A woman holds up an improvised white flag as Palestinians flee Gaza City to the southern Gaza Strip on November 7, 2023. Photo / AP
A woman holds up an improvised white flag as Palestinians flee Gaza City to the southern Gaza Strip on November 7, 2023. Photo / AP
Six months since it began, Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip appears to have reached an impasse that analysts and diplomats say has no resolution in sight, even as experts warn of famine, Gaza’s health system collapses and the death toll continues to climb.
Mediators have found itdifficult to advance negotiations for a truce in Gaza, with Israel reluctant to agree to a ceasefire that allows Hamas to regroup in parts of Gaza and Hamas wary of proposals that do not ensure its long-term survival.
Although Israel has routed Hamas in much of Gaza, and fighting seems to have slowed, the conflict is being drawn out by Israel’s reluctance to either hold ground it has captured or transfer its control to an alternative Palestinian leadership, creating a power vacuum.
In some places, that vacuum has allowed remnants of Hamas to regroup, prompting Israeli troops to raid parts of northern Gaza that they had already conquered and vacated, like Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Elsewhere, the vacuum has led to a breakdown in civil order, making it harder to safely distribute badly needed aid. Scores of Palestinians have been killed around aid convoys, amid chaos and Israeli fire.
A World Central Kitchen vehicle hit by an Israeli airstrike in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on April 2, 2024. Photo / AP
The stasis has been prolonged by Hamas’ determination to hold onto Rafah, the city in southern Gaza that has become its last major stronghold, and by Israel’s decision to hold off on a ground invasion that US officials have warned would create a humanitarian disaster.
By dragging on for so long, the war has become the longest involving Israel since the 1980s. And the ramifications extend far beyond the Gaza border — including increasing domestic pressure on US President Joe Biden, who has continued to supply arms to Israel even as he expresses greater alarm over its actions, and the threat of the violence spilling over into a regional conflict between Israel and allies of Hamas, such as Iran.
Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip on March 31, 2024. Photo / Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, The New York Times
The war has also derailed US-led efforts for Israel and Saudi Arabia to normalise diplomatic relations and prompted protests in Arab states allied with the United States.
At the start of the year, some mediators thought it might be possible to secure a grand deal to end the war; transfer power in Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, the organisation that runs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank; seal Saudi-Israeli diplomatic ties; and create a pathway toward a sovereign Palestinian state.
But the longer the war has continued, the more quixotic that vision has seemed. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, does not want to cede control of Gaza to the authority, and Saudi Arabia says it will not normalise relations before a Palestinian state is created.
An aircraft airdrops humanitarian aid over the northern Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, March 31, 2024. Photo / AP
“The war is not over, and one cannot see a path forward to end it in a way that would bring about stability and humanitarian relief on the scale that is needed in any foreseeable future,” said Shibley Telhami, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the University of Maryland.
“The longer the fighting continues without a viable plan to stabilise Gaza and provide basic services, the greater the chances of more mishaps that kill aid workers operating in what is effectively an anarchic environment,” said Michael Koplow, an analyst at Israel Policy Forum, a research group based in New York.
