The Negotiations In Cairo

Contrary to the expectations that some had voiced, the war in Gaza has obviously not been easy. It is a dynamic and vicious conflict whose impact goes beyond Palestine and Israel. It has stretched as far as the Red Sea and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, with alliances flaring and different projects becoming entangled with one another.
The naval war has caught the United States by surprise. The Houthis launching ballistic missiles had not been on the cards, and the US had not anticipated that they would sink ships and undermine global maritime trade, strengthening piracy at sea, and stoking chaos.
Predicting the scope of such wars, which generally tend to snowball, is impossible. If the actions of a single madman could ignite a World War, then the belligerence of the two sides waging this war and their maximal demands could aggravate this war and the suffering it is creating, as well as expand its scope. While it might seem limited to a troubled coastline and complicated terrain, it is a major war. Amid Israel’s forceful push to make greater territorial encroachments, and with the prospect of a ground invasion into Rafah looming, this conflict could go on for months.
Major impediments stand in the way of the negotiations. The Palestinians are divided, and there are divisions within every Palestinian faction as well. Hamas is not a monolith, and its extreme military wings refuse to make concessions. At the time of writing, we still see Hamas officials claiming that "eliminating the Israeli entity" is a goal that Hamas has set for this war.
For its part, Israel has set two objectives, and both are more about security than they are political: the destruction of Hamas and the liberation of the hostages. Despite some of the Israelis involved suggesting that the government limit itself to the second goal, to avoid exhausting its military further and adding to the number of casualties, Netanyahu is determined to fight this war to the end. Although this war is about both personal and military outcomes for Netanyahu - personal because as its trajectory will decide his fate and his prospects of remaining in power, and military in the sense that he wants to prove that he can win to the Israeli public - his approach to the negotiations will remain intransigent and he will continue to make gambits, even if that means losing the elections.
The mass psychological backlash among Israelis is not against Netanyahu personally but the entire government. The Israeli people are not opposed to continuing the war, nor to the objective of eliminating Hamas, but towards "retribution." This war is not only about security, and the ideological direction it is taking makes ending it difficult... It is not a war to teach the other side a lesson or break Hamas’s back. It is a war of revenge. Once we recognize this fact, the severity of the deadlock at the Cairo negotiations and the major impediments to reaching an agreement become evident.
For the first time since Israel’s founding, Israeli society internally feels threatened. True, Israel has achieved partial objectives: dismantling all of Hamas's key infrastructure, eliminating its stockpile of missiles, and taking out senior officials. However, these achievements are not enough to convince Israelis that the threat has been eliminated. In Israel's view, the Hamas government’s local administrative capabilities must be dismantled before there can be any discussion of who will manage the Gaza Strip, and only after that can it work on ensuring that Gaza poses no risk to Israel.
This is not a conventional war. It is entirely different from the wars Israel fought in South Lebanon, the Palestinian Intifada, or the Gaza War of 2008... This is an existential war; this does not imply Hamas has the capacity to eliminate Israel, but it is well-known that militant movements can shake powerful political entities. Indeed, Israelis compare what happened on October 7 with what happened to the US on 9/11. Al-Qaeda did not bring down the United States, but it shook US national security.
Talking about an existential threat means using every tool Israel has at its disposal to safeguard its national security; this is how the Israeli government and the Israeli people think. Some observers see this war as something like a "Second War of Independence," meaning that it is a second foundational war, implying a new approach to the Palestinian question as a whole and a broad reassessment and redefinition of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Biden and Harris’s statements about the war emphasize two points: firstly, humanitarian aid and pressuring Israel, "as much they can," to facilitate the entry aid. This approach has left Israel silent and the US airdropping aid. Secondly, engagement in negotiations that could bring about one of two outcomes: one is a truce or calming of tensions, and the other, which is highly unlikely (at least right now), is a ceasefire and an agreement to completely end the war; the latter will almost certainly not happen within months.
Hamas's statements are confusing. Its political discourse - that of its political bureau - seeks to balance its statements because its allies in the region are pushing it to allow for a breakthrough. However, the discourse of its military wing is extremely acrimonious. That makes it difficult to understand what Hamas wants from Israel. Hamas's political discourse is in a difficult phase. While Khaled Meshaal and Musa Abu Marzouk talk about readiness to negotiate, sometimes stating that a return to the pre-October 7 status quo as their negotiating position (terms Israel rejects), we see the faction on the inside speaking ideologically, giving us the impression that there is no end in sight to this war. The military faction speaks of eradicating the entity from the root, a goal that all Hamas leaders know cannot be achieved. This split has been an impediment to agreeing on the terms mediators can build on, alter, and add to.
In conclusion, this war - with its intensity, massacres, and the number of victims who have fallen - will continue to mark the region for a long time. The primary focus now should be on humanitarian aid, as an agreement or truce seems extremely far-fetched; it would take a miracle or a change in the means of engagement.
Throughout history, warring sides have unfortunately generally come to an agreement only after an unprecedented massacre shakes the world and pushes everyone to rise up (as happened in the Dayton Agreement), or once both parties become exhausted and thus more open to a deal. In both cases, however, the civilians caught in the crossfires bear the brunt of the devastating war. There is no such thing as a wise or ethical war; in war, primal instincts and urges are stirred, and reason is paralyzed.