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)

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.”