control of border passages, several Arab intelligence agencies have stated that they do not believe that Hamas will surrender their weapons to the new government.

Assuming that Hamas is willing for a new Palestinian government to be established, most of the Arab states involved, along with the United States would like to see a reunification of Palestinian government, with one authority governing both the West Bank and Gaza. All parties concerned do not see the viability of the current Palestinian Authority, including its latest Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa as having the legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinian street, in the West Bank and Gaza in order to actually govern Gaza post-Hamas. Most of the parties involved would like to see President Mahmoud Abbas appointing a new Prime Minister with much greater independence than Mr. Mustafa has and that the new Prime Minister be granted by Abbas the real powers to govern. Mr. Abbas would remain President, but he would be more ceremonial than what he is today which is in charge of executive, legislative, judicial powers as well as controlling the money and the security.  The newly appointed Prime Minister should be granted the powers to independently appoint a governing council for Gaza (at least) with real executive powers and the ability to invite an Arab-led international peace keeping force to Gaza. If President Abbas refuses to give up power and to appoint a truly independent Prime Minister, then the Arab states, the US and the EU should pressure Abbas to at least appoint a head for a Gaza governing council that would be independent to establish the non-partisan technocrat professional governing council. According to the leaders and people involved in negotiations, Prime Minister Netanyahu has no plan for post Hamas Gaza and has voiced opposition to every plan put forward by the Arab mediators and by the United States.

Hamas has agreed that in a deal to end the war and for Israel to withdraw all of its forces from Gaza, it is willing to release all of the hostages held in Gaza.  Hamas has said that they require 3-5 days of cull ceasefire including no Israeli fly-overs to locate all of the hostages and to know what is their condition. Hamas claims that they do now have that information now, and I believe them.  They don’t have freedom and ability to move around Gaza and their chain of command is quite broken and destroyed. There are hostages that might be held by non-Hamas groups, such as Islamic Jihad or the Popular Front. There might be hostages being held by non-affiliated civilians. There are also likely to be hostages who are buried underneath the rubble of buildings bombed by Israel along with thousands of Gazans who status is “missing”.  It may be that all 101 hostages held in Gaza cannot be returned. When a deal is made, the first test of Hamas’s ability to implement the deal will have to be to produce a list of all of the hostages and their status and that list needs to be given to the Qatari and Egyptian mediators.   It will be difficult for Hamas to lie to the mediators and therefore, the list that they produce will be as accurate as possible.

Israel has legitimate security concerns regarding leaving Gaza. Even if a new Palestinian non-Hamas government is established, as I have heard in Egypt and in Qatar, Hamas will not turn over their weapons to the new government. Turning Gaza into a non-militarized zone is a process that will take time.

First, Israel (and Egypt) must agree that any Hamas civilian or military personnel that want to leave Gaza to a third country that would accept them, should be granted safe passage out of Gaza – most likely through Egypt.

The Hamas or Islamic military people that would choose to leave, would do so, of course without their weapons. The new government in Gaza will form a professional security force. Hamas police and other security or military personnel remaining in Gaza should be encouraged to join the new security force with the enticement of receiving double the salary that they were receiving before.  The new Palestinian non-Hamas government would have to be committed to a non-aggression policy towards Israel, otherwise it will not be supported by the Arab countries (Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and maybe others) and will receive no funding from these countries or from the USA or the EU or other donor nations. Even if the majority of remaining Hamas military people join the new governing security force, or leave Gaza, there will remain more radical armed militants willing to continue their attacks against Israel.  This will be a challenge for Israel, for the Palestinian government in Gaza and for the Arab-led international peace keeping force, but it is not a reason for Israel to not withdraw from Gaza. In fact, the longer Israeli forces remain in Gaza, the longer the war will continue, more Israeli soldiers will be killed and armed insurgency will be supported by the general Palestinian public in Gaza, of whom today a large majority simply want the war to end. Israel will not be facing the Russian army and the forces that remain in Gaza have little access to more weapons, no ability to produce new weapons and severely damaged military command and control capabilities.  Israel forces need to be deployed on the Israeli-Gaza border so that there is a zero chance of another attack such as October 7. Egypt needs to continue to guarantee that the Egypt-Gaza border will be sealed and that the legal crossing point at Rafah will be controlled against smuggling by Egypt from the Egyptian side on the Gaza side, it is advisable that international observers be stationed there, perhaps from the Arab-led international peacekeeping force.

