Since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, Qatar has been co-leading the negotiations between the two parties to release Israeli hostages in return for a multiday truce and the release of several Palestinians in Israeli detention. The ceasefire, which was extended several times, ended on Friday. Below, Carnegie Middle East Program Director Amr Hamzawy explores the ceasefire’s short- and long-term impacts.
Qatar was the chief negotiator. How did it end up in that role?
Qatar has hosted Hamas’s political leadership since 2012. The small, oil-rich state has also helped fund the Islamist movement’s rule in Gaza. These two realities have ensured Qatari influence over Hamas and made the movement susceptible to Doha’s political and financial preferences. In previous rounds of violence between Israel and Hamas, such as the Gaza war of 2014, Qatar contributed to ceasefire efforts that Egypt led.
In the past few years, Qatar’s diplomatic role has delivered, under difficult circumstances, negotiation rounds to ensure a measure of stability and peacekeeping. Qatari diplomats have acted as a go-between in different conflict zones and hosted talks that bring together highly antagonistic sides. In 2008, Doha hosted a Lebanese National Dialogue conference that broke a long governance deadlock between Shia Hezbollah and various Sunni and Christian groups. In 2020, the Qatari government helped broker a U.S.-Taliban peace accord for Afghanistan that later led to the withdrawal of American and coalition partners.
In the current war, Qatar has effectively brought together its influence over Hamas and the diplomatic expertise garnered in conflict areas to help co-lead the negotiations with Egypt. The fact that Qatar also has stable economic and political ties with Israel has enabled it to be seen by Israel as a credible mediator.
Were other regional players involved?
Egypt has always been a key player in shaping on-the-ground realities in the strip, and mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas are no exception. In previous clashes in Gaza, Egypt was the main go-between and always led successfulnegotiations to restore calm.
As Gaza’s only additional neighbor, Egypt has long-standing security concerns regarding the role of Hamas and other Palestinian factions. Egypt’s national interest has always been to avoid both instability in Gaza and any forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt, as well as to contain illicit trade, including arms smuggling. Since Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza in 2007, the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza has become instrumental in securing the safe passage of essential goods to the more than 2 million Palestinians living under harsh conditions. Before the current war, the Egyptian government cracked down on Hamas’s smuggling activities, destroying hundreds of tunnels that reached into the Egyptian territory in the Sinai Peninsula.
However, Egypt’s security establishment has kept close ties to Hamas. Egypt has also hosted several rounds of Palestinian reconciliation talks tailored to end the conflict between the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and Hamas and its allies in Gaza.
On the other hand, Egypt has the longest-standing peace treaty with Israel in the Middle East, signed in 1979. In recent years, security and trade cooperation between Egypt and Israel have evolved in multiple ways, leading to an environment of trust between the two governments. This included the Israeli government’s acceptance of more Egyptian troops close to the borders between Israel and Egypt, as well as the borders between Egypt and Gaza in the context of Egypt’s war on Jihadi terrorism in Sinai. Doing so eased some of the stipulations of the 1979 peace treaty.
The fact that Egypt and Qatar cooperated to broker the multiday truce is also a remarkable achievement. Their joint efforts are a testimony to the significant improvement in bilateral relations, from a low point of Qatari meddling in Egyptian domestic affairs and Egypt’s participation in the blockade on Qatar imposed by its Gulf neighbors, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. New trust has resulted in diplomatic, economic, and political rapprochement.
High-level U.S. officials havemade headlinesin U.S. media for their recent trips to the region. What impact did they have on the negotiations?
Having the United States endorse the negotiations and promote their results has been instrumental in convincing the Israeli government, which sees President Joe Biden’s administration as itsnumberonestrategic ally, to engage in talks and to extend the truce more than once. U.S. involvement has signaled to Hamas, among other Palestinian factions, that the only viable truce now includes the release of hostages in exchange for prisoners, and an increase in humanitarian aid. It should be clear to Hamas that this type of temporary arrangement is the only acceptable quid pro quo in the eyes of Israel and the United States.
Since the end of the ceasefire on Friday, the Biden administration has released bold public statements on the need for Israel to protect civilian life, adding to previous U.S. positions that reject Israeli reoccupation and a long-term security role in Gaza while embracing the elimination of Hamas from postwar governance. https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-a-press-availability-43/These statements do not alter the United States’ military and political support, but they put some pressure on Israel as it widens its war on Hamas.
The truce ended on December 1. Is there any lasting political impact?
Yes. Negotiations have been restored as a key tool of conflict containment.
In the short term, diplomacy and mediation efforts made headlines for the first time since October 7, after fifty days of war. Images of released Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners; the increased humanitarian aid going to Gaza, including much-needed fuel; and the fact that a few hospitals were once again operational created hopes for an end to the war. However, over the past few days, Israel has resumed its military operations, and the Palestinian death toll has surpassed 15,000. Egypt has continued to push for a return to truce in Gaza, while Qatari negotiators have resumed talks in Israel, according to media reports.
In the longer term, negotiations will have created momentum for considering ways of linking Gaza’s future to that of the occupied territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in both the interim postwar phase and in long-term conflict resolution efforts.
Such hopes could gradually give birth to a new Arab peace initiative. Such an initiative would be based on the two-state solution, the principle of land for peace, and normalization of Arab-Israel relations against the withdrawal of Israel from all territories occupied in the 1967 war. Both Egypt and Qatar—along with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Morocco—could lead the effort. But for such an initiative to emerge, Israeli and Palestinian leaders need to commit anew to the peaceful settlement of the conflict and to move away from radical parties and movements—via elections in Israel and through a popular rejection of the use of violence against civilians and of antisemitism by Palestinians.
Could another ceasefire be imminent?
I believe that it will be almost impossible to go back to the pre-truce situation, particularly with the massive Israeli attacks on Gaza unfolding and expanding. My hope is that the Qatari-Egyptian mediation, with U.S. backing, continues both to search for a compromise between Israel and Hamas that ends the war along the lines of the truce of the past days and to attempt to couple the compromise with an effort to launch an Arab peace initiative that can provide a negotiation framework for the interim postwar phase and for the long-term settlement.
You’ve written about the Arab public response to the Israel-Hamas war. Has that shifted at all in the past few weeks?
The war has created widespread anguish in the Arab world. The most dominant features of the Arab public response to the war had two fundamental criticisms: the first was of Israel for the killing of a horrific number of civilians in Gaza, and the second of the United States for providing Israel with arms, being complicit in the killing of tens of thousands of Gazans, and the forced displacement of much of the strip’s population. However, there was no move to condone violence against Israelis civilians and the horrific crimes of October 7.
The ceasefire helped restore some belief in the value of diplomacy and politics to the Arab public space. It also changed the headlines from the devastating humanitarian consequences of ongoing Israeli military operations to the prospects for restoring calm in the interim and peace in the long term. With the war resuming, much of the Arab public, myself included, strongly hope that Israelis and Palestinians can find their way back into further negotiations to ultimately end the war and develop a vision for the postwar situation.