Peacemakers in Israel coming to difficult conclusion that negotiations with Hamas are futile

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For the first time in his long career as a peacemaker, Gershon Baskin agrees with the consensus in Israel that, when it comes to Hamas, there’s nothing left to negotiate.

That was a hard conclusion to come to for Mr. Baskin, a 67-year-old paragon of the Israeli left – and one of the architects behind the scenes of the hopeful peace processes of the 1990s. His first reaction in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that killed more than 1,400 Israelis was to try to mediate, as he always does.

He reached out in an unofficial capacity to his contacts in Hamas, which he had built up over decades of trying to find common ground with the various Palestinian factions, to convince them to release some or all of the 199 hostages they had taken during their bloody rampage through southern Israel – maybe, he suggested, just the women, the children and the elderly. His Hamas contacts wouldn’t budge; instead, they crowed about the “victory” they had achieved over the Israeli military.

Mr. Baskin said he specifically asked about Vivian Silver, a 74-year-old grandmother and peace activist with roots in Winnipeg who has been missing since the attacks. “They wouldn’t answer,” he said, adding that he has known Ms. Silver for 30 years.

Now, Mr. Baskin believes, talks between Israel and the Palestinians can only resume once Hamas – the Islamist extremist movement that has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007 – is removed from the equation.

“After what they did on Saturday, there’s no doubt in my mind that the end result of this war has to be the non-existence of Hamas as a governing body in Gaza and as a military threat to Israel,” he said in an interview at his home in Jerusalem. “There is no negotiating modus vivendi with Hamas.”

This is the strange new place that Israel’s dovish left – already a shrinking minority on a political scene dominated by figures from the right and far right – finds themselves in after the Hamas assault, which caused the highest number of Jewish deaths in a single event since the end of the Holocaust, according to Israeli officials.

“It’s very difficult to say the same things now that we’ve been saying for the past 20, 30 years,” said Yonatan Mizrahi, who monitors illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank for Peace Now, Israel’s oldest and most famous pro-peace group.

That doesn’t mean the Israeli left has suddenly turned into cheerleaders for the war in Gaza, which has seen more than 2,800 Palestinians killed in 11 days of intensive air strikes. Worse almost certainly lies ahead, with the Israeli military openly stating that it will launch a ground invasion of the densely populated strip – where 2.3 million people live crammed into just 365 square kilometres.

“Hearing all these Israeli statements about revenge, about killing, about razing Gaza – it’s not a plan, right? It’s just something to say to be popular,” Mr. Mizrahi said, referring to recent rhetoric from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli military. “A military operation without political negotiation after it has no value.”

There are signs that Hamas has a belated interest in talking. Mr. Baskin said that on Sunday night one of his Hamas contacts got back to him and asked whether the kind of deal he had initially suggested – releasing some of the hostages in exchange for a 24-to-48-hour ceasefire to allow some humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip – was still possible. But it was never an official offer from the Israeli government – Mr. Baskin was acting as a private citizen – and as the death toll in Israel continues to climb, there’s no interest in any kind of ceasefire with Hamas.

“They’re beginning to grasp the reality, to understand the full consequences of what they’ve done. That at the end of the day, they’re finished. And very likely that most of them, maybe even him, would be killed,” Mr. Baskin said of his Hamas contacts.

That doesn’t mean Israel’s peaceniks have completely given up hope. Mr. Baskin says he’s already thinking about what he calls “the day after tomorrow” – the moment the war in Gaza is over and someone else, presumably the Palestinian Authority, controlled by the Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, is in control of the strip.

There’s a chance, Mr. Baskin believes, that the suffering on both sides will have been so extreme as to create a new impetus for peace. One requirement, he believes, will be for Israelis to remove Mr. Netanyahu, whose hard-right policies – primarily his aggressive support for illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank – left Israel too divided and distracted to notice the military preparations Hamas was making, while also needlessly increasing Palestinian suffering.

“Bibi is finished – he has to be finished,” Mr. Baskin said, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname. Not just because he presided over the military and intelligence failures of Oct. 7, but because he has done nothing in his 15 years in power to try to end the conflict with the Palestinians. “The bottom line is you cannot occupy another people forever and expect to have peace.”

Change on the Palestinian side, where 87-year-old Mr. Abbas has ruled despite not holding an election for the past 18 years, would also be welcome, Mr. Baskin said, adding that he had personally passed three messages from Mr. Abbas to Mr. Netanyahu offering to hold secret negotiations – which Mr. Netanyahu ignored all three times.

Mr. Mizrahi said he’s also optimistic that the war will somehow create space for new ideas – and new leaders – after this round of fighting is over.

“I’m thinking more about the long term,” he said. “Not for right now – but in the end, there is no other option if we want to live in this land. We have to live together somehow.”