Negotiating with Shadows

Twenty-one months into the Gaza conflict, a new round of ceasefire talks comes laden with conditions while being light on certainty.

After nearly two years of devastating conflict, a tentative sliver of diplomacy has once again emerged from the wreckage of Gaza. Israel will dispatch a delegation to Doha for indirect ‘proximity talks’ with Hamas which are to be mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States on a proposed 60 day ceasefire coupled with hostage releases.

Since Hamas’ murderous attacks on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed around 1,200 Israelis and seized 251 hostages, Israel has responded with unprecedented ferocity. Gaza’s health ministry has reported over 57,000 Palestinians killed. Gaza lies in ruins and millions remain displaced.

The latest Doha proposal offers familiar terms: phased Israeli troop withdrawals, staggered prisoner exchanges, humanitarian aid and negotiations aimed at a longer peace. Hamas called its response “positive” but inserted caveats, chief among them - a demand that fighting must not resume if long-term talks collapse, and that all aid be distributed by the UN, not Israeli-backed organisations. Israel has rejected these demands as “unacceptable” but has nevertheless agreed to participate.

The scale of destruction and Israel’s objectives have been unprecedented since the October 2023 attacks. Unlike past operations – like those in 2009, 2014 or even the 1982 Lebanon incursion - Israel has sought not to deter or degrade, but to erase Hamas’s rule in Gaza.

Entire neighbourhoods have been obliterated with hospitals, tunnels and mosques (which have been used by Hamas operatives) have become battlegrounds. And for the first time, Israel has killed not just all of Hamas’s senior command structure but eliminated the leadership of Iran’s proxy Hezbollah and struck nuclear facilities in Tehran itself.

Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s elusive military chief, was killed in a July 2024 airstrike while Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attacks, was killed in Rafah in October last year. His brother and successor, Mohammed Sinwar, was eliminated in May this year. With them, much of Hamas’s leadership and operational core has been destroyed.

This represents a profound shift. For decades, Israel fought asymmetrical battles against non-state actors - Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad - while Tehran pulled strings in the background. Now, the IDF has struck not just the proxies, but the puppeteer.

The Arab response has been notably restrained. While publics across the region have protested Israeli actions, Arab states, particularly those in the Abraham Accords bloc, have maintained diplomatic channels and security ties. Even Saudi Arabia, which paused normalisation talks in the early months of war, has since quietly re-engaged. Egypt and Jordan, long regional pillars, have focused less on Palestinian politics and more on border stability. Palestinian fragmentation has created a diplomatic void that Israel has exploited.

President Donald Trump now seeks to position himself as the architect of a “big beautiful” Middle East deal. His administration has backed Israel militarily while cajoling Arab states and hosting proximity talks. A meeting with Netanyahu looms, and Trump, always alert to optics, would like to announce a breakthrough.

And yet, power alone does not write endings.

Inside Gaza, Hamas is gone, but no credible post-war plan has emerged. The Palestinian Authority is too weak. Arab peacekeepers are reluctant. A full Israeli re-occupation is politically suicidal. International trusteeship has been floated. But the question is by whom, with what mandate?

Still, this war may mark a break from the past. Unlike the PLO in the 1980s or Hezbollah in 2006, Hamas is no longer capable of returning as a political force in its former stronghold. Iran’s deterrence has been punctured. Hezbollah has been pushed back. Hamas has been buried beneath the rubble of Gaza. Israel, for the moment, holds the strategic high ground.

But victory brings its own burdens. With no enemy left to fight, Israel must now answer a harder question: what comes next? Flattening Gaza may have ended Hamas’s rule, but unless something better rises from the ruins, the silence that follows may be just another uneasy pause.