What’s holding up a ceasefire in Gaza?

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, why aren't Israel and Hamas bringing an end to this war?

0:20Earlier this month, there was a brief glimmer of hope. Talks were progressing. Benjamin Netanyahu was visiting the White House. And there were signs that Donald Trump could get ready to declare that he'd brokered a ceasefire. I think there's a good chance we have a deal with Hamas during the week, during the coming week, pertaining to quite a few of the hostages. And then... Still nothing. Negotiations are fraught and ongoing. Israel has continued to pummel Gaza with bombs. Tanks have pushed into the Gaza city of Dirbalah for the first time. Almost 1 ,000 people have been killed just trying to access aid, and on Monday, 19 died of starvation.

1:05Looking at what I've experienced in the past 600 days, I'm not really hopeful because I've seen how things go. And it's just an overlapping circle of death and survival, where death is the easiest option and survival is mostly the most difficult option. For Amir, living in a tent in Han Yunus with eight members of his family, the ceasefire can't come soon enough. There need to be an end. There must be an end. And believe me or not, maybe I'm too brave to say that on the news, but I'm telling you, even the people of Gaza here, they don't really care about the end game. They just want an end to this struggle.

1:48If they really want to to to ethnically cleanse us for instance and if you want to kick all of us out of the gaza strip the people of gaza i mean a lot of them are are willing to leave gaza just open the porters at least they can have some kind of food

2:09these people have children these people have dreams these people are educated these people have hopes and these people are willing to live because they love life despite all these allegations of how resilient we are. But I mean, at the end of the day, we're just people. We cry, we laugh, we smile, we love and we learn. I hope there is a ceasefire. From The Guardian, I'm Nosheen Iqbal. Today in Focus, what is holding up a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas?

2:48Amir, what have the last few weeks been like for you and your family? It's been very tiring. I mean, currently, if anyone says, it's just piles of rubbles and trash. It's very congested and it's totally inhumane. This time, hunger is used as a weapon for food. I mean, I've never been so unhealthy in my whole life. the time it had been in the past few weeks. Despite that, I work in a very good position and one of the NGOs operating in the Glastonbury do have a very will-be job, but I can't afford such food. I know nowhere is really safe, but how dangerous has it been for you in the last few weeks compared to the last 21 months?

3:36Death was closer to me than my own breath, let's say. In the past few weeks, I've lost one of my co-workers. He's a photographer and just two hours before he was killed, it was just with him. Sometimes I really have to go near the sites, the distribution sites, in order to try to buy some goods. And we get shot at on daily basis. I can see the people injured and no one is looking at them because they're all busy surviving they're all busy trying to find some some food to get to their homes I'm talking about starvation I can't even tell you how bad it is here in the garden strip for those who do not have the mental or the physical capacity to go to the aid sites are really dying of hunger while I'm walking down the street every day going to where I can assure you that I see people, very good and strong people, just collapsing and fainting in front of everyone because of the lack of food.

4:58Emma Graham Harrison, you're The Guardian's chief Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem. It's been a frustrating process, to say the least, waiting for this apparently very close ceasefire to happen. And of course, it hasn't yet. So what do we know about what is in the currently proposed deal? You could say what both sides are looking for from these talks hasn't changed that much since the beginning, right? Netanyahu likes to talk about total victory. essentially he he wants a Gaza in which Hamas has no significant military capacity and no meaningful role in government what Hamas wants is to continue to exist and to have influence in one form or another so you know from what we understand that the sort of current draft envisages an initial 60-day ceasefire during which Hamas would hand over 10 living and 18 dead hostages in return for Palestinians held by Israel, which would leave 10 living hostages inside Gaza.

6:05Then there would be an agreement to bring in significant amounts of aid through the UN agencies and international humanitarian organisations. There would be some withdrawal of Israeli forces. The question of how far they should withdraw seems to be the main sticking point at this point. Emma, can you tell us how these negotiations actually work? Who is involved and where are they held? So, I mean, there's two kind of key players in the talks who are Israel and Hamas. They do not sit in a room together. I can't claim to know what's going on in the talks at the moment. But for instance, during the last ceasefire, they were actually on separate floors of a building in their own rooms.

