Why America Has Failed to Forge an Israel-Hamas Cease-Fire

On May 31, U.S. President Joe Biden announced a three-phase proposal to end the war in the Gaza Strip. He called, first, for a temporary cease-fire tied to partial withdrawals of Israeli forces, limited hostage exchanges, and an influx of aid. Negotiations would then begin and, if successful, lead to the second phase, involving a permanent cessation of hostilities, tied to full withdrawals and complete hostage exchanges. The final phase would see reconstruction efforts begin in Gaza, and the exchange of the remains of Israeli hostages.

Despite the fanfare with which it was announced, this proposal was just one of many to have been made since the war began. Indeed, Israel and Hamas had previously rejected similar plans advanced by Egypt and Qatar. And like the other proposals, the Biden plan has fallen flat. Although these mediated initiatives have not succeeded in forging peace, they represent attempts to end the ongoing suffering caused by the war. It can’t hurt to try.

Or can it? The historical record reveals that such diplomatic interventions often have hugely negative consequences. Outside powers have almost never been able to impose lasting cease-fires without support from the belligerents themselves and, perhaps more troublingly, external efforts to facilitate diplomacy can make wars worse. Rather than bringing peace, there is the uncomfortable likelihood that diplomacy, which takes place regardless of what is happening on the battlefield, can actually exacerbate a war. The United States and its allies should pressure Hamas and Israel to change their wartime conduct instead of seeking to impose negotiations when neither side has expressed an interest in a settlement.

FEAR TO NEGOTIATE

Many prominent academics, including Robert Powell and Branislav Slantchev, have viewed negotiations during conflict as a process that can produce a spectrum of outcomes. On one end, the relevant parties successfully reach a mutually acceptable agreement, ending the dispute. In the middle, parties may identify more limited areas of compromise, and the dispute continues with a narrower range of differences. On the other end, parties fail to find any common ground, and the dispute continues as if nothing changed. Across all these possibilities, negotiation is seen as a costless activity that either improves the situation or, at worst, does not change the status quo.

But negotiations can have costs. One of these is that leaders often worry that betraying a willingness to negotiate will be interpreted as a sign of weakness, waning resolve, or interest in suing for peace. Such an interpretation could deflate morale at home or motivate the enemy to fight more fiercely because it believes that victory or, at least, further gains are within reach. This fear was expressed in 1965 by former U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then Ambassador to South Vietnam Maxwell Taylor. He warned Washington against diplomatic overtures to North Vietnam, because “haste to get to the conference table may spark upsurge in [Viet Cong] efforts designed to achieve the maximum negotiating advantage, since Hanoi and Peking may interpret our eagerness as a sign of weakness.” North Vietnamese officials expressed similar concerns, telling the Norwegian ambassador to Peking in 1967 that whenever Hanoi showed any interest in talks the United States unleashed fresh attacks. Consequently, peace talks did not begin until 1968, after both sides felt that they had demonstrated their strength through respective operations. Officials in both Washington and Hanoi knew that indiscriminately initiating negotiations can lead to more intense fighting and a further deterioration in relations between combatants. In the words of former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Fred Iklé and Georgetown Professor Paul Pillar, negotiations can have “side effects,” regardless of whether they produce agreement.

The historical record reveals that such diplomatic interventions often have hugely negative consequences.

To be sure, the reality of the battlefield can open space for negotiation. Waging war reveals each side’s strength, as well as its willingness to absorb costs to resolve a dispute on terms favorable to it. New information from fighting helps all parties to revise their expectations and can lead to a shared understanding of the war’s trajectory. Sustained battlefield trends that undeniably and continuously favor one side provide the clearest path to negotiations, as was shown by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5. Before Japan initiated hostilities, few would have expected it to decisively or repeatedly defeat Russia on the battlefield. Yet this is exactly what happened. The relentless string of Japanese battlefield victories led U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to mediate, at the belligerents’ request, and negotiate the Treaty of Portsmouth, which granted Japan most of its demands.

That said, lopsided battlefield trends do not guarantee openness to diplomacy if belligerents cannot trust the opponent to honor a diplomatic settlement, or if they cannot trust a third party to reliably enforce its terms. During the darkest moments of World War II from 1940 to 1941, when Germany’s blitzkrieg strategy conquered Europe, the United Kingdom and other countries refused to negotiate with German Führer Adolf Hitler because they saw no scenario in which he could credibly commit to a peaceful deal or be meaningfully deterred from reneging. After all, the failed prewar policy of appeasement had shown that Hitler could not be trusted to follow through on his promises. The only way to address the problem was to eliminate Hitler or to die trying.

