According to the BBC's Paul Danahar the Israeli conditions for a ceasefire in Gaza are:
- No hostile fire of any kind to come from Gaza into Israel including smalls arms fire at Israeli troops near the border
- Hamas fighters must be stopped from traveling to the Sinai to carry out attacks against Israel at the Sinai/Israel border
- Hamas must not be able to rearm – International and regional actors needed for this
- A ceasefire must not simple be a "time-out" for Hamas, it must be an extended period of quiet for Southern Israel
Israel wants Egypt to play a "key role" in this, guaranteeing the points 2 and 3. That is just another of many attempt of dumping its Gaza problem onto Egypt. Morsi would be crazy to agree to that. There will thereby be no guarantees.
According to an U.S. official Israel also wants the Hamas official "in charge of guns" in Gaza to guarantee the ceasefire. That is a great idea but Israel killed the most able guy, Ahmed al-Jaabari, capable of not only controlling Hamas but also the other fighting groups, right at the beginning of its new war on Gaza. That has significantly reduced the chances for a long term ceasefire. There will be promises from other groups to hold fire but there can again be no guarantees.
Hamas has, of course, also demands. It wants guarantees that:
- Israel stops its bombardments,
- promises not to enter Gaza,
- ends targeted assassinations and
- lifts its economic blockade of the Gaza strip.
Whatever the outcome no one, not even the U.S, could guarantee Israel's promises and Hamas certainly knows that Israeli promises are usually not worth the paper they are written on.
But these are now the opening position to what looks likely to become protracted negotiations.
Netanyahoo wants to win the demanded concessions solely by continuing the air war, bombing this or that house of some Hamas functionary or another police station into rubble. In principle Israel could continue to do so for weeks. But after more than 1,400 strikes on Gaza all obvious targets on its list have already been hit. What is it going to bomb next if not civil infrastructure and the civil population?
Netanyahoo, as well his allies in Washington and London, fears a ground war in Gaza. His troops would likely get bogged down in urban guerrilla fighting and would take losses from the new arms Hamas acquired from Libya and elsewhere. Public opinion in Israel would turn against Netanyahoo should any invasion of Gaza end up with high casualty rates on the Israeli side.
But if Israel continues the bombing the pressure from the outside to end the war will increase. There are this time many more journalists in Gaza than there were in 2008. Detailed news and pictures of each and every civilian killed is getting out and with each of them Israel's position in the court of world opinion will sink further.
The bombing campaign has a time limit and a ground war is too dangerous. Those are the weaknesses of Netanyahoo's position.
Hamas knows those weaknesses. As longer it holds off a ceasefire while continuing to fire some rockets into Israel the better its negotiation position will become. It will probably try to goad Netanyahoo into a ground war. One rocket hit with a high Israeli causality rate might be sufficient to achieve that. After such a hit public pressure, especially from the right, to go "all in" would increase. At some point Netanyahoo might have no other way to end the stalemate but by committing more forces. Hamas is likely well prepared for that moment.
As long as Hamas keeps its fighting spirit and does not give in to appeasement pressure from Qatar and other U.S. clients it has a good chance of – in the end – coming away stronger while seeing Netanyahoo weakened.
