After 200 Days of War, Where Have the Gaza Ceasefire Negotiations Reached?

Relatives of Israeli prisoners demonstrate in Tel Aviv to demand that the government reach an agreement to release the detainees held by Hamas. (AFP)
Relatives of Israeli prisoners demonstrate in Tel Aviv to demand that the government reach an agreement to release the detainees held by Hamas. (AFP)
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After 200 Days of War, Where Have the Gaza Ceasefire Negotiations Reached?

Relatives of Israeli prisoners demonstrate in Tel Aviv to demand that the government reach an agreement to release the detainees held by Hamas. (AFP)
Relatives of Israeli prisoners demonstrate in Tel Aviv to demand that the government reach an agreement to release the detainees held by Hamas. (AFP)

Two hundred days since the eruption of war in the Gaza Strip, ceasefire efforts are still ongoing even though it remains to be seen whether mediators in Egypt, Qatar, and the United States will be able to resolve the crisis.

Since its start on Oct. 7, the war has only stopped for one week, following an Egyptian Qatari-mediated agreement in November during which Hamas released more than 100 of its hostages and Israel freed about three times this number of Palestinian prisoners.

Since that “lone truce,” the mediators have been pushing for another “broader and more comprehensive” agreement, but their efforts have not borne fruit so far. Expert in Israeli affairs at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies Dr. Saeed Okasha attributed this failure to “miscalculations on the part of both sides of the conflict.”

“Tel Aviv accepted the first truce, believing that it would help in relieving pressure, and then quickly decide the battle in its favor. For its part, Hamas hoped it would be able to build an international drive to end the war, believing that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s accepting of the deal would weaken his position and damage his image before the international community because he views the movement as terrorist,” Okasha told Asharq Al-Awsat.

During the past months, the hope of achieving a “truce” rose at times and faded at others, as the mediators’ efforts stumbled at continued “Israeli intransigence” and “conditions” that Hamas was not willing to abandon.

At the end of January, hope was pinned on the “framework of a three-stage truce agreement, each lasting 40 days.” The framework was agreed upon at a meeting in Paris that was attended by the intelligence chiefs of Egypt, the United States, and Israel, in addition to the Qatari prime minister. They expected that the proposal would ultimately lead to talks over ending the war completely.

But this framework, which was described as "constructive" by officials in Israel and the US, did not translate into reality after six rounds of indirect negotiations, which moved from Paris to Cairo to Doha and then back to Paris.

Towards the end of the month of Ramadan, Cairo hosted a new round of negotiations during which the Director of the CIA, William Burns, presented to Hamas a proposal to restore calm. It called for a six-week truce during which Hamas would release 40 Israeli hostages in exchange for the release of 800 to 900 Palestinians arrested by Israel, the entry of 400 to 500 trucks of food aid daily, and the return of the displaced from northern Gaza to their homes.

However, the mediators were unable to convince both parties to accept the deal, so the negotiations reached a “dead end.” Here, Okasha said: “Neither party wants to make concessions, because that means losing the battle.”

He noted that Tel Aviv is seeking to achieve a military victory by invading the city of Rafah, while Hamas is heading toward “political suicide.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry confirmed in an interview with CNN last week that the talks “were continuing and have never been interrupted” even though “an agreement has not been reached yet.”



Bittersweet Return for Syrians with Killed, Missing Relatives 

Syrian activist and former refugee Wafa Mustafa shows a picture of her missing father Ali on her phone after attending a demonstration in Damascus on January 1, 2025. (AFP)
Syrian activist and former refugee Wafa Mustafa shows a picture of her missing father Ali on her phone after attending a demonstration in Damascus on January 1, 2025. (AFP)
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Bittersweet Return for Syrians with Killed, Missing Relatives 

Syrian activist and former refugee Wafa Mustafa shows a picture of her missing father Ali on her phone after attending a demonstration in Damascus on January 1, 2025. (AFP)
Syrian activist and former refugee Wafa Mustafa shows a picture of her missing father Ali on her phone after attending a demonstration in Damascus on January 1, 2025. (AFP)

Wafa Mustafa had long dreamed of returning to Syria but the absence of her father tarnished her homecoming more than a decade after he disappeared in Bashar al-Assad's jails.

Her father Ali, an activist, is among the tens of thousands killed or missing in Syria's notorious prison system, and whose relatives have flocked home in search of answers after Assad's toppling last month by opposition forces.

"From December 8 until today, I have not felt any joy," said Mustafa, 35, who returned from Berlin.

"I thought that once I got to Syria, everything would be better, but in reality everything here is so very painful," she said. "I walk down the street and remember that I had passed by that same corner with my dad" years before.

Since reaching Damascus she has scoured defunct security service branches, prisons, morgues and hospitals, hoping to glean any information about her long-lost father.

"You can see the fatigue on people's faces" everywhere, said Mustafa, who works as a communications manager for the Syria Campaign, a rights group.

In 2021, she was invited to testify at the United Nations about the fate of Syria's disappeared.

The opposition who toppled Assad freed thousands of detainees nearly 14 years into a civil war that killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.

Mustafa returned to Branch 215, one of Syria's most notorious prisons run by military intelligence, where she herself had been detained simply for participating in pro-democracy protests in 2011.

She found documents there mentioning her father. "That's already a start," Mustafa said.

Now, she "wants the truth" and plans to continue searching for answers in Syria.

"I only dream of a grave, of having a place to go to in the morning to talk to my father," she said. "Graves have become our biggest dream".

- A demand for justice -

In Damascus, Mustafa took part in a protest demanding justice for the disappeared and answers about their fate.

Youssef Sammawi, 29, was there too. He held up a picture of his cousin, whose arrest and beating in 2012 prompted Sammawi to flee for Germany.

A few years later, he identified his cousin's corpse among the 55,000 images by a former military photographer codenamed "Caesar", who defected and made the images public.

The photos taken between 2011 and 2013, authenticated by experts, show thousands of bodies tortured and starved to death in Syrian prisons.

"The joy I felt gave way to pain when I returned home, without being able to see my cousin," Sammawi said.

He said his uncle had also been arrested and then executed after he went to see his son in the hospital.

"When I returned, it was the first time I truly realized that they were no longer there," he said with sadness in his voice.

"My relatives had gotten used to their absence, but not me," he added. "We demand that justice be served, to alleviate our suffering."

While Assad's fall allowed many to end their exile and seek answers, others are hesitant.

Fadwa Mahmoud, 70, told AFP she has had no news of her son and her husband, both opponents of the Assad government arrested upon arrival at Damascus airport in 2012.

She fled to Germany a year later and co-founded the Families For Freedom human rights group.

She said she has no plans to return to Syria just yet.

"No one really knows what might happen, so I prefer to stay cautious," she said.

Mahmoud said she was disappointed that Syria's new authorities, who pledged justice for victims of atrocities under Assad's rule, "are not yet taking these cases seriously".

She said Syria's new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa "has yet to do anything for missing Syrians", yet "met Austin Tice's mother two hours" after she arrived in the Syrian capital.

Tice is an American journalist missing in Syria since 2012.

Sharaa "did not respond" to requests from relatives of missing Syrians to meet him, Mahmoud said.

"The revolution would not have succeeded without the sacrifices of our detainees," she said.