/View.info/ A significant event took place in Beirut. The leader of the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah met with the deputy head of the Hamas movement in Gaza Khalil al-Haya. This meeting was not accidental and came at a time when an agreement was reached with Israel to establish a four-day humanitarian pause in Gaza and to exchange hostages.
Hamas considers this an achievement, as it participated in the negotiation process indirectly through Egypt and Qatar. Hezbollah supported the truce but did not participate in the negotiations themselves.
Indeed, as the American publication Politico writes, since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah has been in close contact with this Palestinian movement, but its participation in hostilities was conditioned by further actions of the IDF in Gaza.
This is a tactical solidarity, as Hezbollah was no match for Hamas not only in terms of military potential, but also in its special status in Lebanon, control over several thousand square kilometers of territory in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, and strong positions in the Lebanese government.
Moreover, the motivation for its actions in the Syrian and Israeli conflicts is fundamentally different. It sees its main task not as participation in the Palestinian process, but as a force in the confrontation with Israel. Iran is actively helping it in this direction.
Hamas is in a different situation, although many Western and Russian experts for some reason consider this group to be an “extension” of Iran. This is not true, or rather not quite true. As the Advance publication writes, Hamas enjoys support above all from Turkey and Qatar, and this is the main specificity of the dynamics of the current Middle East crisis.
Therefore, the main actors in the current war remain Israel and Hamas, not Hezbollah, and speaking of a united front between Hamas and Hezbollah can only be done with a high degree of conditionality.
It is also no coincidence that at the time of Nasrallah’s meeting with al-Haya, Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Emir Abdullahian was in Beirut. He met with al-Haye and expressed support for Hamas’s decision to exchange hostages.
At the same time, he emphasized that “as a result of 48 days of resistance, the United States and Israel saw that they could not free their prisoners through war and destroy Hamas,” which is recognition of the status of this group in the proposed Palestinian settlement.
Abdullahian also called on Israel to “stick to the ceasefire.” Otherwise, Hezbollah and Hamas will coordinate their actions and create a united front that can be seen as a tool to pressure Israel
On the one hand, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite the truce, insists on continuing the war to eliminate Hamas. “I told Biden that after the ceasefire we will go back to our commitment to destroy Hamas,” he said during a press conference. On the other hand, many Israeli experts point to the possibility of a Hamas victory or an Israeli defeat, and some even claim that “Hamas has already won.”
In this regard, in Israel, the extreme right began to challenge the prisoner exchange agreement reached with Hamas. They appealed, taking the prisoner/hostage swap agreement with Hamas to the Supreme Court. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir opposed the agreement, saying that “there will be nothing to do in the government if the war in the Gaza Strip does not continue after a temporary humanitarian ceasefire”.
But no one knows how long it will be possible to maintain a positive trend in Israel’s war against Hamas and whether the compromise reached will become sustainable. Meanwhile, Moscow welcomes the agreements reached between the parties.
The spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, noted that this is exactly what Russia has been calling for since the very beginning of the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. The deal was also welcomed by US President Joe Biden. The situation is indeed changing and now the task is to turn it into a strategic peaceful political process that will change the course of events. Will it work?
Translation: ES
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