In October 2018, the three parties came to a three-stage agreement: a mutual cease-fire (with no restrictions on the Palestinians’ right to demonstrate peacefully up to 500 meters from the border fence), aide in setting up a power station that runs on gas, Qatar’s continued bankrolling of wages and aid for needy families and rebuilding the ruins of Gaza to the tune of some $600 million.
The article below, from the Israeli paper Ha’aretz, written in 2021, provides the background to the deal done in 2018 which was broken by the Hamas assault on 7 October 2023. It also explains why Netanyahu is so desperate to obtain a victory over Hamas at any cost – even the lives of the hostages.
Martin
After a decade and a half of ruling the Gaza Strip, Hamas has positioned itself as the Palestinian Authority’s competitor, and as a political organization that can determine the rules of the game for Palestinian. It has amended its charter to open the possibility of diplomatic negotiations, opted to take part in the Palestinian legislative and presidential elections and paved the way to ruling all of the Palestinian territories. Such an organization doesn’t collapse because its senior officials are killed. They have replacements.
Hamas has turned its military weakness vis-a-vis Israel into a political advantage. Its ideological positions – refusing to recognize Israel and to engage in diplomatic negotiations with it – has become an effective strategy. It leans comfortably on Israel’s own strategy of separating the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.
As far as Israel is concerned, this is a necessary separation. It justifies its objection to any peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority under the pretext that it doesn’t represent all of the Palestinian people, and that it is especially incapable of reining in Hamas. There’s no point in holding peace talks with one part of the Palestinian leadership, Israel says, while the other, the one ruling Gaza, continues its terror acts, doesn’t recognize Israel or the Oslo Accords, is supported by Iran and is well-connected to Hezbollah. Hamas couldn’t have expected a firmer basis on which to establish its status as the force that dictates the Palestinian Authority’s next moves, or any attempt to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians.
A contradictory assumption
The reciprocal conflicts between Hamas and Israel, the inhumane siege Israel imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2006 and the appalling poverty this siege has caused have turned against their creators. Instead of a civil uprising against Hamas, the weekly March of Return demonstrations have broken out on the border fence. Instead of surrender, international and Arab pressure on Israel has developed. This process has created a triangular Egypt-Israel-Hamas axis, whose tactical goal was to obtain quiet in exchange for economic aid, opening the Rafah border crossing and moving hundreds of millions of dollars from Qatar to Hamas’ coffers.
In October 2018, the three parties came to a three-stage agreement: a mutual cease-fire (with no restrictions on the Palestinians’ right to demonstrate peacefully up to 500 meters from the border fence), aide in setting up a power station that runs on gas, Qatar’s continued bankrolling of wages and aid for needy families and rebuilding the ruins of Gaza to the tune of some $600 million. In contrast to this lifeline to Gaza, an Israeli law passed three months earlier allowing the government to deduct the money the Palestinian Authority pays out to security prisoners and the families of terrorists from the taxes paid to the PA.
It seemed at the time that the balance of military deterrence between Israel and Hamas could be replaced by an agreement buying quiet for Israel in exchange for padding Hamas with funds. Israel also assumed then that Hamas had no interest in generating a new military conflict, because it could lose its economic gains and sabotage its ability to rule its people. This assumption contradicted itself. If Hamas is a terror organization that isn’t moved by damage or the death of civilians in Gaza, as Israel maintains, why should it stop the confrontation with the Israeli military, which represents a core element of its ideology? On the other hand, if Hamas needs quiet and economic development to survive, why not open the economy completely, lift the siege and let them build infrastructure in Gaza, thus considerably lowering the chances of a violent conflagration?
The answer is political. It lies in the inverse relationship between broadening Gaza’s economic base and the public criticism in Israel, which will see such a move as a “surrender to Hamas” and “a concession to terrorism.” It was not just the right-wing parties, but centrist ones as well who accused Netanyahu of funding Hamas after he allowed Qatar to hand them suitcases full of money. But this formula of “quiet for cash,” on which Israeli military and intelligence officials based their situational assessments, was missing a vital component. It ignored the broader national and political context in which Hamas operates. This is reflected in two Hamas moves that took the intelligence experts by surprise: Hamas’ ultimatum that “by six in the evening” the police must remove its forces from the Temple Mount and release the people it arrested, and the implementation of that ultimatum.
Both moves not only shattered the accepted assumption according to which Israel was working, they were “astoundingly brazen.” They also made it especially clear that the divide between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and especially between Jerusalem and Hamas, existed only for Israel.
The problem for the “quiet for cash” issue is that it is not working any longer. As another article in Ha’aretz from today makes clear, Qatar no longer has traction over Hamas.
Martin
“Qatar has no more means to apply on Hamas. At most, it can deport the Hamas leadership to another country, but that would mean losing its ability to continue to serve as a mediator, especially as deportation could cause the Hamas leadership to go to Iran or Syria, which would little serve the interest to negotiation for the release of the hostages,” a European diplomat close to the negotiations told Haaretz.
He continued, saying that “relations within Hamas and its decision-making hierarchy have been in turmoil as a result of the war, to the point that it is not fully clear how much Ismail Haniyeh, Khaled Mashaal, and even the Shura Council, the movement’s supreme guiding body, can impose their demands on Yahya Sinwar, who appears to be the sole director of the negotiation terms.”
The conclusion is that the external Hamas leadership has itself become a mediator between Sinwar and the mediating countries, including Israel, and it can no longer be sure of Sinwar’s intentions, and the consequences of his actions on the movement’s future.
Qatar had levers to pressure and influence the Hamas leadership inside Gaza so long as it was Hamas’ primary financier – both when it was founded in the 1980s, and under the “quiet for cash” project that operated in close cooperation with Israel.
In previous negotiations between Hamas and Israel following military operations, Qatar was the country that provided financial guarantees, not just to Hamas, but also to Egypt, so that it could fulfill its share in Gaza’s reconstruction, as it did after the 2021 Gaza war.
Although the question of financing’s Gaza reconstruction is not currently on the agenda as a condition for negotiating the release of the hostages, rebuilding Gaza is one of the clauses that Hamas is demanding. It could become crucial if agreements are reached allowing residents to return to the northern Gaza Strip, and for rebuilding infrastructure, which would call for vast financial resources.
Qatar cannot guarantee that Israel will fulfill its part of any agreement – the U.S. will likely be responsible for that – but it can guarantee financing for reconstruction, which will satisfy Sinwar’s demands.
Martin Plaut 