International institutions and third parties can also pressure combatants in ways that allow them to pursue peace. Belligerents can cast their willingness to negotiate as an act of cooperation with the international community rather than as evidence of waning resolve. This allows them to appear as the moderate voice and to frame the opponent as the recalcitrant party. An example of this was seen during the Cenepa Valley War between Ecuador and Peru in 1995, when Ecuadorian President Sixto Durán Ballén proposed to his National Security Council that they request diplomatic assistance from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the United States in order to look like good-faith actors. Diplomatic pressure can not only make negotiating less risky but also make avoiding negotiations costly. In many conflicts, including those in Ukraine and Gaza, third parties backed by institutions, including the United Nations, have managed to get belligerents to negotiate while fighting. It is no coincidence that the proportion of time spent talking while fighting wars was almost twice as high from 1947 to 2003 as it was between 1823 and the establishment of the post–World War II order, in 1945.

A SLY GAME

Another mistaken assumption about negotiations is that they always take place in good faith. Even if disputants do not reach a settlement, it is presumed that they have made a sincere attempt to find a mutually acceptable agreement. If true, there may be no harm in talking. But reality is more complicated. Belligerents can and often do negotiate in bad faith, by seeming interested in a settlement while actually aiming for talks to fail. Insincere belligerents can use the time gained from talking to rearm and regroup, to deflect political blame for the war, or to propagandize. Negotiations, then, become a way to fight wars—not just to end them.

This dynamic was seen from 1951 to 1953, during talks in Kaesong and Panmunjom to end the Korean War. William Vatcher, the chief psychologist working for the United Nations Command delegation, noted that because North Korea and China had been “unsuccessful in attaining their objectives on the Korean field of battle, they turned to the conference table as a means of achieving their ends … to gain precious time while they rebuilt and strengthened their forces, to obtain every possible benefit from the UNC, and to serve as a sounding board for their propaganda.” The U.S. contingent leading the UNC’s delegation also dragged its feet during these talks while seeking to show its allies that it was willing to give diplomacy a chance, thereby creating more political space for continued fighting.

Bargaining is more sincere when a side is left with no other options—that is, when the battlefield has plainly revealed the war’s likely outcome. When that has happened, a belligerent will independently seek to negotiate, despite the risks of looking weak. Without these factors—and still hopeful of victory—belligerents feel greater liberty to negotiate insincerely. Forcing belligerents to talk when the battlefield has not revealed the conflict’s trajectory can backfire, yielding outcomes that are counterproductive to settlement.

That is the risk with Gaza. Israel and Hamas are not currently prepared to reach a mutually acceptable agreement. Deals can succeed only when all parties are willing to accept the same terms and when all parties believe that the terms will be followed. Neither condition currently holds. Rather, each side’s fundamental goal has not wavered since October 7: Hamas wants to survive as a political and military entity, and Israel wants to eliminate it. Regardless of any potential changes in the belligerents’ positions regarding the presence of Israeli forces in Gaza, the rights of return for Palestinians, or the viability of a two-state solution—which are themselves intractable issues—fundamentally incompatible positions on Hamas’s future afford no space for agreement.

THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

Belligerents are more likely to believe that a peace deal will hold either when at least one side is too weak to fight or when both believe that any attempt to renege on an agreement would lead to terrible consequences. Neither condition is currently satisfied in Gaza. The Rafah operation that began in early May, which was staged to eradicate Hamas, has not accomplished its objective. Hamas still seems willing to fight on, and its uncompromising demand for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, even in July, attests to this fact. Indeed, Israel’s attacks against Palestinian civilians have increased political support for Hamas, which could actually grow stronger, thereby decreasing the likelihood of the organization’s members abiding by a deal.

Both Israel and Hamas face intense and constant pressures to negotiate, which makes them—perhaps even forces them to—feign interest in diplomacy. Hamas responded to Biden’s May 31 proposal by saying it wanted to work “positively and constructively” toward a cease-fire. In a written statement published a week later, the organization reaffirmed its “positive stance towards Biden’s statements.” This encouraging language does not demonstrate Hamas’s genuine desire for agreement. Instead, it reflects the organization’s awareness that Biden’s announcement was designed to place the blame for the war’s continuation on Hamas. Moreover, the fact that slight variants of the same three-phase plan have been proposed, accepted, and then rejected over multiple months, even as political and battlefield realities have changed, indicates that diplomatic efforts are primarily driven by third parties’ desires to stop the fighting and are not closely tied to belligerents’ real or perceived conditions.

If pushed to engage in diplomacy without fundamental points of disagreement being resolved, belligerents may exploit talks for their own political and military benefit. For example, warring parties may insincerely offer or agree to terms that, although they may sound reasonable to outside observers, are unlikely to be accepted by the other party. This process allows one side to curry political favor internationally by shifting blame for continued conflict onto its opponent, and subsequently justifying continued and escalated hostilities. Moreover, any pauses in fighting due to negotiations provide further opportunities to remobilize and prepare for resumed hostilities, as was seen during the first Arab-Israeli war. In October 1948, five months after the conflict began, the Israeli delegation at the United Nations helped draft Security Council Resolution 62, which called on all belligerents to return the land conquered and retreat to their positions from two weeks prior, while urging further negotiations. Rewinding the battlefield by two weeks made little sense to Israel, as it had gained significant ground in that time. However, Israeli officials supported the resolution because they correctly predicted that the Arab states would spurn it, thereby diverting international criticism to the Arab states, and Israel could continue with its planned military operations.

