…my goalposts haven’t moved. I acknowledged your cite back when you first shared it in June. Since then though, I’ve re-evaluated.
You cite a spokesperson for the U.S. mission to the U.N. And the letter from the UN said the same thing: that “Israel has accepted this proposal.” What I’m asking for is for any Israeli spokesperson that is on the record as even supporting the proposal, let alone even accepting it.
Israel’s representative in the United Nations is Gilad Erdan. I think I saw him on CNN explaining that during the 6 week ceasefire phase, Israel would demand Hamas’s complete removal from power. The point of contention seemed to be what happens if 6 weeks pass and there is no permanent agreement.
It’s been a couple of months so I apologize for not having a direct quote or video cite with timestamp.
ETA:
The Source With Kaitlan Collins CNN June 10, 2024 6:00pm-7:00pm PDT
~Max
Timeline for the June peace proposal, and I’ve cited the straight dope wherever I could find it:
~Max
…both " Israel meeting its goals for the war" and " Hamas’s permanent removal" are not in Resolution 2735 which was adopted on the 10th of June, a day before DrDeth’s article that was published on the 11th. In fact its at complete odds with what is in Resolution 2735.
Its plain as day that whatever it was that Israel “agreed” to, it wasn’t Resolution 2735.
Netanyahu can’t both “recommit to the original proposal” AND commit to not end the war until they had “destroyed Hamas’s military and governing capability.” These two things are not compatible. You can’t read what was said here and believe that Netanyahu was agreeing to a permanent end to hostilities and withdrawal of troops conditional only on the release of the hostages as outlined by 2735.
Thanks for the hard work on tracking down the cites. But it just shows that Israel actually weren’t committed to the deal and that nobody went on the record to explicitly agree with the text of the resolution. And even if they did, everybody else had essentially said they were going to ignore the terms of the resolution anyway.
I see what you’re saying but I have to disagree. Israel construed the six weeks in phase 1 as the timeframe for Hamas to surrender; if Hamas did not agree to surrender during that period, the ceasefire would continue so long as Hamas and Israel both agree to keep negotiating (for Hamas’s surrender, as Israel would demand). Phase 2 does not begin until the negotiations are complete. If negotiations fail, the war recommences in earnest and the plan does not advance to phase 2. This is, from what I can gather, Israel’s interpretation of the initial proposal.
~Max
…can you show me where it says this in Resolution 2735?
The six weeks of negotiation is taken from paragraph 3, and referred to as a prerequisite for phase 2 in paragraph 2(b). The UN resolution does not specify the terms to be negotiated at this time (doing so would defeat the purpose of leaving room for negotiation, and this lack of certainty is why Russia abstained from the vote); Israeli ministers have stated repeatedly and on the record that they would demand the full destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities before committing to a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal such as is contemplated by phase 2.
~Max
…this isn’t something that was “up for negotiation.” It was conditional. It was a red-line. A non-negotiable.
Israeli ministers have stated repeatedly and on the record that they would demand the full destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities before committing to a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal such as is contemplated by phase 2.
:: shrug ::
Yes, this is exactly what I was saying. This wasn’t a good faith deal. The terms of the resolution were quite clear. If the deal was conditional on Hamas stepping down, that had to be in the resolution.
And if Hamas had agreed to the deal, then the hostages would have been released, but the “war” would still have continued until “Hamas was destroyed”, whatever the heck thats supposed to mean. Why would they agree to that?
So I can reply - what exactly are you referring to here? The initial six week period? Phase 2?
~Max
…nope. “Hamas’s permanent removal from power.”
That’s not part of the resolution.
~Max
…I know! That’s literally what I just said. Israel’s red lines were not in the resolution. It wasn’t a genuine attempt to end the war.
