A martial speech was still required at the head of the Israeli state, Monday evening, May 17, while the war which does not speak its name with Hamas in Gaza enters its second week.
At the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu repeated in front of the security cabinet more or less the same words as on Sunday, inflexible in the face of the Islamist movement which leads the Palestinian enclave: “We will continue to hit terrorist targets in Gaza. We will continue to act as necessary to restore calm. “
Multiplication of contacts
Behind the scenes, however, that determination is marred by background noise, fueled for the past three days by members of the security cabinet and senior military officials in the Israeli press. On condition of anonymity, they evoke for the middle of the week the end of hostilities initiated on May 11 by Hamas. They killed more than 200 people in Gaza and ten in Israel. Calls in this direction are also being heard better from abroad, in Washington in the first place.
On Monday evening, in a new exchange with Mr. Netanyahu, President Joe Biden affirmed that he was in favor of a ceasefire, without however asking for an end to hostilities. This is the first time that the White House has used this term. Reluctant for days to get involved, the United States on Monday blocked an appeal from the United Nations Security Council (UN) for the third time “To stop the violence”. Mr. Netanyahu replied to Mr. Biden that he wanted to achieve all of Israel’s objectives in this operation.
Their exchange follows contacts between US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and his Israeli counterparts, Meir Ben-Shabbat, and Egypt. The head of general intelligence in Cairo, Abbas Kamel, has been transmitting messages from Hamas to Israel since the middle of last week, according to the Israeli press.
Monday, in an interview with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi, Emmanuel Macron supported this mediation. The King of Jordan also said Sunday to work there. A second point of contact is put forward by the UN special coordinator for the peace process, Tor Wennesland, who has held talks since the weekend with Hamas officials as well as with Mr. Ben-Shabbat.
Targeted assassinations
However, the two actors are still far from speaking the same language. On Monday, the leader of the Islamist movement, Ismaïl Haniyeh, told the Lebanese daily Al Akhbar that the stake of this war exceeded the desperately tight framework of the enclave of Gaza, under blockade. For him, it is also a question of defending Jerusalem against an attempt by the State of Israel to “Judaize” the holy city.
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