A last-ditch effort to defuse the crisis in the Middle East, before it develops into a second major proxy war alongside that of Ukraine, is being made by the United States, Egypt and Qatar with a horizon of crucial negotiations on August 15. A far worse war than the one in Gaza with 40,000 dead and 100,000 wounded in ten months could break out at any moment from a knee-jerk reaction, from a provocation, from a miscalculation on one side or the other, with the danger that direct involvement of the US which guarantees its security Israel against him Iran and have strengthened their forces in the region.
A heavy shadow on the mediation efforts was cast by the new strike with dozens of dead Palestinians in a school in Gaza, where refugees had taken refuge, on Saturday morning (10/8). Israel admits it bombed the building, but insists it was a “terrorist headquarters”.
No margin
And if there were still doubts that the road to – even temporary – peace in the region passes through the ruined Gaza Strip and the Palestinian issue, they were dispelled by the joint statement of the three governments on Thursday evening that “there is no more time for loss, nor excuses by either side for further delay” in reaching a ceasefire agreement. The message was accompanied by a warning from Washington to Tehran that if it strikes Israel it will face “very serious consequences”.
The Iranian regime and its proxies in the region threaten large-scale missile attacks on Israel, which in turn warns that it is capable of destroying key Iranian infrastructure and turning Lebanon into Gaza. Both Iran and Hezbollah have declared that they will respond “in a tough way, at an appropriate time” to the killing of the head of the Hamas Politburo Ismail Haniya in Tehran on July 31. According to Western reports, the new president of Iran Massoud Pezeskian reacts to pressure from the Revolutionary Guards (who report directly to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei) to strike Tel Aviv, while one of the scenarios predicts that Hezbollah will unleash the first wave of retaliation.
Israel, without confirming or denying that it killed Haniya, said it intends to attend the August 15 negotiations in Cairo or Doha. However, if it is attacked in the interim, all possibilities are open, let alone if Tel Aviv or Haifa are targeted. The plan to invade South Lebanon and/or a “preemptive strike” on Iran remains on the table of the Israeli staff.
The invisible Sinuar
After Haniyeh was killed, the Council (Shura) of Hamas, which met in Qatar on the day of his funeral, entrusted the leadership of the organization to the “gunpowder-smoked” but absent leader of Gaza Yahya Sinuarmastermind of the bloody October 7 raid in Southern Israel.
This means three things: First, that Israel’s number one most wanted terrorist, if he remains alive, will also formally make the final decision on the terms of a ceasefire and the release of those 120 Israeli hostages who remain alive. Second, that members of Hamas’s political leadership who live outside Gaza and are not necessarily aligned with Sinwar are largely relieved of the burden of a decision, which he would otherwise have to implement. Third, that the Sunni Palestinian organization is getting even deeper into the arms of Iran’s Shiite mullahs, risking to identify completely with them and their proxy in Lebanon, the Shiite Hezbollah.
In this light, the reference in the joint statement of the US, Egypt and Qatar that “a framework agreement is now on the table and the details of its implementation remain to be determined” is of particular importance, as well as the indication by the three mediators that if necessary they are ready to present “a final proposal to bridge the differences, in a way that will satisfy the expectations of all sides”.
Hamas claims to be included in the first stage of the “prisoner exchange”. Marwan Barghouti (Fatah) and o Ahmad Saadat (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), who are serving life sentences in Israel for terrorism. Perhaps it is an irony of history that the Netanyahu and Sinuar, who are called to negotiate through third parties, have been on parallel paths since 2011, when the former as prime minister released the latter, then serving life in Israeli prisons. Sinwar was one of 1,027 Palestinians exchanged by the Netanyahu government for an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, who spent five years in the hands of Hamas after being kidnapped during the group’s raid on southern Israel in 2006. The Hamas operation is called that Sinwar’s brother was involved, while during the exchange of the Israeli soldier his Palestinian guards were strapped with explosives, ready to detonate if anything went wrong.
On the release of Shalit as well as the “mowing of the lawn” in Gaza (a euphemism for targeted operations to exterminate opponents) Netanyahu built the “Mr. Security” narrative, until it was bitterly refuted on October 7. Netanyahu is also criticized for allowing the Qatari financiers of Hamas to send millions of dollars in suitcases to Gaza, which became cement for the tunnels, in order to remove the prospect of a Palestinian state.
Russia and China
The Americans’ study of a ceasefire is also dictated by Russia’s and China’s growing interventions in the region. Moscow appears ready to bolster Iran with new weapons systems, while Beijing hosted, eight days before Haniya’s assassination, representatives of Hamas, Fatah and 12 other Palestinian organizations who signed an agreement to form an “interim government of national reconciliation” ».
The longer the war in Gaza drags on, the more US political capital in the Arab world is depleted, while economic bleeding is added to the human toll. In Israel the cost of the war reached 25 billion dollars and the budget deficit rose in July to 8.1% of GDP. The cost in lives and money will skyrocket for all involved as the fire spreads…
#Middle #East #Solution #Brink
