Akbar Shahid Ahmed
It is a bit of a Groundhog Day situation. There’s no denying that the contours of the agreement we now see between Israel and Hamas, negotiated by the US — with Egypt and Qatar as mediators, since those two parties don’t talk to each other directly — are the same terms that have been on the table since May last year. Hamas publicly said “yes” to those terms in July 2024. Not a lot has changed from that point of view.
The contours of the agreement we now see between Israel and Hamas are the same terms that have been on the table since May last year.
There is a very serious sense that the Israelis had been the sticking point, despite the fact that the US was very often saying, “No, it’s Hamas that has been the obstacle.” The defenders of this outcome — which means the Israeli government and the outgoing Biden administration — argue that they were able to get a deal now because Hamas has been weakened by all these months and months of fighting. That is a line of argument we have heard repeatedly from the Biden administration throughout its unchecked support for Israel’s offensive on Gaza from January 2024 onward.
They were saying, “The Israelis are putting so much pressure on Hamas, they’re going to come to the table to get a deal.” They said this in January; they said it in March; they said it over the summer. It’s not a line of argument that I think carries a lot of tangible weight in terms of whether Hamas was willing to agree. Hamas had been clear that they were willing to agree.
I think the argument is that the war in Lebanon happened and Hezbollah turned out to be something of a paper tiger. Israel certainly proved to have greater capabilities to degrade it than people thought, and that changed the dynamic in terms of whether Hamas could expect to have support from the outside.
Another very…
Auteur: Akbar Shahid Ahmed
