Urgency to avoid Iranian retaliation against Israel drives Gaza ceasefire talks

Last week, in an unusual joint communiqué, the countries mediating a ceasefire in Gaza — the US, Egypt and Qatar — called for a meeting on August 15 for Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement without any more “excuses” and “with no time to waste.” They offered to draft a “final proposal” that “meets the expectations of all parties.” The idea (mentioned twice in the note) that “the time has come” to put a gradual end to the invasion, by means of a pact allowing the return of the 100 or so hostages remaining in Gaza, is not new: it has been present for months in the messages of Joe Biden’s administration. What is new is the context of maximum regional tension, in which the importance of a successful dialogue is increasingly oriented towards avoiding reprisals from Iran and Hezbollah to the most recent fire Israel has lit in the Middle East with the assassination two weeks ago, and in barely 24 hours, of the number two of the Lebanese militia, Fuad Shukr, in his fiefdom in Beirut and, it is presumed, of Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

The world has since held its breath for the response — joint or separate — and the ensuing Israeli reaction, which it is feared could escalate into regional war. Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that his army is prepared for a “quick transition to offense.” “As things stand, [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah may drag Lebanon into paying extremely heavy prices. They can’t even imagine what might happen,” Gallant added.

Negotiations are scheduled to begin Thursday in Doha, the capital of Qatar, and will last several days. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Wednesday with his negotiating team and approved its “mandate.” Hamas has announced that it will not send representatives, in a decision that is more symbolic than influential because they are, in any case, indirect negotiations: Hamas leaders and Israeli officials never meet in the same room.

Hamas justifies this on the grounds that the mediators should “force” Israel to “implement what has been agreed” — based on the proposal that Biden made at the time and to which Netanyahu introduced modifications — instead of “engaging in new rounds of negotiations or new proposals” that “give more time” to Israel to “continue its genocide” in Gaza.

The ambassadors of three of Israel’s main allies — Washington, Berlin and London — met Wednesday in Tel Aviv, at the headquarters of the forum pressing for the release of the hostages, to call for the deal to be approved. On Monday, Hamas announced that a guard killed one of the hostages he was in charge of and, in another incident, two others were seriously injured. The Israeli army said it has received no information to confirm or deny these reports.

Never in the 10 months of the Israeli invasion has the ceasefire in Gaza been less about the Strip. Not only because of the prevailing feeling — including among Israelis of different political persuasions, according to the polls — that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for personal interest, but also because of the urgency to provide Iran and Hezbollah with a symbolic victory that will allow them to hold off on carrying out a retaliation that both have described as “certain.”

In reality, the Lebanese militia has been saying for months that it will stop firing shells at Israel as soon as it stops bombing Gaza, but Netanyahu treats these as separate problems and insists on continuing to bombard the Strip until the “final victory.” Many in the Israeli government and army want to go all out with Hezbollah now, to draw its elite forces away from the border and return the tens of thousands of displaced people in the area to their homes.

“I hope so”

The link between the end of the horror in Gaza and the defusing of Tehran’s retaliation was expressly made Tuesday by the U.S. president, who noted that it is his “expectation.” A day earlier, three Iranian regional government sources anonymously pointed it out to Reuters as the only thing that would deactivate the response. Amos Hochstein, Biden’s envoy who forged the maritime delimitation agreement between Israel and Lebanon in 2022, sounded more cautious on Wednesday in Beirut: “I hope so, I think so,” he said.

“We continue to believe that a diplomatic resolution is achievable because we continue to believe that no one truly wants a full-scale war between Lebanon and Israel,” he said after meeting with Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament and a Hezbollah ally who leads the other major Shia movement in the country, Amal. Another of his interlocutors, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, admitted that diplomatic efforts are focused on “preventing a war and stopping Israeli aggression.” Hezbollah has begun moving people and computers in Dahiya, its emblematic neighborhood in Beirut where Israel assassinated Shukr. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to travel to the area, but has cancelled the trip.

Among the diplomatic efforts is a joint appeal by the United States, Germany, and France that did not sit well with Tehran. They asked it not to respond to the humiliation of the assassination of its guest Shukr, who had been invited to attend the inauguration of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian. Israel has not acknowledged responsibility for the attack, which it generally does in this type of operation. Tehran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani noted Tuesday that “it lacks political logic” and “amounts to public and practical support for Israel” by “blatantly asking Iran not to respond to the violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity” while “raising no objections to the international crimes” of Israel. Washington has just approved another arms package to its ally, worth more than $18 billion and consisting mainly of 50 F-15 warplanes.

The regime of the ayatollahs, meanwhile, uses vague words to leave several doors open. Its UN mission insists that retaliation for Haniyeh is “a totally unrelated matter” to the Gaza ceasefire negotiations but also that it will carry it out at a “time and in a manner” that “will not be detrimental to the potential ceasefire.” And, like Hezbollah, it uses uncertainty as a weapon, causing the cancellation of numerous flights to Tel Aviv and generating anxiety among Israelis, who every week receive WhatsApp and Telegram hoaxes or information about an imminent attack. “Waiting is part of the punishment, of the response,” Nasrallah said earlier this month.

As diplomacy moves, so does the U.S. military machine heading to the Middle East. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin has announced the dispatch of the guided missile submarine USS Georgia (a rare occurrence, as the Pentagon does not usually report the movements of its submarine fleet) and ordered the Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier with F-35 fighters, to speed to the region from near the Philippines, where it will join the already deployed Theodore Roosevelt. Washington will also send more fighter jets and warships.

For its part, the Israeli army has deployed elite units in the north of the country to act as a rapid intervention force, given the possibility that Hezbollah’s retaliation could include not only the foreseeable launching of rockets, anti-tank shells, and explosives-laden drones, but also the infiltration of militiamen, as was the case of the Hamas-led surprise attack on October 7, 2023, according to the Maariv daily.

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