The terms of the entire resolution are not conditional on Hamas stepping down. Paragraph 2(a), the humanitarian ceasefire and release of elderly, sick, and female prisoners of war, is unconditional. Paragraphs 2(b) and 2(c) are conditional on Hamas and Israel making some future unspecified agreement, as given in the text of paragraph 2(b), which is triggered “Upon agreement of the parties”, said agreement in Israel’s (and the US’s) interpretation being the product of “negotiations” during phase 1 contemplated by paragraph 3, as distinguished from agreement to the resolution.
Israel can make whatever demands she wants during those negotiations, but so can Hamas. There is no requirement that any particular demand be put in the resolution itself - again, this uncertainty is precisely why Russia abstained from the vote. It was no secret that Israel would not budge on dismantling Hamas.
That doesn’t mean Israel is acting in bad faith. As consideration for Hamas’s peaceful and permanent removal from power, Hamas would obtain concessions for the Gazan people and its own military forces. I already cited Israel’s assent to a Palestinian Authority peacekeeping force, which seems to be a major concession for the people of Gaza and Palestine as a whole. There is obviously the humanitarian swap already contemplated in phase 2 - only the women, sick, elderly, etc are released during phase 1. Healthy male prisoners of war would not be released unless both sides came to an agreement. Because both sides stand to gain from the negotiations, I cannot agree with you that Israel has acted in bad faith here.
~Max
Lest you think my description of phase 1 is one-sided, Israel gives up quite a bit too and this is not conditional on Hamas’s permanent destruction. They promise to exchange Palestinian POWs, to temporarily withdraw from populated areas of Gaza (essentially undoing months of military progress), to facilitate the return of civilians to their homes in Gaza, and to effectively distribute humanitarian aid including housing units from the international community. This is no small consideration for the female, elderly, and wounded hostages, and Hamas could go right back to attacking Israel as soon as the 6 weeks are up without breaking its word.
These provisions are explicitly given by the text of the resolution, and Prime Minister Netanyahu got a lot of domestic flak from his hardliners after President Biden revealed the terms.
~Max
https://www.axios.com/2024/08/01/haniyeh-assassination-mossad
One of the sources said the Mossad position was that Haniyeh’s assassination would bring justice to the Oct. 7 attack victims and remove an obstacle to the hostage deal. The source claimed Haniyeh held a more hardline view on the deal than Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar and was making it more difficult to get a deal.
~Max
…but if it was a red line, then it had to be.
They’ve been negotiating for months. The resolution wasn’t supposed to be a precursor to another round of negotiations. This was the deal. The “negotiations” in the resolution would be specific to the resolution…things like “the exact dates of withdrawal from areas” or “exactly what sort of aid would be allowed into Gaza.”
It says nothing about “Hamas surrendering” or “Hamas’s permanent removal from power.” Imagine if Hamas’s unwritten red line was “Netanyahu’s removal from power”. That’s how ridiculous the idea is that this wasn’t part of the resolution.
And on paper, the resolution is basically what the Hamas negotiating team have agreed to from the start. This wasn’t the first deal that was put on the table. There have been multiple deals put on the table.
But the stumbling block was what wasn’t in the agreement. The unwritten red lines. The fact that Hamas could do everything that was stated in the resolution, but Israel was still committed to continuing the war until “Hamas was destroyed.” And when we look at the pattern of attacks, the targeted killings of journalists, the deliberate destruction of infrastructure and the healthcare system, the targeting of the UN, the definition of “Hamas being destroyed” is a constantly moving target.
Israel literally killed the Hamas chief negotiators grand children, his children, then the chief negotiator himself.
None of this was in the resolution.
And based on history, those “concessions” would be a continuation of the siege and a brutal occupation.
If this were a serious proposal, it would have been part of the resolution. We know that it isn’t because it was not.
Hamas is a side. And what they would get was mutually assured destruction. I don’t know how you could argue that they would “gain” from further negotiations.
If removing Hamas from power is a red line, then it needed to be in the resolution.
But it is! That’s literally what everyone has been saying. Because:
Firstly: let’s not characterise Palestinian prisoners as “POW’s.” There are thousands of Palestinians that are detained in “administrative detention.” They are not designated POW’s. They are in legal limbo. The resolution does not call them POW’s.
