International calls for a ceasefire in Gaza started in October last year. Why is it so hard to get a peace deal?
Photo: JACK GUEZ / AFP
In the past week, Israel sent the head of its spy agency to Qatar for negotiations, and Hamas agreed to begin talks about releasing Israeli hostages.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also said that a ceasefire deal must allow his country to keep fighting, and Hamas accused him of obstructing progress.
For much of the past nine months, since Hamas's initial attack on Israel on 7 October and Israel's near-immediate retaliation, it's been one step forward, one back for peace talks.
This latest is more of the same.
The deal currently under consideration was proposed by US President Joe Biden in late May, and passed by the United Nations Security Council in June. It has three phases.
"My understanding is that the sticking point around this current agreement is basically Hamas wants there to be some sort of guarantee that the ceasefire -- as in a stop, a halt in fighting -- will go on beyond that first phase of the agreement and it won't be subject to more negotiation. That's not something that Israel is willing to accede to as yet," says Marika Sosnowski, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne Law School, who studies the dynamics of ceasefires.
In today's episode of The Detail, Sosnowski explains why it's taking so long to reach a truce, and how a deal like this is brokered.
"I think the easiest way to think about it is probably [that] a ceasefire deal is like a really complicated contract between these parties.
"You want to make sure that the terms of the agreement are really well spelled out."
For a ceasefire to be enacted, the minute details of this contract are essential.
"They will go literally off the terms that they have negotiated in the contract.
"What my research suggests is that the more detailed the terms, the better chance there is logically of the parties implementing the ceasefire, because they know exactly what they're meant to do at particular times and kind of how they're meant to do it.
"And that's exactly what we saw back with the truce in November. The terms were super-specific and basically highly choreographed.
"Both Hamas and Israel, but also the Red Cross (that helped facilitate the release of the hostages and the prisoners), Egypt (where prisoners and hostages were released and exchanged along their border) - everyone knew exactly what the dance was. That's why basically the terms of the agreement are so important."
Working out those terms has been a long and arduous back-and-forth with multiple parties, all of whom have different and often conflicting demands.
"With this particular case... obviously you have the people that are going to actually negotiate the deal, but of course swirling around those people, from both Hamas, from Israel, from America and from Qatar, there's a lot of other dynamics that those people are having to take into account.
"For the Israeli side, just for starters, Netanyahu has the domestic politics and the domestic pressure that he's under - first of all from the families of the people that have been taken hostage - to make a deal.
"But then contrarily he's got quite a large block of right wing politicians in his government that have other concerns and maybe don't want to make a deal under specific terms.
"And then he's got his own political future as well that he's considering and the possible criminal charges that would happen to him if he's not prime minister anymore."
Sosnowski says that on Hamas's side, letting go of hostages without a guarantee of a long-term ceasefire is risky.
"They're the only leverage that Hamas has got over Israel," she says.
Under the current deal, the first phase would allow for an "immediate, full, and complete ceasefire with the release of hostages including women, the elderly and the wounded, the return of the remains of some hostages who have been killed, and the exchange of Palestinian prisoners."
Phase two would see the rest of the hostages in Gaza released, Israeli troops leaving Gaza, and a permanent end to fighting.
Phase three would be a reconstruction plan in Gaza, as well as a return of the remaining bodies of hostages who have died while in captivity in the strip.
Sosnowski says this final phase needs careful consideration.
"I think it's really important for the international community to start thinking about how those things will occur, because a ceasefire is not a panacea.
"Without some sort of really deep thinking on how to come to some sort of place where Palestinians and Israelis can live together in some sort of humane way, we're just going to kind of further the dynamics that saw the attack on 7 October in the first place."
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