The Hostage Truce
The Resistance, right from Iran to Hamas, have hailed the hostage truce as a political and military victory of the Resistance. ‘Israel couldn’t achieve its goal of eliminating Hamas even after seven weeks’ they say. ‘We won’t stop even after the end of the hostage truce’ says Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. The hostage game is tricky to handle because according to the estimated counts released by the Israeli Government, 240 hostages are held by different factions across the Gaza Strip. This includes Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The issue is that Hamas has reported around 70 of them as dead following Israeli airstrikes. No count given by Hamas from Gaza is being taken seriously in Tel Aviv. They still hope all 240 are alive and can be brought back. So they are working to get all hostages back before they resume their operation of eliminating Hamas.
Building Negative Peace
According to the truce deal, Hamas will release 50 hostages, women and children. Israel will release 150 Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank, women and teens not convicted of serious offences. The ratio agreed to as per the deal is 3:1, which some say is because President Biden himself was deeply involved in getting this deal through. Had he not been involved, this ratio wouldn’t have been this low at 3:1. The Resistance has a History of getting 1027 prisoners for 1 Israeli soldier, the ‘Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange’ back in 2011. The Resistance has kept the clause open to keep trading going beyond the four-day agreed truce. Few hostages daily in exchange for 3x prisoners in the West Bank. The US, Egypt and Qatar, the three who got the deal cracked are all working to keep building on this negative peace (cessation of violence).
The South
More aid is flowing into Gaza with around 130,000 litres of fuel released on Day One of the truce. For every day extended, Palestinians could be somewhat secure from bombardment while Hamas would regroup in the South. Israel is literally sitting in Gaza City with a demarcated line going beyond Wadi Gaza as the North-South divide. The Israel Defence Force is using the time to dig deeper into the Hamas tunnel network to understand how to counter the infrastructure in the South. The issue in the South is that the civilian population is mixed with Hamas command, which has fled into the South. The US has encouraged Israel to build “safe-zones” where the civilian population can be relocated while eliminating Hamas.
The Game
This is a game between Iran-led Axis of Resistance and the Western empire in West Asia. The Western world has a divided opinion on the Israeli approach of War. There is neither a consensual approach on the Islamic side. The West debates the way Israelis are conducting the war while maintaining sanctity on the two-state solution. The Islamic side is caught up between ‘cut-off all-ties with Israel’ and ‘Israel is the occupation force but let’s keep talking’, which is what the Arabs are advocating.
For Israel, eliminating Hamas is a way of deterring any aggression from any Islamic Resistance across the region. They have faced the combined Arab aggression, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah and the cold war with Iran. They understand that the only thing that will deter Islamic Resistance is a cold victory over Hamas in Gaza. The Israeli leadership has reiterated that they will design the post-Hamas security architecture in Gaza and they will keep it under conditions that do not threaten the security of Israel. The US and partners have called for restoration of Palestinian Authority’s powers back in Gaza but the Israeli leadership have rejected the idea citing lack of credibility in PA’s Governance.
Peace & Piracy
If the momentum in truce is prolonged enough to stretch negative peace as much as might be needed to establish institutional deconfliction mechanisms, we can be looking forward to peace-making. Peace-making phase is also crucial because we might have a situation where the conflicting parties will try to shape the order that will benefit them while entering the peace-building phase. This will inherently bring chaos. Hence, peace in the region, for a considerable time period is not possible when we factor in the high risks of escalations that the resistance groups across the region provoke to do. We saw how Houthi fighters landed from a helicopter onto a ship travelling from Turkey to India via the Red Sea. Houthis got the ship docked in Yemen and have seized it because they think it belongs to an Israeli whereas reports claim the owner is of Japanese origin. Japan has condemned the act of piracy in the strongest of terms.