STACKING THE DECK

Such factors do not bode well for the Biden administration’s recent diplomatic offensive. Over the course of negotiations, which are still ongoing in fits and starts, Israeli and Hamas representatives have repeatedly and publicly blamed each other for being the obstinate party, in an attempt to make themselves seem like the reasonable one. If Hamas abandons the current mediation effort entirely, Israel can argue that it tried—although, of course, it had little interest in seeing negotiations succeed—and that violence is the only way forward. On the other hand, if Hamas accepts the proposal to begin the deal’s first phase, both sides gain six weeks of a temporary cease-fire to rearm should negotiations leading into the deal’s second phase fall apart. Given both sides’ fundamental disagreement, the odds of failure are high. Almost as soon as Biden completed his remarks, Netanyahu stated that the plan does not affect his overarching goal of destroying Hamas, and Hamas would certainly reject or renege on any negotiated agreement that calls for its own destruction.

The situation may become a repeat of June 1948 when, during the first Arab-Israeli war, the United Nations arranged a four-week temporary cease-fire to provide space for the UN mediator Folke Bernadotte to negotiate a permanent peace. As Bernadotte presented various proposals, both Israel and its Arab rivals recruited new troops, recuperated, and stockpiled international shipments of arms. Unbeknownst to the UN mediator, neither side ever had any genuine desire to compromise and both even considered launching attacks before the cease-fire’s formal end, to surprise their adversary. When the cease-fire lapsed, the hostilities that followed ultimately favored Israel, which benefited from the breathing space allowed by negotiations. The side effects of diplomacy enabled more war.

The strong relationship between the United States and Israel further complicates the prospects for peace in the current Gaza war. Political scientists including Katja Favretto, Andrew Kydd, and Burcu Savun have found that powerful biased mediators—and the United States is certainly one for Israel—have greater success in convincing belligerents to settle than weak or unbiased mediators. This is because mediators that favor one side are capable of persuading that side to negotiate and abide by a deal. But the United States may be too biased. Washington has consistently shown its willingness to use UN Security Council vetoes to protect Israel, to criticize International Criminal Court charges against Israel, and to generally tolerate Israel’s wartime conduct. Overwhelming U.S. support for Israel has raised doubts that the United States would be able to deter Israel from reneging on a settlement.

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

Third-party efforts to push for diplomacy, regardless of the belligerents’ beliefs, conditions, or goals, can undermine peace. Indeed, negotiated settlements borne of third-party pressure are much more liable to collapse than those sought by the belligerents themselves. Real peace relies on a far more judicious and challenging exercise of international diplomacy.

To be sure, cease-fires associated with negotiations, even if short-lived, are often essential in providing valuable humanitarian aid to innocent civilians caught in war’s crossfire. Such efforts, in this case for Palestinians, should not be abandoned. Rather, the benefits of humanitarian relief borne of temporary cease-fires must be considered in tandem with the potential longer-term downsides of insincere diplomacy. Ignoring this dilemma can result in greater suffering.

Although numerous countries and international institutions could influence the present war, the United States holds the greatest sway. And Washington has several alternatives to its current strategy of pushing for talks that could more meaningfully affect the course of the conflict. First, Biden should change course by calling out and expressing willingness to punish human rights atrocities and violations of laws of war. As Oona Hathaway has previously argued in Foreign Affairs, Washington would benefit from dialing back its offensive against the International Criminal Court and strongly pushing Israel to investigate and punish its soldiers’ wrongdoings. Biden should do so, and he should increase threats to pause or withhold arms transfers if Israel’s conduct does not change. This would not only save civilian lives but would also slowly build confidence that the United States might be an impartial arbiter of a future cease-fire agreement. To undermine Hamas’s recruitment and mobilization efforts, the United States should encourage Israel to directly target Hamas’s agents and avoid hurting Palestinian civilians. Sanctions on groups and individuals fomenting violence will also have a part to play.

The United States—as well as Egypt, Qatar, and other prospective mediators—should also stand ready to offer its services whenever the belligerents request them. But constant efforts to instigate talks or insist on terms that do not align with belligerents’ actual positions should end. If negotiations take place, the likelihood of their success will depend in large measure on recent battlefield activity having revealed one side’s superiority and both belligerents accepting that a settlement will be truly enforceable. The value of third parties is not that they can create peace where peace does not exist. It is, rather, that they can assist in arranging peace—and in reducing the risk that belligerents will look weak or be exploited while negotiating—when both sides are ready to consider it. Pressuring Israel to minimize civilian casualties and to punish its troops’ unacceptable behavior, or convincing all belligerents to put down their weapons, would require greater political will, patience, and restraint than a public push demanding acceptance of an improbable agreement. But these actions hold the promise, however slim, of positive change.