Hamas Manoeuvring Complicates Efforts To Secure Prisoner Swaps With Israel

Israel wasn’t slamming the door on renewed indirect prisoner swap negotiations with Hamas when it this week barred David Barnea, the head of Mossad, the country’s foreign intelligence agency, from travelling to Qatar to explore possibilities for renewed exchanges. Instead, it was manoeuvring for greater leverage in potential talks and expressing doubts about whether Hamas could deliver a second temporary truce in the Gaza war that would make further prisoner swaps possible.

Israeli media reports suggested that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant opposed the trip in the belief that Hamas’ Qatar-based leaders had lost contact with the group’s Gaza leadership after it failed to respond to Qatari proposals. Exiled Hamas leaders, Khaled Mishaal and Ismail Haniyeh, served as conduits to their Gaza counterparts in talks in November that produced a week-long truce during which Hamas released 84 Israeli and 24 foreign hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

Some Israeli sources suggested that Israel, despite pressure from relatives of the 138 hostages kidnapped by Hamas in its October 7 attack on Israel to prioritize the release of the captives, may not want to negotiate at a time that the United States is pressing it to adapt its military strategy to ensure fewer Gazan civilian casualties.

Barnea was stopped from travelling a day after US President Joe Biden met in the White House with relatives of American nationals held hostage by Hamas. Israel’s negotiating position was weakened by a US intelligence assessment concluding that half of the air-to-ground ordinance Israel has dropped on Gaza since October 7 consisted of unguided rather than precision-guided munitions. The report challenged Israeli assertions that its military sought to spare or minimise civilian casualties. Israel was quick to counter the assertion.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry puts casualties at close to 19,000. The ministry classifies all casualties as civilian. It is unclear whether that number includes Hamas fighters or whether the ministry simply does not publish that figure. Even if fighters were included, the vast majority of casualties, including 7,700 children, are civilians. Israel puts the number of fighters killed at about 7,000, including ten battalion and brigade commanders. Hamas is estimated to have 30,000 fighters.

Qatar appears to see a second round of prisoner swaps as a possible way of turning a limited and temporary deal into something that could lead to an end in the fighting and create the basis for negotiations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog poured cold water on peace talks and the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel any time soon.

In wanting to negotiate a second round of prisoner exchanges, Qatar reportedly proposes it involve not only women and children but also men. Last month’s swaps exclusively involved Israeli women and children and foreign nationals held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian women and children incarcerated by Israel.

In a move that could influence strained relations between Hamas and the Western-backed, West Bank-based Palestine Authority, Qatar reportedly suggested that Marwan Barghouti, a popular member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Al Fatah group be included in a potential exchange.

Widely seen as a potential successor to 87-year-old Abbas if Israel releases him, Barghouti was convicted to five cumulative life sentences in prison on murder charges. Israel accuses Barghouti of founding the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a coalition of Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank.

In 2006, Barghouti authored from prison a National Conciliation Document of the Prisoners that was co-signed by Hamas. The document endorsed Palestinians’ right to resist Israeli occupation, implicitly including armed resistance, while appearing to envision a two-state solution.

Exiled Hamas leaders’ apparent willingness to re-engage in prisoner swap negotiations reverses their earlier refusal to further discuss exchanges until Israel halts its assault on Gaza. The turnaround fits a pattern of convoluted and contradictory statements by Hamas leaders as well as Iranians suggesting that militants and their backers are manoeuvring for the day the guns fall silent in Gaza.

The manoeuvring started when Iran signed on to a statement by leaders of Arab and Muslim-majority countries gathered in Riyadh last month endorsing the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. A month later, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian appeared to roll back the Iranian endorsement. He told the Doha Forum this week that rejection of a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was Iran and Israel’s only agreement.

Iranian political scientist Nasser Hadrian noted that “there are three views in Iran, which are reconcilable. One is a referendum. They argue that Palestinians, Jews, Christians, and Muslims should decide the future of that country. Number two is whatever Palestinians decide is fine for Iran…. And there are people in Iran who think a two-state solution is the best solution.

Making a point of condemning Hamas’ targeting of civilians in its October 7 attacks alongside tackling Israel for its conduct of the war, Hadrian argued that in the end Iran would accept realities on the ground. He was referring a 1982 Arab peace plan that proposes recognition of Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state and various Muslim countries that have maintained diplomatic relations with Israel, or in the case of Saudi Arabia, are considering recognising the Jewish state.

Iran’s manoeuvres occurred against the backdrop of contrasting Palestinian and Iranian responses to Iranian support for Hamas. Iran’s rising popularity among Palestinians is in stark contrast to sympathy for Israel among ordinary Iranians, according to Hadrian. A recent survey concluded that 41 per cent of Gazans and 30 per cent of West Bankers were satisfied with Iran’s role in the Gaza war. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have fired missiles towards Israel and attacked Israel-related shipping in the Gulf scored double those numbers.

Iranians’ response is diametrically opposite. Iranian manoeuvring also constitutes an attempt to facilitate efforts to ease harsh US sanctions imposed in response to Iran’s nuclear program. The United States has effectively frozen billions of dollars it had promised to release as part of a prisoner exchange deal because of Iranian support for Hamas.

Much like Iran, exile Hamas officials, in an exercise of one step forward, two steps backward, signalled that recognition of Israel was not beyond the pale. The PLO, a coalition of Palestinian factions other than Hamas, recognized Israel’s right to exist and renounced terrorism in 1988. In exchange, Israel acknowledged the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. (IPA Service)