Amid the tug-of-war of ceasefire negotiations, cracks in Israeli politics start to show

Last Tuesday, Hamas’s armed wing, the Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades, announced that it had lost contact with the group in charge of guarding U.S.-Israeli soldier Eidan Alexander, after an Israeli strike “directly targeted” the location where he was being held captive. 

Alexander has been at the center of the U.S. administration’s attention in recent months, with U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff saying in early March that the U.S. wanted Hamas to release Alexander. 

Later, in mid-March — three days before Israel broke the ceasefire deal and resumed the war on Gaza — Witkoff rejected a Hamas proposal to release Alexander and the remains of four dual nationals in exchange for entering into talks over the end of the war, calling it “disingenuous.” Witkoff said that he expected the Palestinian movement to accept his earlier proposal to extend the ceasefire for a month in exchange for the release of Alexander and half of the remaining captives, but without a guarantee of ending the war.

The most recent Hamas announcement about Alexander’s uncertain fate could reshuffle efforts to reach a temporary ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas after U.S. envoy Adam Boehler said on Thursday that the U.S. would “come for Hamas” if it turns out that Alexander had indeed been harmed. Before the announcement, the U.S. had reported “progress in the talks” between Israel and Hamas over reaching a potential ceasefire.

The resulting pattern has been a game of back-and-forth in the ceasefire negotiations, in which Israel insists on trading captives for a temporary halt in hostilities, and Hamas insists on releasing the captives with guarantees that the war would end.

The most recent development in this game of tug-of-war came last Wednesday, when Hamas rejected Israel’s altered proposal for a temporary six-week ceasefire that included no guarantees for permanently ending the war and included a clause that Hamas should disarm, a demand that Hamas has repeatedly called a “red line.” 

Hamas followed up its position with a televised speech by chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya on Thursday, April 18, who said that the time for interim agreements had passed and Hamas would instead seek a “comprehensive” solution that would release all Israeli captives in exchange for permanently ending the war.

Amid the protracted back-and-forth, the climate in Israeli politics has become increasingly volatile, as broader swathes of the military and security establishment have begun to say that Netanyahu’s choice in resuming the war was “political.”

On April 12, Israeli captives’ families held a public Jewish Passover Seder in Tel Aviv’s “Hostage Square,” and on April 13, hundreds of Israelis protested in front of the house of Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, who runs the negotiating team in the ceasefire talks with Hamas. Protesters demanded that Dermer conclude a deal to return the captives — or resign.

Reservist dissidents

Since last week, Israeli military members have been consecutively voicing their demands to return Israeli captives at any cost, even if it means ending the war. Additionally, Israeli military members have accused Netanyahu of continuing the war “for political gain.” 

The internal dissent within the military establishment picked up steam last week. On April 10, some 1,000 Israeli air force reservist pilots, many of them senior and retired members, signed a collective call for ending the war and returning the captives. The Israeli Ministry of Defense announced that all signatories would be dismissed from active service.

Three days later, three former heads of the Israeli Mossad and 250 special operations veterans signed an open letter supporting the pilots’ letter. Then, on Monday, April 14, thousands of Israeli reservists and veterans backed the same calls with a new letter.

The crisis centers around the gap between the government’s intention to prolong the war and the demands of the families of Israeli captives and the sectors of Israeli society they represent — to prioritize the release of captives through a deal. 

But this conflict of priorities is also widened by the gap between Netanyahu’s stated political goals for the war — the full destruction of Hamas — and Israel’s capacity to achieve them. Israel is economically strained, and its military suffers from exhaustion, which has been deepened by the reported lack of reserve staff in the army. This staff shortage has accentuated the conflict over the drafting of members of the religious Haredi community, which has historically been exempted from military service.

This reality of Israeli military fatigue was further confirmed last weekend when the army’s newly-appointed Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, met with members of the Israeli cabinet to discuss the continuous dissident calls in the army. According to Israeli media reports, Zamir told ministers that the Israeli army doesn’t have enough soldiers to achieve all of the government’s goals of a continuous war, especially permanently occupying the Gaza Strip.

But all this doesn’t mean that Israel will sign a ceasefire deal to end the war. Since day one of the ceasefire deal, Netanyahu’s allies repeatedly said that Israel would resume the war after releasing a number of captives. Netanyahu himself refused to begin talks over the second phase of the deal to end the war, instead demanding an extension of the first phase to release more captives without committing to ending the war. Israel then blamed Hamas for refusing the extension of the first phase, blowing up the entire deal.

If there is anything that can be counted on, it’s Netanyahu’s intransigence and insistence on escaping internal accountability by manufacturing a crisis. This pattern has repeated itself ever since the ceasefire talks began.

Netanyahu’s way out: the West Bank option

But there is another pattern that is likely to repeat itself. Immediately after the entry into force of the short-lived ceasefire deal between January and March, Israel launched an offensive on the West Bank dubbed “Operation Iron Wall.” It started with an invasion of Jenin refugee camp, and later expanded to other parts of the West Bank, destroying hundreds of buildings, civilian infrastructure, and displacing at least 40,000 Palestinians from their homes. Israel also escalated its settlement activity in the West Bank to unprecedented levels, which Israel’s Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, described last week as “a settlement revolution” that “hasn’t happened in Judea and Samaria [the Israeli term for the West Bank] since 1967.” It is part of a plan to eventually push forward Israel’s intentions to annex the West Bank.

The West Bank offensive, which included imposing dozens of new roadblocks and checkpoints across the Palestinian territory, was understood as compensation offered to Smotrich in exchange for accepting the signing of the now-defunct ceasefire and refraining from quitting Netanyahu’s right-wing governing coalition. However, Israel’s annexation plans in the West Bank are as much Netanyahu’s goal as they are his allies’.

Israelis opposed to the continuation of the war seek to put a limit on Netanyahu’s personal takeover of Israeli institutions. The fact that captives’ families have been addressing Trump directly for months to pressure Netanyahu into a ceasefire deal indicates their hope that the U.S. administration might share their goal.

What is missing from most mainstream media coverage, and from official U.S. statements, is the price that will be paid for both ending Netanyahu’s personal political games and returning Israeli captives.

It is a price that Palestinians will pay, just as they continue to pay for the continuation of the war and Netanyahu’s maneuvers. They will pay with the lives of their loved ones, and that will appear as an acceptable price for all parties involved.