DEBKAfile traces the progress of the negotiating process in Cairo, stage by stage:

1. From Friday, Nov. 16, two days into the Gaza operation, the three Israeli ministers at the helm bowed to President Barack Obama’s repeated requests every few hours for yet another 24 hours’ grace for Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and Qatar Emir al-Thani to conclude their bid for a ceasefire.

2. Saturday, Nov. 17, the IDF units mustered on the Gaza border received orders to go in. Some notified their families by text messages.  Less than an hour later, the order was cancelled and they were pulled back after another phone call was received in Jerusalem from President Obama.

3.  By then, it was too late for Israel’s leaders to correct their worst strategic mistake. They had gone along with Obama’s devolution of the ceasefire brokerage effort on three avowed foes of the Jewish state: Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood; Erdogan who keeps on slamming Israel as “a terrorist state;” and the Qatari ruler, who is bankrolling Hamas’s purchases of sophisticated weapons smuggled out of Libya.

The “truce brokers” prevented Israel from taking its place at the table. The Israeli delegation sent to Cairo was confined to exchanges though Egyptian intelligence officers, while at the same time forced to accept Hamas and Jihad Islami as negotiating partners.

4. When they saw tens of thousands of IDF reservists standing idle on the Gaza border, Hamas and Jihad Islami strategists concluded that, while they may have lost the opening round of the war, they had gained enough momentum to make up for it in the days that followed.

5. Building up their stake for the endgame, the two terrorist organizations intensified their missile blitz on Israel and raised their terms for a ceasefire. Meanwhile, international pressure from Western leaders on Jerusalem to step back from a ground operation was crushing.

By Tuesday, Netanyahu was willing to assure visiting German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle: “I would prefer this to end with a diplomatic solution. I hope we can achieve one, but if not, we are fully entitled to defend ourselves by other means and we shall use them.”

The Prime minister had also come around to accepting Egypt’s role in monitoring and managing the proposed ceasefire and providing guarantees for its implementation.

Netanyahu, Barak and Lieberman gave there consent to this arrangement in the face of strong objections from top military commanders and intelligence pros. The latter argued that, even with the best will in the world, the Muslim Brotherhood rulers of Egypt were not up to the task.

6.  The clincher was the news that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had left the Obama party touring the Far East and was on her way to Jerusalem and Cairo Tuesday night to tie up the last ends of an accord to stop the fighting in Gaza.

The issue had acquired ramifications which transcend the embattled Palestinian enclave: For Washington, Morsi’s acceptance of a key role in the execution of the truce would signify that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood had after all chosen to join the US-Israel orbit in preference to the radical Middle East camp – albeit without fanfare for fear of embarrassment at home and in the inter-Arab arena.

The Obama administration expects Israel to go along with this perception.

DEBKAfile’s sources report that this is a dangerous illusion because, in the first place, it does not truly represent the intentions or orientation of the Egyptian president or the Muslim Brotherhood. In the second, it flies in the face of ten years of experience.

Even when Hosni Mubarak, a far more pro-Western figure, ruled Egypt, Cairo never upheld a single security accord negotiated with Israel for the Gaza Strip or Sinai and sponsored by Washington. Why would the Muslim Brothers behave any differently?

But even if Cairo does take charge of the ceasefire deal, it would put Israel in the invidious position of having to run to the Egyptians to complain about every Hamas violation, helpless to do anything about the smuggling into the Gaza Strip of fresh and better munitions with more powerful multiple warheads, or stop the groundwork being laid for the next Palestinian blitz.

The boast by government sources that the first missile fired from Gaza in violation of the truce would be met with an extra-powerful response unfortunately recalls the pledge of a former prime minister Ariel Sharon. After he disengaged Israel from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and pulled out every last civilian and soldier, Sharon declard that the first bullet fired from the Gaza Strip would be met with a powerful response.

Since then, the bullet has evolved into a missile… and is still growing.

via For Israel, a truce is the worst of all worlds: Tied hands, Hamas unbowed.

Categories: Israel in the News