Secondly, as what often happens during these exchanges, there is nothing stopping Israel from simply arresting and detaining people again. This has been standard operating procedure. It happened multiple times during the previous pause. Its hardly a “concession.”
More on administrative detention.
The IDF have temporarily withdrawn from populated areas all the time during this conflict. For example they withdrew from the area surrounding Al Shifa after the first raid. It resumed operations as a hospital, then it was raided again months later and set on fire.
This isn’t a “concession.” Israel are bombing Gaza with impunity. They have complete air, land and sea supremacy. They’ve got drones that are literally hunting people. They’ve got full control of the borders and everything that gets in and gets out. Israel has no problems scaling up operations rapidly if they need to. What they are more likely to do is what happened during the first “humanitarian pause”, which was to simply get ready for the next phase of the “war”.
More than 500,000 Gazans don’t have a home to return to. Almost 2 million people have been displaced, most of them multiple times.
That’s the starting point here.
This isn’t a “concession.” These are the obligations of the occupying power. It violates the Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian law. Allowing civilians to their homes just means that Israel has temporarily stopped committing war crimes.
And do what exactly? The reason why October 7th was so devastating was in part due to horrific, systematic failures of Israel security’s apparatus. They aren’t going to let that happen again. So if Hamas indeed were foolish enough to lob a few ineffectual rockets over the border, then the response from Israel would be overwhelming. And disproportionate. Again.
And the redlines are not. Israel have made it explicitly clear that this resolution as written isn’t going to happen.
This says it all, to be honest. This resolution wasn’t Netanyahu’s initiative. It was orchestrated for American domestic consumption. They couldn’t lose. If Hamas agreed to the resolution, “Biden brokered a peace deal.” But they didn’t, so instead the narrative became “the June UN proposal which Hamas more or less ignored.”
“We will keep assassinating the negotiators until we find a negotiator that agrees with us” hardly sounds like a good-faith bargaining to me. Does it sound like one to you?
No, it doesn’t.
Yes, it was; no, it wasn’t.
That is a valid interpretation, but I have it on record that it is not and has never been the interpretation taken by Israel or the U.S.
No, it doesn’t.
Hamas’s red lines actually aren’t part of the UN resolution, as evidenced by their rejection of the terms as written and counter-proposal with amendments.
Are you familiar with the term brinkmanship? The proposal as laid out in the UN resolution is an exercise in brinkmanship. The future round of negotiation is essential to its design. It gives Hamas and Israel both a taste of peace and a six week deadline to make it last.
That seems to be correct.
That is a matter of opinion. To the extent that there are stumbling blocks or changing goalposts, they did not prevent Israel from endorsing the initial proposal, which is what I set out to prove.
That is true, and I have personal reservations about the assassination (because it violated the sovereignty of Iran). The victim was the head of state and was not going to or returning from negotiations, and therefore I don’t consider the assassination comparable to perfidy.
Furthermore my previous point remains: conditioning a phase-two permanent ceasefire and military withdrawal on total destruction of Hamas is not evidence of bad faith. The phase 1 ceasefire, if faithfully executed, has sufficient consideration. Phases 2 and 3, with Israel’s demand to remove Hamas from power, amount to an opportunity for Hamas to negotiate a conditional surrender.
No, it wasn’t.
It’s your right to assume bad faith based on history, however that makes it futile to make any attempt at peace: Israel is justified in fighting until Hamas is destroyed; Hamas is justified in fighting until Gaza is destroyed and furthermore, until Hamas is destroyed.
If you look at the dates, the UN resolution was passed June 10 and the report on a Palestinian Authority peacekeeping force was published July 10.
During the interim, Hamas rejected the UN resolution. Hamas took the position that it would not agree to give up any more hostages until there was a permanent end to the war. The UN resolution calls for the release of hostages without guaranteeing a permanent end to the war, thus crossing Hamas’s red line. That is why Hamas rejected it.
