There’s no ceasefire in sight for Israel’s Gaza war. Why not?

In the year following Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, there has only been one successful pause in hostilities: a week in November during which Hamas traded 110 Israeli captives for 240 Palestinian prisoners. Since then, the Biden administration has repeatedly touted ceasefire deals that have gone nowhere — both between Israel and Hamas and, more recently, between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia that is fighting an Israeli invasion in southern Lebanon. Other parties have tried as well. The United Nations has attempted multiple times to secure a ceasefire resolution, though the US either vetoed or abstained on each. In September, France and the US tried to advance a 21-day pause in hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Both Hezbollah and the Israeli government refused that proposal. The cost of those failures has been high. At this point, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. Israel has expanded its war to Lebanon, killing nearly 2,000 people there, and violence has increased in the West Bank. Israel is also weighing its response to an Iranian attack earlier this month, in which around 180 missiles landed in Israeli territory. Unlike previous Israeli conflicts, there doesn’t appear to be any end to the war in sight, at least not through diplomatic means. The recent death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar could provide an opening for renewed talks, but the same core issues remain. Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah can’t agree to a ceasefire because they’re at cross purposes The short answer for why ceasefire talks have failed is that each of the three parties directly involved in the regional conflict — Hamas, Israel, and Hezbollah — have demands that their would-be negotiating partner is unwilling, or unable, to meet. When it comes to Israel’s conflict with Hamas, the country’s demands have been both evolving and abstract. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly torched a potential July ceasefire agreement with Hamas by insisting that Israeli troops maintain a permanent presence in Gaza, and that Israel would continue to have control of the Gaza/Egypt border. Those are much bigger — and more unrealistic — asks than previous demands for the return of Israeli hostages in Gaza, which is what the initial ceasefire conversations revolved around. And more broadly, Israel’s goals in Gaza are somewhat subjective: Israeli leaders have repeatedly said they want to completely eliminate Hamas’s military and governing capacities, a goal Hamas has obviously rejected, and which US officials have said is unlikely. It’s very difficult to eradicate a political ideology, which is what Hamas is at its essence, and Israel has not made clear under what conditions it will feel satisfied its goals are met — whether that means the death or capture of major leaders, the dismantling of outside support, total Israeli occupation of Gaza, or some other scenario. “It seems clearer to me what the Israeli government considers unacceptable than what it considers acceptable,” Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Vox. “The challenge it will have is keeping an eye on what is achievable and sustainable. Both are surely less than what the government wants.” Similarly, Israel’s stated goal in its conflict with Hezbollah — to ensure the group is unable to attack Israel like Hamas did on October 7 — is opaque. That could mean anything from pushing the group a certain distance from Israel’s northern border to pushing regime change in Lebanon. Israel is unlikely to be able to dismantle Hezbollah totally, but its goal may be to shift the balance of power in its decades-long conflict with the organization. “This time around, with the damage they’ve done to Hezbollah and with the direct fighting between Israel and Iran, Israel was hoping to fundamentally change the threat that the Iranian proxies [like Hamas and Hezbollah] pose to Israel,” Natan Sachs, director of the Middle East program at the Brookings Institution, told Vox. “They feel like they’ve been successful, and they’re hoping to push their success, so that makes them less keen on a ceasefire than they have been in the past.” That is to say, the abstract and shifting nature of Israel’s demands may be the point; it’s impossible to find a workable solution when it’s not clear what one side wants or when its demands will be satisfied. And with US support still strong, there’s no real reason for Israel to compromise. Hamas’s aims have been more concrete throughout the negotiating process, although as fighting persisted beyond just a few months, the presence of Israeli troops in Gaza added a new valence to the group’s demands. Now, “you’ve got Hamas that’s insisting on a complete and total cessation of hostilities, on full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, it’s demanding the return of people from the south back to the north. And obviously, the release of prisoners [from Israeli prisons]. And that just doesn’t gel well with what Israel is demanding, which is the complete and total destruction of Hamas,” Tahani Mustafa, Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Vox in May. Five months later, those remain Hamas’s goals. According to Mustafa, Hamas also has a larger goal with any ceasefire negotiation: cementing a permanent status for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as the right of Palestinians to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel, both goals laid out in the group’s 2017 charter. But Netanyahu has repeatedly made clear that he will not accept a Palestinian state of any sort. And public opinion polling from May indicates many Jewish Israelis don’t believe it’s possible to live peacefully