The economic blockade on Gaza must come to an end and Gazans must be reintegrated into the world with the right for movement and access, just like any other people in the world.   The continuation of the economic blockade on Gaza cannot be justified in anyway. Obviously, security systems need to be put in place to ensure the safe passage of people and goods in and out of Gaza.

Israel will have to release Palestinian prisoners in order for Hamas to agree to release hostages in Gaza. This is the price to be paid to retrieve the hostages. Before October 7, 2023 there were 559 Palestinian prisoners serving life-sentences for killing Israelis. Some of them are serving multiple life-sentences for killing many Israelis. Some of these prisoners are considered the symbols of Palestinian terrorism by Israel and these will be the most difficult for Israel to release. As such, they will be the prisoners that Hamas is most anxious to release. Israel will probably not have a choice and Hamas will not agree to an Israeli veto on the names of Palestinian prisoners. One solution might be for the most dangerous (as considered by Israel) of the prisoners to be granted safe passage to a third country (perhaps Algeria, Turkey, Iran, maybe some others). They would not be allowed to return to Palestine according to the agreement.   This was done partially in the Schalit deal of 2011. My advice to the Israeli side would be to allow all other West Bank prisoners to return to their homes in the West Bank. All prisoners released have historically been required to sign an undertaking that they will not return to acts of violence against Israel.  The main reason for this document to be used is that it provides the legal pretext for re-arresting those who violate the terms of their release, as was done in 2014 when 68 prisoners released in 2011 were re-arrested by Israel. By allowing them to remain in the West Bank there is greater ability for Israel to monitor them and to re-arrest them if need be.

The end of the war in Gaza needs to be the beginning of a genuine new regional based peace process to enable the Palestinian people to establish their own independent state next to Israel in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. I won’t go into the contours of what that peace should be.  I will only state that this war in Gaza must be the last Israeli-Palestinian war, but if the occupation over the Palestinian people continues, it will not be the last Israeli-Palestinian war.

Almost everything that I have written above is opposed to by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu. I have heard from very senior sources in Qatar, Egypt, the EU and the United States that the primary obstacle to ending the war today is Prime Minister Netanyahu.   In all honesty, the United States is also opposed to ending the war as long as Hamas continue to control Gaza. But there is a way out. What I have heard from Qatar, Egypt and the USA is that with Netanyahu’s refusal to agree to any possible day-after scenario for Gaza, the mediators are stuck and don’t know how to move forward. To me this is shocking. The formulation of a non-Hamas professional technocratic government for Gaza is a Palestinian issue over which Israel should not be granted a veto. Israel should not be asked or consulted on this matter.  Both Egypt and Qatar have the ability to work with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and other independent Palestinian personalities in order to come up with a solution that enables the legitimate creation of a Palestinian government that can take Gaza forward into reconstruction. This is not a matter on which Israel should even have the right to decide. As long as Egypt and Qatar are satisfied that the new government in Gaza will not be Hamas and will not provoke new attacks against Israel, they should support it and enable the international community to begin to assist in the reconstruction of Gaza.

The President of the United States Biden has said that the war must end. US officials have said that President Biden wants the war to end by the end of his term in office on January 20, 2025.  There are 75 days between Election Day and the day that the new President is sworn into office. That is sufficient time for the US to use its enormous leverage on Israel to even force Netanyahu to accept a deal – assuming that Hamas does not continue to control Gaza after the war ends. If Hamas is willing to release all of the hostages and to give up control over Gaza, then Biden needs to use the full weight of the Office of the President to even force the deal on Netanyahu. There are so many points of US leverage over Israel, I am not even referring to the doomsday leverage of withholding military support and weapons. There is leverage behind closed doors which can be very effective, but there is also the kind of leverage which is used openly and announced publicly and that has proven, in the past to be even more effective on changing Israeli public opinion.

Lastly, the Israeli public is very divided on the issue of ending the war. The division derives from the belief that Hamas will never release all of the hostages and that Hamas will never give up control over Gaza. This is clearly part of the narrative of the Israeli government and it has penetrated deeply into Israeli public opinion. But if it is turns out that Hamas is ready to release all of the hostages and that Hamas is prepared to give up control over Gaza, the overwhelming majority of Israelis would support the deal to end the war and to withdraw from Gaza.  This is what must happen now to bring this war to an end, to return the hostages to Israel, to free Palestinian prisoners and to enable the millions in Gaza to begin the process of reconstruction.