However, Hamas didn’t “ignore” the peace proposal as DrDeth wrote. They sent a counter-proposal with amendments, reportedly committing Israel to a timeline to permanently withdraw troops. Israel took a couple weeks but, following an international pressure campaign and domestic peace protests, returned to the table. One of the concessions Israel is reported to have made during the ensuring negotiations is a PA peacekeeping force. Having the PA involved in Gaza was previously understood to cross a ‘red line’ for Israel. Hamas, in turn, reportedly backed down from its ‘red line’ of holding hostages until a peace treaty is signed.
The original proposal, endorsed by the UN Security Council, would have had these negotiations take place during a six-week or longer ceasefire. In actuality that proposal was rejected and negotiations took place without the benefit of a ceasefire. That the concessions were not included in the original proposal says nothing about their authenticity.
Mutually assured destruction is a defensive foreign policy doctrine whereby one state waves its nuclear arsenal around to prevent catastrophic conflict with another state and it’s nuclear arsenal. It has no place in this discussion. Even in the literal sense, which is inappropriate in this context, mutually assured destruction requires mutually assured destruction, not unilateral assured destruction.
I argue Hamas would gain concessions for its own forces and the Gazan people. Furthermore you do know I made this argument because you responded to both points. 
It isn’t, for paragraph 2(a).
No, it doesn’t.
No, it isn’t.
Too bad. I consider them prisoners of war and when I have an opinion, I necessarily think I’m right and other opinions are wrong.
Irrelevant.
No, it doesn’t.
If during the cessation of hostilities contemplated in paragraph 2 Israel re-arrests the people it released per that same paragraph, Israel would be in breach of the agreement.
If hostilities resume then either the agreement has already been breached or the agreement has been fulfilled.
One option is to have third parties guarantee performance if the parties words cannot be trusted. For example the United Nations, the United States, Russia, China, Turkey, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, etc. The UN resolution itself names the United States, Egypt, Qatar, and the Palestinian Authority, not as guarantors, but these would be obvious candidates. I cited articles upthread which mention Hamas’s proposal included amendments requiring Israel to provide guarantors.
Yes, it is. It is “consideration for the female, elderly, and wounded hostages”. Israel’s military position is something of value given up by Israel for the benefit of Hamas, in consideration of the benefit Israel receives from Hamas releasing hostages.
This is why a ceasefire is valid consideration for the release of hostages.
You will note paragraph 2(a) requires Israel to distribute aid “effectively”.
If Israel preparing for the next phase of the “war” is more likely than adhering to a ceasefire agreement, then there is no point in Hamas ever accepting any ceasefire. Therefore why should Israel ever offer a ceasefire?
Sometimes I wonder if you consider the full implications of the arguments you put forward.
Yes, it is.
Still a concession.
Still a concession.
Still a concession. Look, you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. The basic idea of a truce is “stop hurting me and I stop hurting you”. Crimes are injuries and putting a stop to war crimes is fair game for a truce.
I agree.
Proposals are supposed to be written so you can’t lose. It takes two to tango and all that jazz.
Media coverage is written for American domestic consumption, I’ll give you that.
The full terms of a peace treaty are not usually included in a ceasefire agreement. You seem to be arguing that Israel rejected its own peace proposal because it is more like a ceasefire proposal than a peace treaty. In reality it is a hybrid of a ceasefire proposal and a promise to negotiate a conditional surrender, written as a ceasefire plus promise to negotiate a lasting peace, advertised as a comprehensive peace proposal.
It’s not comprehensive, that much is a lie.
~Max
…of course it does. That’s what these resolutions are.
Israel’s redlines aren’t up for negotiation. You concede that, right? So that had to be in the resolution. This wasn’t a negotiation. They’ve been negotiating for months. It was a resolution with terms that neither side was ever going to agree with, and enough caveats that it was never a serious proposal anyway.
No you don’t.
Concession accepted.
This wasn’t actually a red line. I just made it up.
Hamas’s red line is an actual ceasefire. Which was in the resolution.
