Since Donald Trump announced on July 1 that a Gaza ceasefire deal was likely, if not imminent, Israel has sought to sabotage negotiations through well-worn methods in an effort to block a deal that would end the war. For nearly two weeks, a senior delegation from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) have been meeting with regional mediators from Qatar and Egypt in Doha in an effort to secure an agreement that lifts Israel’s deadly blockade and restores the UN-led aid distribution system, withdraws Israeli occupation forces, and would see Hamas formally relinquish its governance of Gaza in return for a U.S.-guaranteed end to the genocide.
Immediately after Trump announced what he called the “final proposal” for a Gaza deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu undermined the negotiating process, repeatedly announcing—in public—his intent to continue the war after securing the release of ten living Israeli captives in a temporary 60-day truce and to forge ahead with his ethnic cleansing campaign to force the surviving Palestinians out of Gaza. “After the pause, we will transfer the population in the Strip southward and impose a siege [on the rest of Gaza],” Netanyahu told far-right cabinet minister Bezalel Smotrich recently, according to Israel’s Channel 12……more
