Afrasianet - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday announced his unequivocal rejection of the 15-point Peace Council document, a declaration that is not limited to Gaza, and cannot be read in relation to the issue of the Gaza Strip alone, but in practice includes the rejection of any peace process in the region by the Netanyahu government and the current Israeli government.
This trend was also reflected in Israeli hardlining in the Lebanese file with the announcement of the failure of the seventh round of talks in Rome to reach an agreement on an Israeli withdrawal, which may currently push the Lebanese government to refuse to participate in a new round, and with the continuation of the attacks and their expansion from shelling and explosions to incursions and bulldozing, and monitoring the movement of the Lebanese army and municipalities.
Netanyahu's rejection of the document is based on the "hanger" of disagreement over how to disarm Hamas, but it really concerns the question that Netanyahu, and his partners in the government of genocide and ethnic cleansing, have tried to prolong the war to prevent an answer: How will Israel bury any Palestinian political track?
The US document proposes a clear equation: a gradual disarmament of Hamas in parallel with a phased Israeli withdrawal, and the transfer of the areas evacuated by the army to an international force, a Palestinian technocratic administration, and a new Palestinian police, and after Hamas has expressed its initial agreement to this formula, including the relinquishment of control of the Gaza Strip and the handing over of weapons, tunnels, and manufacturing facilities.
According to Netanyahu, what is required is the complete disarmament of Hamas, and then "later on to discuss withdrawal," which means depriving Hamas of the last cards of its power without Israel relinquishing its control But the real problem that worries Netanyahu is the political issue, so if a demilitarized Palestinian Authority is indeed built in Gaza, what prevents this experiment from becoming a gateway to a broader Palestinian settlement?
This is complemented by Israel's ongoing plans to implement the West Bank annexation and settlement expansion project, which is based on the dissolution of the Oslo Accords and the Hebron Accords, paving the way for the imposition of Israeli sovereignty over it and reducing the role of the Palestinian Authority to a symbolic role.
Open-minded stability in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank is only one dimension of Israel's broader conflict with Iran — and soon with Turkey — at the regional level.
Netanyahu's rejection of the 15-point document is not about Gaza alone. It is an expression of a broader struggle over the shape of the Middle East after the recent wars: is the region moving from the logic of open deterrence and military power that the government of Israel lives on, or to the logic of mutual compromises?.
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