Ending the Assault on Gaza: What Must Be Done Now

PALESTINE ISRAEL GAZA GENOCIDE, 1 Sep 2025

Gershon Baskin | The Cairo Review of Global Affairs – TRANSCEND Media Service

Israel’s military juggernaut will not be stopped in Gaza without significant international pressure and a range of conditional sanctions.

30 Aug 2025 – For 18 years, I have negotiated with Hamas. While there were short periods during that time that I was authorized by Israeli officials to pass messages on to Hamas leaders and negotiators, most of my contacts were not authorized but generally viewed as valuable at best and, at worst, having no influence at all. My secret direct back channel was used to secure the deal which led to the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, held by Hamas for five years, back in 2011. I believe that my contacts also led to the first negotiated deal between Israel and Hamas at the end of 2023. In September 2024, I secured an agreement from Hamas to release all of the Israeli hostages (more than 100 at that time) in exchange for a three-week period that would end the war, release Palestinian prisoners, and lead to a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The Israeli and American sides were not interested at that time.

There is another partial deal currently on the table—put forward by the Egyptian and Qatari mediators and supported by the United States—for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza. Hamas would release 10 living Israeli hostages and the bodies of 18 deceased hostages. In exchange, Israel would release about 200 Palestinian prisoners, most of them serving life-sentences for killing Israelis, and another 1,000 Gazans taken prisoner during the past 22 months. The exchange would not include those who crossed the border on October 7, 2023 to kill Israelis. The deal is very close to the one presented months ago when Israel reportedly accepted it, but then claimed Hamas walked away from the table. The truth is that Hamas was continuing to negotiate on the details when Israel walked away and blamed it for being unreasonably hardline on the issues of Palestinian prisoner release and the redeployment of Israeli troops in Gaza. The United States adopted the Israeli narrative and blamed Hamas for the failure of the talks.

When Israel recalled its negotiating team before Hamas agreed to the new deal, Hamas released videos of two starving and emaciated, near-death Israeli hostages in the hopes the images would rally the Israeli public against the government’s failure to bring them home. It did. The mass protests on August 17 brought out one million Israelis in demonstrations across Israel, with some 400,000 in Tel Aviv in the evening. But these, too, failed to move the Israeli government and its prime minister even one millimeter.

More than two weeks have passed since the partial Egyptian-Qatari deal was accepted by Hamas, but the Israeli government has yet to respond.

On August 28, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and his Qatari counterpart Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani issued a joint statement blaming Israel for the delay in implementing the ceasefire deal.

They said that Israel was showing “resistance and delay” to their proposed deal, and called on the international community to pressure Netanyahu to agree to the ceasefire.

Meanwhile in Washington, U.S. President Donald Trump has said he was deeply disturbed by the Hamas videos and that he felt a deep personal connection to the Israeli hostages and to their families. He then issued a statement that Israel needs to do what Israel needs to do—essentially giving Netanyahu the green light to advance the planned escalation of the war and the total occupation and destruction of all of Gaza.

What infrastructure remains in Gaza will now be flattened by Israel.

Finality

Israel is engaging in all kinds of tricks and deceptions to enable the final stage of the war before ‘total victory and the total destruction of Hamas’, as Netanyahu has described it several times during the past 22 months. One of those deceptions is the long time that Israel says will be needed to properly plan and execute its newest military operation to take over all of Gaza, which was approved during the first two weeks of August.

The truth is that this operation has already begun. Israel has sent notices to 60,000 reservists to show up for duty on September 2 (the day after the school year begins so that those who are fathers can take their kids to school on September 1). No one should have any illusion about what the true goals are: level the central area of the Strip including Gaza City and squeeze more than two million Gazans into the southwest corner of the Strip. Israel has begun this military operation and is already attacking the outlying neighborhoods of Sabra, Zaytoun, and Jabalia.

The human pressure cooker will explode; Israel—chiefly Netanyahu and his government coalition allies Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir and Cabinet Minister Bezalel Smotrich—want the dire humanitarian disaster to force the Gazan masses to cross the border into Egypt. Egypt, meanwhile, has begun to deploy more forces on the Gaza-Sinai border in fear that it will be breached by thousands of Gazans trying to escape the misery and the fear of being killed.

The Israeli plan even includes the government’s approval to allocate more than $300 million to prepare infrastructure for what is being described as “the humanitarian zone”—including roads, electricity, water, tent cities, and more.

