The ceasefire in Lebanon shows diplomacy can work – but it is premature to hope for Gaza

It is hard to be optimistic about the situation in the Middle East. Every step forward seems to be followed by two steps back. As welcome as the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, acting for Hezbollah, might be, it does not have any necessarily hopeful implications for Gaza.

It remains the case that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has a personal incentive to keep the conflict in Gaza going. He knows that any ceasefire there is likely to mean the end of his time in office. Not only would he lose the support of coalition parties in government, but Israeli voters seem determined to eject him as soon as normal politics resumes.

If there is a case for optimism, it rests on the alignment of geopolitical forces. It is that Joe Biden wants to make his mark on history before he leaves office. As one American headline put it, “Biden tries to go out with a Middle East miracle.” Unusually, there is a synergy between the incentives operating on him and on his successor; in that Donald Trump is, as the world knows, very much against the US financing foreign wars.

Pressure from the US has long been the precondition of meaningful negotiations in the Middle East, and it may be that a realignment of power involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Turkey will allow new diplomatic efforts to succeed. Equally, however, it may be that the temporary ceasefire in Lebanon is merely the curtain-raiser for an intensification of the destruction in Gaza – and possibly for Mr Netanyahu to take the fight more directly to Iran.

Those hoping that a diplomatic breakthrough on one front will lead to peace on another may be being too optimistic, therefore. Sir Keir Starmer was right to welcome the “overdue” end of hostilities, but we fear that his hope that it might lead to a wider ceasefire is not well founded.

Indeed, as Mark Almond points out, Mr Netanyahu’s internal rationale for agreeing to the ceasefire in Lebanon is that he wants to be able to concentrate on the war in Gaza – and resupply his troops there. Never mind that the whole world knows that this war is unwinnable, he wants to keep fighting it, a bit like the permanent state of war in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Everyone knows the ostensible war aim, the “elimination” of Hamas, cannot be achieved, because it is not possible to eliminate by force of arms an idea – not even an idea as terrible as Hamas’s founding antisemitic purpose of destroying Israel.

However gloomy the outlook, however, we make one plea: that the world remembers the hostages. We do not know how many are left alive, but there may still be 70 of them, including one British-Israeli national, Emily Damari, 28, who is presumably still being held in a tunnel in Gaza.

The hostages were taken in a cynical attempt by Hamas to give itself some negotiating leverage in its asymmetric struggle with Israel. There should be no question of Hamas benefiting from hostage taking, and now that its feeble military capability has been eroded by a year’s campaign by the Israeli Defense Forces it should be possible to reach some kind of deal.

The ceasefire in Lebanon is good news, but the really difficult negotiations are yet to come.