Let’s be clear here. Since Hamas committed the atrocity on October the 7th Israel have completely dominated this “war”, and Gaza has been effectively destroyed. It will take decades, if ever for Gaza to recover. (Not that they will ever get the opportunity though, because I don’t think thats the endgame here.)
Israel don’t need a “taste of peace” and neither do the Palestinians. Gaza urgently needs a permanent ceasefire. Hepatitis A is widespread. The WHO are pleading for a ceasefire so they can give everyone in Gaza the Polio vaccine. Theres famine.
This isn’t brinkmanship. Its ethnic cleansing. And in the opinion of all of the experts in this field its a genocide.
You didn’t prove it. Nobody was on the record supporting the resolution after it was released on June the 11th.
And the grandchildren? And his children?
It doesn’t matter if he was “going to or from” a negotation. He was still the chief negotiatior.
The constant lies from the IDF and Isreali spokespeople that we get on a daily basis is more than enough evidence of bad faith. The complete lack of evidence that Hamas are using hospitals and schools as bases. The assassination of a couple of journalists the other day. Claiming that the IDF weren’t involved in the killing of Hind, even when she was describing the tanks that were approaching her.
If Israel wants to demand Hamas is removed from power: then that’s an IMPORTANT demand that can’t be left out of the resolution.
That isn’t on the table. Not with this resolution. They can’t just pull that out of their arses.
Except Israel are not targeting Hamas. They don’t even know how many Hamas fighters they have killed. They are targeting civilian infrastructure, they are targeting civlians. Another school hit today. Targeting makeshift tents. 17 killed. It was hit multiple times.
The January 10th article is paywalled. But “senior officials” talking off the record are meaningless here. From your July 28th cite:
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/23/us-israel-gaza-rebuild-talks-uae
Its not happening.
Phase 2, upon agreement of the parties, was a permanent end to hostilities. Its there in black and white.
Which Netanyahu has rejected.
Mutually assured destruction are three random words I’ve put together that has every place in this discussion, and any similarity with a defensive foriegn policy doctrine is entirely co-incidental.
It is for Israel, which is all that matters.
Yeah, it does. It isn’t up for negotiation. Israel have been clear about that. So in addition to releasing the hostages, Hamas would be required to be removed from power.
This isn’t a matter of opinion. Prisoners of War are afforded rights under the Geneva Convention and the laws of war. They are a separate category to people that have been arbitarily detained because they are men of a military age, and a separate category to people like Bassem Tamimi, who has just had his administrative detention extended for another six months and we don’t even know why he was being detained in the first place.
Very very very much relevant. Because these detentions didn’t start after October the 7th. They are fundumental to this discussion.
Who exactly is going to stop them?
For months they have been breaching International Humanitarian law. Almost on a daily basis. The entire system of administrative detention is a fundumental breach.
Its a genocide Max. My argument is that Isreal doesn’t want a ceasefire,and are just playing games with these discussions just to draw things out. The only hope to end this war is for the international community to stop giving Isreal a pass, to cut off the money and arms, and to punish them for multiple warcrimes.
These are warcimes Max. You should be demanding your government stops funding the warcrimes. You shouldn’t be defending the warcrimes. They should stop immediately, unconditionally.
I’m arguing that Israel is acting in bad faith, and that the resoution was never a serious attempt at stopping the war.
Am I correct in inferring your opinion that no proposal that doesn’t include the dissolution of Hamas can be considered a good faith Isreali ceasefire framework? Let me get rid of a few of those negatives: Isreali is negotiating in bad faith in agreeing to any ceasefire proposal that doesn’t include Hamas’s destruction.
…my opinion is that Netanyahu and co don’t want a ceasefire. That they want to continue until the job is done. And the evidence for that are the words that Netanyahu and co has actually used. The evidence for that is that they killed the Hamas chief negotiators grandchildren, his children, then the chief negotiator himself. It isn’t just this negotiation. It isn’t just the requirement of the dissolution of Hamas.