It seems Israel is mulling over a cease-fire offer from Hamas. Earlier in the week, Defense Minister Barak warned Syria and Turkey that Israel had plans to launch a major operation against Hezbollah and Hamas. A few days later, a Hamas spokesman said, "we won't rule out any bid for cease-fire with Israel." This morning, the Guardian reports the mayor of Sderot (the Israeli town with the most to gain from a cease-fire) would talk with Hamas.
"I would say to Hamas, let's have a ceasefire, let's stop the rockets for the next 10 years and we will see what happens,' said Eli Moyal, the mayor, who is a member of the rightwing Likud party. "For me as a person the most important thing is life and I’m ready to do everything for that. I’m ready to talk to the devil."
Also of note, former Mossad Chief Efraim Halevy called for Israel to talk with Hamas in a recent interview. Halevy lays out his rationale and likely Israel's to engage Hamas:
"Hamas shuns direct contact and negotiations with Israel and this actually meets Israel's reciprocal attitude to them. The same is true of the United States. But Hamas is eager to "engage' the two indirectly and reach a verifiable cease fire, and understands that could lead to more "down the road.'
Such a strategy of indirect proximity engagement, whilst covering our flanks, offers the prospects of lowering the temperature in the region, easing constraints, and opening up real possibilities of social and economic progress. This is a policy that could be tested, and is warranted by the abject failure of the present Palestinian Authority rump leadership in the West Bank led by the aging, tired and sad Abu Mazen [Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas], and his able prime minister Salaam Fayyad, a great economist and banker but a man who does not pretend to overstay his time."
The sudden shift to engage Hamas is an interesting development, but also a signal that Israel has less faith in the peace-process. Negotiations over a cease-fire are probably taking place through a third party. Before getting ahead of ourselves and analyzing what this means, we will wait for confirmation that a deal has been reached. If a cease-fire deal is not reached, one might expect Israel to go-ahead with their Gaza operation.