There is nothing humanitarian about what they are planning and implementing. Crowding two million hungry Palestinians who have already lost everything and have been moved from one location to another in Gaza several times already cannot be called humanitarian. These actions by Israel are illegal under international law and cannot be whitewashed in any way, especially not by calling them humanitarian.

How much of this will actually be accomplished by Israel remains to be determined. As long as there is no alternative deal that Trump would accept to end the war, the Americans will continue to provide political cover for Israel, as they have done until now. The United States has adopted the Israeli blame narrative for which side is to be held accountable for continuing the war—Hamas. It will also use its veto power or its threat to veto to guarantee that the UN Security Council is ineffective in pressuring Israel to end its war on Gaza.

What Hamas Should Do

While Hamas have informed me that they want to end the war—and have included significant concessions to that goal—they nonetheless failed to present their own initiative to the Egyptian and Qatari mediators. Instead, they claim that the mediators have pushed them to accept a partial deal because that is what Israel and the United States are willing to accept. For some inexplicable reason, Hamas has not stood firm on outright ending the war, even though they have said that they are willing to release all of the Israeli hostages in 24-48 hours and have publicly agreed to give up governing Gaza in favor of a Palestinian technocratic civilian government that they would not be part of.

Because Israel has failed to respond to the deal accepted by Hamas, I have advised Hamas to draft a comprehensive end-of-war deal and to hand it in writing to Qatari Prime Minister Al Thani. I also suggested that they stop seeing Netanyahu and Israel as the ‘other side’ at the negotiating table. Netanyahu does not want to end the war. Instead, Hamas needs to imagine that they are sitting across the table from Trump and ask themselves what the U.S. president wants and how best they can deliver.

First and foremost, Trump wants to see a new non-Hamas Palestinian government working in Gaza and supported by Egypt and Qatar. This is essential so that he can debunk Israel’s claim (which had him convinced until now) that if it leaves Gaza, Hamas remains in power.

Second, Hamas needs to say that with the implementation of the end-of-war deal, it will release all of the Israeli hostages—those still alive and those who died in captivity.

They can say that when the Israeli withdrawal is complete, the last hostages will be released. If Israel wants the 60 days of ceasefire first then, fine, Hamas accepts that and Israel will have 60 days to leave Gaza. Hamas, I have been told by a member of their negotiating team, will accept an Israeli no-entry security zone along the Gaza-Israel border, with no Israeli soldiers inside of Gaza.

I have also been told by a member of the Hamas team that they agree to an international inspection mechanism at the Rafah crossing. They also expect a reasonable deal on the release of Palestinian prisoners and hostages from Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas demands a massive increase of food supplies, medical aid, fuel, generators, and more, to be managed by international organizations in Gaza and not by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (that should be shut down).

Hamas should deliver their plan to the Qataris and the Egyptians and publish it in Western media. Hamas should immediately begin to provide real food and medical care for the 20 living Israeli hostages and film them being cared for. This care should continue until they are released. They need to do this because this is the right thing to do according to Islamic law and because it will bring Trump to the side of ending the war.

Until Hamas produces a written initiative to the mediators, the Israeli-U.S. claim that Hamas wishes to continue fighting will remain the dominating narrative of what is happening in Gaza.

Israeli Impunity

In the meantime, it must be acknowledged that Netanyahu and his government are immune to public pressure in Israel. They have a strong base and a majority in the Knesset, and they perceive any protest against the government as the actions of the home-grown anti-Israel (it is really anti-Netanyahu—not anti-Israel) leftist traitors who support Hamas and Israel’s other enemies.

Israel also continues to enjoy overwhelming impunity internationally. While the international community is obligated by international law to do everything in their power to prevent genocide, they are not doing that, and as such they are complicit in the genocide taking place in Gaza. There is growing global criticism against Israel, but it will take significantly more pressure to produce any real impact. Recognizing the State of Palestine (which should have been done decades ago) and cancelling the visa of a right-wing fanatic Israeli minister to Australia is not enough.

Every country in the world with relations with Israel needs to immediately impose conditional sanctions on Israel, to be lifted when Israel ends the war and withdraws from Gaza. That is the most important thing right now—getting the war in Gaza to end. Afterward, we can discuss what needs to be done to end the Israeli occupation, create peace, and implement a fair two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Gershon Baskin – A political-social entrepreneur dedicated to peace between Israel & Palestine. Co-Head – Alliance for Two States. Middle East Director – International Communities Organisation. Lives in Jerusalem.

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