Veteran Israeli negotiator says Netanyahu blocking Gaza ceasefire

A veteran Israeli negotiator has blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for scuttling efforts to reach a comprehensive ceasefire deal in Gaza as he was against withdrawing troops from the besieged enclave for political reasons.

Gershon Baskin, Israel’s “backchannel negotiator” with Hamas in ceasefire negotiations for a long time, says that Netanyahu is the “sole decision-maker” on a potential ceasefire issue but the premier and his allies have “manoeuvred the issue” and politicised it for their own benefit.

“There are people [in Israel] who believe that if you’re calling for a deal and ending the war, you’re, in fact, a traitor to Israel,” Baskin says, apparently referring to far-right political parties and groups which are against any truce with the Palestinian resistance group.

Israel has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in its genocidal war on Gaza during the last 14 months. Tel Aviv has turned the densely populated enclave into a war zone, bombing the infrastructure to an extent that sets back human development in the area “by almost 70 years”.

Repeated attempts to strike a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas have failed since October 2023, even though Netanyahu faces growing pressure at home to end the Gaza war for a safe return of Israeli hostages.

Israel’s security establishment is reportedly open to a trade-off in which Israel withdraws from Gaza to secure the release of the hostages from Hamas’ captivity.

Baskin, however, is confident that a ceasefire could be achieved in the coming weeks.

“There’s an expectation that in about three weeks from now when President (Donald) Trump enters the White House, there would be a deal,” Baskin adds.

He says the ceasefire may materialise after Trump assumes office on January 20 because the president-elect will tell Netanyahu that “it’s time to make a deal”.

“President Trump… is the only person in the world who can effectively apply pressure on Netanyahu,” says the veteran dealmaker, who played a key role in the 2011 negotiation with Hamas for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for the freedom of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.

But even if the ceasefire comes into effect immediately, half of all Palestinian families in Gaza will have “nowhere to go back to” as Israel has destroyed more than one-third of all water and sanitation infrastructure in the besieged territory.

Ceasefire under Trump?

President-elect Trump has publicly called on Netanyahu to wind down the war on Gaza. Trump told Netanyahu during a meeting in July at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that he wanted “the war wrapped up by the time he enters office”.

Saying that Netanyahu “knows I want [the war] to end”, the president-elect noted he does not want people from either side killed.

Baskin says Trump is the “only person in the world” who can pressure Netanyahu into concluding a ceasefire.

“He’s going to have to tell Israel that it has to withdraw from Gaza, it has to withdraw from the occupied territories, it has to enable a Palestinian state to be established next to Israel,” Baskin says.

Netanyahu will have “no one to turn to” for help in the Trump presidency unlike the administrations of presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, Baskin adds.

The outgoing Biden administration has firmly backed Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza by not only blocking UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions but also providing Israel with funds and weapons over the last 14 months.

In contrast, Trump has had a rocky relationship with Netanyahu even though his first administration recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017 and shifted the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the city that most countries consider part of the Palestinian territories.

Trump previously stated that Netanyahu was being “rightfully” criticised for the October 7 incursion by Hamas.

His animosity with the Israeli premier dates back to November 2020 when the latter hastened to congratulate Biden on his win in the presidential election.

Contours of the ceasefire

Hamas said last week Israel has set new conditions that have led to delays in reaching a ceasefire agreement.

News reports quoted an anonymous Palestinian official close to the negotiations as saying that the mediators had “narrowed gaps on most of the agreement’s clauses” without going into the specifics.

According to Baskin, the two sides have been holding negotiations over the ceasefire deal that President Biden presented at the end of May 2024.

The first phase of the proposed deal involves a six-week ceasefire in which about “30 or 32 Israeli hostages” would be released in exchange for an agreed number of Palestinian prisoners.

Israel has demanded that Hamas present a list of hostages that they would release, including young people that Hamas wants to hold on to until the second and final phases of the proposed ceasefire, Baskin says, in an apparent reference to the contentious conditions currently stalling the deal.

“My message to the Israeli people and to the members of the Israeli government is that as long as the Israeli army remains in Gaza, Hamas will remain in power in Gaza. They have an endless supply of new recruits from young people who have no life, who have no future,” he says.