2 hours agoShareSaveJeremy Bowen International editor, JerusalemShareSaveAnadolu via Getty ImagesAfter two years of war, there is a chance of a deal that will end the killing and destruction in Gaza and return the Israeli hostages, living and dead, to their families. It is an opportunity, but it is not certain that it will be seized by Hamas and Israel.It is a grim coincidence that the talks are happening exactly two years after Hamas inflicted a trauma on Israelis that is still acute. The 7 October attacks killed around 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians, and 251 were taken hostage. The Israelis estimate that 20 hostages are still alive and they want the return of the bodies of 28 others.Israel’s devastating military response has destroyed most of Gaza and killed more than 66,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians and including more than 18,000 children. The figures come from the health ministry that is part of the remains of the Hamas administration. Its statistics have usually been regarded as reliable. A study in The Lancet, the medical journal based in London, suggested they were an underestimate.Israelis and Palestinians both want the war to end. Israelis are war-weary and polls show that a majority want a deal that returns the hostages and ends the war. Hundreds of thousands of reservists in the armed forces, the IDF, want to get back to their lives after many months in uniform on active service. More than two million Palestinians in Gaza are in a humanitarian catastrophe, caught between the firepower of the IDF and hunger and in some areas a man-made famine created by Israel’s restrictions on aid entering the Strip.The version of Hamas that was able to attack Israel with devastating force two years has long since been broken as a coherent military organisation. It has become an urban guerilla force mounting an insurgency against the IDF in the ruins.Hamas wants to find a way to survive, even though it has agreed to give up power to Palestinian technocrats. It accepts it will have to have to hand over or dismantle what is left of its heavy weapons, but it wants to keep enough firepower to defend itself against Palestinians who want to take their revenge for nearly two decades of brutal rule and the catastrophe the Hamas attacks brought down on them. It is not saying so publicly, but an organisation that still has followers and a charter that seeks to destroy Israel will also want to emerge with enough left to rebuild its capacity to live up to its name, which is an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement.Israel would like to be dictating the terms of a Hamas surrender. But the fact that Hamas has a chance for a serious negotiation opens up more possibilities for it than looked likely just a month ago. That was when Israel tried and failed to kill the Hamas leadership in a series of strikes on a building in Doha where they were discussing peace proposals from Donald Trump. Their main target, the senior leader Khalil al-Hayya, is leading the Hamas delegation at the talks in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Al-Hayya’s son was among the dead, though the leaders escaped with their lives.Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a different kind of survival in mind. He wants to preserve his power, keep on postponing his trial for corruption, win elections due next year, and not to go down in history as the leader responsible for security blunders that led to the deadliest day for Jews since the Nazi holocaust.To achieve that he needs a credible way to declare “total victory”, a phrase he has used repeatedly. He has defined it as the return of the hostages, the destruction of Hamas and the demilitarisation of Gaza. If he cannot to do that, it will not be enough for him to point to the very real damage Israel has inflicted on its enemies in Lebanon and Iran in the last two years.Hamas and Israeli ne …
