Saturday 17 August 2024

Is a ceasefire in Gaza so close, as Biden claims?

Joe Biden has suggested several times over the last few months that a ceasefire deal in Gaza was imminent but every time the optimism faded away and the bombings continued. Now Biden claims the deal is closer than ever before. I suspect it's more in hope than in concrete. First of all, Hamas is not even present at the current round of talks and second, the new overall leader of Hamas is the very man whom Israel has been desperate to track and kill ever since the October 7 atrocities committed by hundreds of Hamas invaders. Yahya Sinwar who took over the top political Hamas post after the assassination of his predecessor Ismael Haniyeh in Tehran, is Israel's arch enemy. Doing a deal with Hamas under his leadership would surely be anathema to Benjamin Netanyahu. Sinwar, as far as is known, is hiding in a tunnel under one of the cities in southern Gaza and there is no way Netanyahu will allow him to come out and walk around a free man under a ceaefire deal. So the latest imminent ceaefire deal could just as easily fall apart. It's also becoming increasingly clear that many of the Israeli hostages who have now been held for ten months are no longer alive. This is a tragedy which is not going to go away either for Israel or for the Palestinians who have suffered appalling casualties, caught in a terrible war which Yahya Sinwar started.

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