alongside Palestinians. “Hamas’s vision is a two-state solution,” Mustafa said. However, she added, “They won’t ever openly give up the notion of a full, free Palestine” — that is, establishing a state that encompasses all of historic Palestine, an area that includes Israeli territory. Hamas does understand “that reality will not allow for that, which is why they also accept a two-state solution,” Mustafa said. “So for Hamas, the objective is to jump-start those negotiations.” A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, meanwhile, presents a circular problem. Hezbollah initially ramped up its attacks on Israel in support of Hamas; it has fired rockets at Israel since October 8, 2023, maintaining that attacks will only stop when a Gaza ceasefire is reached. Hezbollah leadership recently signaled they’d support a truce not tied to Gaza, but it’s unclear whether that’s now official policy. That ceasefire doesn’t appear to be forthcoming, which means — unless Hezbollah has indeed changed its stance— Israel will continue its invasion of Lebanon and potentially push further into the country. The US isn’t pulling its weight, and the UN is toothless The ceasefire talks are complex, multiparty affairs; Egypt and Qatar are important mediators, since they both have relationships with both Israel and Hamas. Though the US and the international community have been able to mediate Israeli conflicts with its neighbors in the past, they just don’t have as much sway now, for a number of reasons. “US influence, and US ability to dictate events — or at least control them and control the narrative — has been diminished in many respects,” Andrew Hyde, director and senior fellow at the Stimson Center, said. That’s partly because the US is no longer the same kind of dominant regional power it was in the late 20th century; Iran has been able to grow its influence in recent decades, as has Russia. In the past, the US and the international community have succeeded in pausing hostilities, both when Israel has invaded Lebanon and in operations against Hamas. Sometimes this happened through the United Nations, like in 1978 when the UN Security Council implemented a resolution calling for Israel to leave Lebanon. Other times, US presidential administrations have directly intervened, like when President Ronald Reagan withheld shipments of artillery and fighter jets over Israel’s bombings of Beirut in 1982 and 1983, or when the first Bush administration used access to funding to pressure Israel over illegal settlements in the Palestinian territories. Annelle Sheline, a research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute, argues that today, the US could take similar actions to rein in Israel — in Gaza and in Lebanon — but it has little interest in doing so. “The US government has said that they aren’t actually seeking a ceasefire in Lebanon, which is fairly astonishing, given that Israel is engaged in this blatant violation of the UN Charter by invading Lebanon,” Shilene said. “About the failure of the administration to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza … for me, the short answer is just that the United States is not using any leverage to actually get to that outcome. So it seems clear to me that this is not actually the desired outcome of the administration.” Though Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently warned Netanyahu that they would consider halting weapons shipments unless the humanitarian situation in Gaza improves, the US has largely failed to use the fact that it has supplied nearly $18 billion in materiel and related assistance over the past year to push Israel to deescalate. Iran is not an actor in ceasefire negotiations, although there are increased outright attacks between itself and Israel. But it does play a role in these conversations because both Hamas, and to a much greater extent Hezbollah, are part of a network of groups called the Axis of Resistance fighting Israel under Iran’s aegis. Broadly, these groups are fighting on behalf of Palestinians, and it’s unlikely Iran or any of its affiliated groups will give up until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. And the Iranian government itself faces an internal crisis of legitimacy, and it needs a win. A Hamas or Hezbollah victory would provide good public relations for Iranian leaders, and that can’t come if there’s a ceasefire. “Part of the Axis of Resistance strategy since October 7 has been to show that the unity of arena strategy that has brought the Axis groups together — they want to show that it’s working,” Sanam Vakil, director of the MIddle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, said. Though many nations — particularly in the Global South — and global institutions like the International Court of Justice and the United Nations have demanded a ceasefire and pushed for Israel to end its occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, the role of these institutions will remain minimal for the foreseeable future. That’s because the US’s goals in the conflict don’t comport with those of international institutions, Hyde said. With veto power on the UN Security Council, the US has a great degree of power over the very mechanism through which international law is supposed to be carried out. “Institutions get rolled over pretty easily. In the case of the Israeli situation right now, where a lot of the things that the UN should be standing for, and has tried to stand for both in its leadership and in its charter, doesn’t fit with this Israeli government in any way, shape, or form,” Hyde said. “[Israel] has made a point of not only not respecting it, but openly defying it. And then, the US isn’t necessarily weighing in on behalf of the institutions, to the Israelis, to say, ‘Well, you know, you really have to respect this.’”