6:47And then you had the mediators who are Qatar, Egypt and the Americans sort of shuttling up and down between the floors, taking messages between the two different parties. I imagine something similar is going on, focused in Qatar. And a lot of what people are saying is that when Steve Wyckoff, Trump's sort of envoy for this process flies to Doha, that's when you'll know that a deal is really within regions. I mean, the fact that he's not there to me is a sign that they're not in the final lap. Well, Emma, obviously both sides have their own demands in order to come to this agreement. What are the sticking points for Hamas?

7:23I think in a way, the main sticking point for both sides at this point is to what extent Israeli forces withdraw from the areas of Gaza that they're currently controlling militarily. There's a general agreement that they are going to create some kind of buffer zone around the edge of Gaza, which of course shrinks the space in what was already a very densely populated place available to Palestinians. But then the big question is, do they withdraw from areas inside that or not? And, you know, Hamas wants Israel to withdraw entirely. Many in Israel don't want Israeli forces to pull back, particularly people who want to continue fighting.

8:07We're talking about ministers here and people backing them. They want this war to continue. They may grudgingly accept the ceasefire, but only on condition they see it as a pause. And their argument is that if we withdraw, Israeli soldiers are going to have to die retaking that land.

8:29Well, let's talk about that withdrawal, because we saw reports that the Israeli government has announced to build what it calls a humanitarian city inside Gaza, which isn't exactly how everyone else sees it. Can you explain, first of all, what Israel is proposing? I should say when I first read about this plan, I was really shocked. It was laid out initially to Israeli journalists in a briefing by the defence minister. He wanted to turn the southernmost part of Gaza, about a quarter of a of the land area of Gaza into what he called a humanitarian city. And his description of that was that it would essentially be an enclosed camp built on the ruins of what used to be the city of Harappa, into which initially 600 ,000 Palestinians, but ultimately the entire population of Gaza, which is over 2 million or was about 2.3 million before the war, would be moved and would not be allowed to leave unless they were going to another country.

9:33I'm a veteran of 50 years of the most brutal political system in the world. I'm not intimidated by anything. So I interviewed former Prime Minister Ehud Elmert, who's originally from the same party as Netanyahu. He sort of started out as a right winger, although his positions have shifted over his years in power. But he certainly, you know, he was very much at pains to tell me that he was a man who did not hesitate to launch wars, order military action to protect Israel when he felt it was necessary as prime minister. You know, perhaps most famously, he was the prime minister who launched the Lebanon war in 2006.

10:17In a very brutal manner, against the enemies of Israel. Okay? I don't need someone to remind me of what needs to be done against murderers and killers. The Hamas are killers. The Hezbollah are killers. And I fought against them in a very brutal manner. I know where to fight and how to fight. And I had no regrets. And I never apologized for all this. Okay? and he said to me there is really no other way to describe it if you force hundreds of thousands of people into a small area and you don't allow them to leave in the context particularly of a government whose ministers have talked repeatedly about wanting to cleanse Gaza and to build new Jewish Israeli settlements there if that plan goes ahead that would clearly be ethnic cleansing And he said if the camp is built, it would be a concentration camp.

11:19But if they're going to start to create a camp of 600 ,000, you know what Haaretz's leader said the other day? I must say that I felt the same. Which was? The concentration camp. And you know, in a country founded in the wake of the Holocaust, where many, many, many people are descendants of Holocaust survivors, and indeed there are the last few living Holocaust survivors still among Israeli citizens. That is not a word that anybody uses lightly and certainly not a former prime minister. And I asked him a little bit about why he had decided to go public with these criticisms. And he said that he felt really that a battle for the soul of Israel was going on.

12:14And he felt, in his words, ashamed and heartbroken. And that therefore he had to use his platform to draw attention to what was happening. When I see that in the false name of fighting anti-Selitism or in the false name of fighting terror, we are committing terror. with the tacit support of the Israeli authorities, with the absence of reaction by the government of Israel, by the prime minister of Israel, by the president of Israel, by the political leaders of Israel, I'm ashamed. I'm heartbroken. I'm ashamed. I just can't take it. I mean, to what extent does the wider Israeli public, do you think, agree with what Omer has said to you?

