After 28 days of fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants in Gaza, a ceasefire at last looks like holding and there are some indications that political and diplomatic progress can be retrieved from this human wreckage. There is a gross disproportionality in military and civilian casualties between the two sides: 64 Israeli troops killed against 1,850 Palestinian fighters and civilians, hundreds of thousands of Israelis forced to seek shelter from rockets against over 400,000 Palestinians made homeless by destruction of their houses, and a handful of Israelis injured against many thousands of Gazan men, women and children.
This is a disastrous, unacceptable and tragic state of affairs, going well beyond ordinary military engagement and involving culpable humanitarian and criminal actions – on both sides – which must be fully investigated by international agencies. Behind the immediate conflict lies a story of a failed peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, a prolonged and misconceived attempt to exclude Hamas from it and a sense that Israel's increasingly right-wing public opinion and governments are abandoning serious efforts to find a two-state settlement. Unless each of these factors is addressed in forthcoming talks little will be achieved save a postponement of further destructive fighting.
Israeli war objectives were to disable Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli communities, destroy cross-border tunnels and deliver a crippling blow to the Hamas leadership. Their troops have withdrawn from Gaza after disabling but not preventing the rockets, destroying many of the tunnels but leaving defiant Hamas leaders intact and part of the Palestinian team negotiating the ceasefire in Cairo. Israel must recognise the reality that Hamas is here to stay as a political force among the Palestinians. Even though political change in Egypt and elsewhere has weakened its international support it cannot be excluded from the search for a longer-term peace.
In fact that change could give an opportunity to pursue peace more effectively, taking account of a new balance of forces among the Palestinian leadership. The Cairo talks should combine the search for an elaborated ceasefire agreement involving comprehensive relief for Gazans from the seven-year long Israeli blockade and undertakings to internationalise arms control measures, with efforts to organise renewed negotiations on a two-state settlement.
Binyamin Netanyahu's coalition government has been divided on each of the war objectives, as well as on the search for peace, but it would be well advised to review its position in the light of these changing international realities. They have been reinforced by public anger – in Europe, the US and the Middle East – over Israel's use of disproportionate force.