The Difficulties of Negotiating with the Israelis – Imad al-Din Hussein

How does Israel negotiate with the Palestinians or any other party?

This is a very important question, and any Arab party that negotiates directly or indirectly with Israel, whether now or later, whether maintaining relations with Israel or in a state of hostility, must have sufficient awareness and a full understanding of the different and varied and thorny Israeli negotiation methods, so as not to get caught in an endless spiral and maze.

What reminded me of this topic was that last Sunday evening I met with an Egyptian expert on Israeli affairs at the end of a round of negotiations in Cairo aimed at reaching an armistice that would stop Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip and release Israeli prisoners.

I asked this distinguished expert for his assessment: Will we reach a deal?

The problems I am talking about are not referring to Sunday’s round of negotiations, which did not produce a breakthrough due to Israeli intransigence and Egyptian insistence on the need for Israeli withdrawal from the Philadelphia axis and Palestinian insistence on the need for the occupation forces to withdraw from the entire Gaza Strip. But I am referring to all negotiations, especially those that may be repeated in the future.

The expert told me that the Egyptians had real experience with Israel’s negotiating tactics, and without that experience they would not have been able to retake Taba. They faced all of Israel’s tricks and subterfuge, and he advised the Palestinians to benefit from those lessons so they don’t fall victim to Israel’s deceptions.

The experts are right, and anyone who has followed the recent rounds of negotiations will have noticed that there is no end to the bags of Israeli containers!!

For example, the Israelis agreed to US President Joe Biden’s proposals in late May last year, thinking that Hamas would inevitably reject them, but they were surprised that Hamas accepted them, so they naively abandoned them and then went on to invade Rafah and occupy the Philadelphia axis.

When negotiations began for the signing of an armistice agreement, everyone was surprised by Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that his forces would under no circumstances remain on the Philadelphia and Nazarim axis and would never leave them.

Since the beginning of the aggression, Israel has been creative in preventing all humanitarian aid trucks from entering the Gaza Strip. When it allowed a small number of trucks in, it acted as if it had made a major concession, and after a while it became creative, carefully checking the trucks in order to delay their entry as long as possible, sometimes even allowing its settlers to attack these convoys at certain moments, whether at the Kerem Abu Salom crossing or attacking UNRWA warehouses in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem.

From what has been leaked from behind the scenes of the negotiations, Israel said that its army could withdraw to a distance of 2 km from the Philadelphia axis and could also reduce the conditions to the necessity to check all Palestinians returning from southern Gaza to its northern Nezarim axis. Sadly, the United States viewed these Israeli statements as concessions, which prompted some US officials to claim that Israel had a positive stance, and when Hamas rejected these charades, it was described as tough or retreating, as stated by US President Joe Biden.

Israel has established several observation points on the Philadelphia axis or the Nezarim axis, and when it says it can reduce these observation points from 15 to 12 or even 10, according to Israeli and Washington custom, this is considered a concession and should be welcomed and accepted?!

When the Palestinian side agrees to a specific point and considers the negotiation issue closed, surprisingly, there are still hundreds of details pending and the Israelis are renegotiating for the second, third and tenth time, to the point that I think the proverb “the devil is in the details” comes to the fore after a round of negotiations between Israel and any other party.

Even if the negotiator is alert and familiar with all of Israel’s tricks and traps, he will be surprised to find that the Israelis finally say, yes, we agreed to it before, but we will not implement it, and if we implement it, they will be creative in implementing it until the other side gets bored and backs out.

I wrote this last Sunday evening. Yesterday afternoon, Monday, our Foreign Minister, former Secretary General of the Arab League, Dr. Nabil Elaraby, passed away.

I believe that all Arab diplomats urgently need to read his memoirs, Camp David – The Wall, published by Dar Al-Shorouk, in which he talks about the Camp David negotiations, where he served as legal adviser to the Egyptians. He served as head of the delegation and the Egyptian delegation to retake Taba from Israel through negotiations and arbitration. I will return to this topic tomorrow, God willing.