13:08There's some interesting and sort of, you could say, conflicting opinion polls coming out of Israel. Some of them are pretty chilling. You know, there was a poll published about a month ago that over 80 % of Jewish citizens of Israel backed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the forcible deportation of Palestinians. There was a lot of discussion over it. And one of the things I actually found most striking in that debate was that an article was published criticising that poll and saying actually the methodology was wrong. And if you looked at other polls, it was more accurate to say perhaps 50 to 60 percent of Jewish citizens of Israel backed the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, which in itself is staggering.

13:52Right. That's still a very disturbing figure. One would say both of those numbers are way too high. Absolutely. At the same time, recent opinion polls have shown actually a very similar figure, over 80%, would like to see the war end in return for a deal that brought home all the hostages. And some might say, well, at this point, it is just a blueprint. It's just a proposal. But Emma, how seriously should it be taken? I mean, what I'd say here is obviously, there are so many questions about this, some of which have been raised by Netanyahu himself. There was a big cabinet debate about this where Netanyahu was attacking the plan to build this, in his words, humanitarian city, because he considered it was too expensive and too slow.

14:39Right. So those were his objections. Those were his objections. I think that shows you this is not a sort of abstract idea. They are making concrete plans for the construction of this. I sort of perhaps turn here to the words of an Israeli critic, a very senior former diplomat, Alon Pincus. And he said this plan is by definition unviable and impractical without even getting to the moral depravity of forcing desolate people into a camp like this. But he also said that there's been feasibility studies into forced displacement of Palestinians. We've seen very credible reports from Reuters that the Trump administration has been discussing plans for the construction of camps which it called humanitarian transit areas.

15:28And given that there seems to be a lot of practical work going on, these discussions cannot be dismissed as just political posturing. What is everything we've heard about these plans? How does it affect the potential for a ceasefire? What does it mean for a ceasefire? Actually, the humanitarian city seems to have become one of the main obstacles to a ceasefire. I mean, it sort of came into view as this deeply disturbing plan. And now it seems to be disturbing not only in and of itself, but as a major obstacle to a ceasefire deal that would at very least, you know, bring some respite to civilians in Gaza and might hold out the hope of a permanent end to the war.

16:13And so fundamentally, Hamas want Israel out. They want them to withdraw their troops, but it doesn't exactly fit with this plan for Israel to build and run this camp in southern Gaza. So I guess in the meantime, where does this leave Gazans today? I don't think there's anything I can say that would sort of sufficiently sum up how urgent it is. Every day that passes for negotiators to quibble over a withdrawal line on a map or details of exactly what aid is allowed in is a day in which dozens of Palestinians die. We're seeing almost daily killings of people simply trying to get food. There's people dying of communicable illnesses, people dying in airstrikes.

17:04people dying because they can't get medical care for very normal things, whether that's high blood pressure or cancer or women dying because they can't see doctors when they give birth. Babies dying because their mothers are too malnourished to feed them and there's no baby formula or there's no clean water. If there is baby formula, there's many people, including scholars of genocide here in Israel at Hebrew University, who now consider what's happening there a genocide. Whether or not you agree with that description, Gaza and its people are devastated. It just can't start soon enough.

17:45Coming up. Donald Trump wants a deal on Gaza. So why can't he get one?

18:03Emma, most people would have thought that there are incentives on both sides to end hostilities. But for Benjamin Netanyahu, it seems that prolonging this war is politically beneficial. Can you explain this? I mean, that is a very good and very dark question. He's a man who is leading a very fragile coalition that brings together two particularly problematic groups. One is two far-right extremist parties who do not want the war to end. They want to keep fighting. Then he has another element in his coalition, which is ultra-Orthodox. The ultra-Orthodox in Israel do not serve in the military. For legal and political reasons, the debate about whether the ultra-Orthodox should serve has sort of reached a head.

18:49They're threatening to leave over that. One of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties is quitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition in a long-running dispute over a new military conscription bill. The move leaves Netanyahu's government with just a one-seat parliamentary majority in the Knesset. And that majority could disappear if UTJ's ultra-Orthodox ally Shaz follows suit to quit the coalition. And then Benjamin Netanyahu is also, while running the war, on trial for corruption. So he has a certain number of days a week where he has to show up in a courthouse to go on trial. And essentially, the argument is that, you know, the war conveniently helps him sort of manage his corruption trials, stave off an official inquiry and generally prolong his sort of stint in power by managing his coalition.

19:38He would obviously, of course, deny that and say that, you know, his only commitment is to Israel security, getting the hostages home and defeating Hamas. What else is likely influencing whether or not we see a ceasefire soon? So there's also basically both Israel's courts and its parliament go into recess at the end of this month for the best part of three months until the end of the Jewish high holidays in October. There's a sense among many of Netanyahu's critics that essentially he's just trying to drag these ceasefire negotiations out until Parliament's shut down, everybody's gone home. And then even if his coalition members aren't really happy with his ceasefire deal, it will be much harder for them to get rid of him, essentially, or to bring down the government at that point.

20:24He'll have bought three months grace if he can get to the recess of the courts and the Parliament before a ceasefire is agreed. And yet, Emma, Donald Trump keeps announcing that a ceasefire is close. Last Friday, he insisted 10 hostages would be, to quote, released shortly. We got most of the hostages back. We're going to have another 10 coming very shortly. And we hope to have that finished pretty quickly. It's clear that he's chomping at the bit to be the one who announces that he's brokered the ceasefire. but how important a role is he actually playing in negotiating it? That's a very good question.

21:03I mean I think he himself is playing a sort of background role in the sense that everybody sort of has to defer to him to a degree. I think his envoy Steve Wyckoff there was a lot of credit to him given in the last round certainly you know Biden's team put a lot of work into preparing the ground for the ceasefire but Wyckoff was apparently a very impressive and effective negotiator. So, you know, I think Trump's team play an important role in the fact that Trump is so clear about what he wants. And he's made clear generally in life, but particularly in this presidency, that he likes to get what he wants, that he wants people to sort of pay court to him and give him what he's asking for.

21:43The sort of weight of those expectations are a player, a factor in the room. Well, there's also this sense that the US is the main provider of military weapons to Israel. And one wonders, could he not use that as leverage? Would he not threaten to turn that tap off if he really wanted to push this ceasefire through? I mean, yeah, I think it's a really good question, because, you know, it's not just a general sense that America is important to Israel. They very specifically are a key weapons supplier. And I think there is a sense among many people, again, more Netanyahu's critics than others, that he's playing a dangerous game because Biden, for all his issues with Netanyahu, was fundamentally, instinctively a Zionist who supported Israel and believed in Israel, whereas Trump really doesn't seem to have any great emotional connection to Israel.

22:36Yeah, he likes winners, he sort of has some kind of bromance going on with Netanyahu, but he doesn't seem to have a sort of fundamental, personal commitment to Israel. You know, he's quite a transactional person. And several people, Israelis, have said to me, Nehnyahu doesn't seem to have taken into account the fact that Trump's already turned around to Ukraine and said, why are we giving you all these weapons for free? Israel gets billions of dollars in weapons, military support from America. It would have been unconceivable under Biden. But under Trump, it does seem not inconceivable that he might turn around one day and say, why aren't they paying for our great weapons?

23:20Finally, what are the next steps in these talks and how hopeful should we be for a ceasefire? Last time we spoke about this, I felt that there was still a lot of very major differences between the two parties and the idea that Netanyahu was going to come back from DC where the peace deal seemed, of course, it would be great, but it seemed to me not that likely. I would now say that going towards the summer recess, It seems fairly likely that some kind of halt to the fighting will be agreed. I think the big question is, is it the beginning of the end, or is it just another pause before the horrors start again?

24:13Amir, we may soon be hearing news of an agreement between Israel and Hamas The talks are still on the table How do you feel? In the Gaza Strip, people are receiving such news with an overload of optimism and they're hoping maybe because hope is the only fragment that is keeping them going on and on with this miserable life conditions i personally i'm not really hopeful with regards to the ceasefire even if it's done or agreed on but at the same time i'm very eager to see this happening and taking place but i think other than that i'm also very concerned and worried because after every failure of reaching a ceasefire, the situation in the Godship only gets worse.

25:03And I've seen how people change because their instinct of survival has grown stronger. And the values that we hold as Palestinians is now giving a lesser value. This is a tragedy.

25:25that was Amir speaking to us from Han Yunus in the Gaza Strip my thanks to him and Emma Graham Harrison our chief Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem that's everything today this episode was presented by me Noshin Iqbal it was produced by Natalie Khatena sound design is by Rudy Zagadlo the executive producers were Khmer Khalili and Courtney Youssef We'll be back again tomorrow.