00:00The United States has given the Palestinian group Hamas an ultimatum.
00:04President Donald Trump says they've got three to four days to accept his 21-point peace plan
00:09and get in line alongside the Israelis or face the consequences.
00:14Trump was clear when he spoke to journalists after his White House meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 24 hours ago
00:20that failure to comply would open Hamas to Israel stepping up its military operation.
00:25The situation will get worse with Trump vowing full backing to whatever Israel decides to do.
00:31Netanyahu's words to Hamas were these.
00:33It's either the easy way, i.e. comply, or the hard way, which would be more Palestinian deaths in a stepped-up Israeli attack.
00:40Let's get some analysis of the situation and bring in Fatih Nimeh,
00:44who is a Palestinian policy fellow at the Al-Shabaka think tank in Ramallah, joining us live from the West Bank.
00:51Fatih, thanks for joining us here on France 24.
00:53We appreciate your presence and your time.
00:56This ultimatum from Trump to Hamas.
00:59I'm wondering how this 21-point deal is being viewed in the Palestinian territories.
01:04Can you give us some insight, please, into that?
01:07Well, I mean, it's less being seen as a deal and more seen as a surrender diktat, basically.
01:11I don't know what more Trump could do to threaten Hamas at this point, what more Netanyahu could be doing to Gaza at this point,
01:20because there has been no really red lines, neither by the Biden administration or by the Trump administration.
01:25But to say it more simply, the plan is basically a surrender plan.
01:30And it's very vague and imprecise.
01:31It's obvious that it is, you know, contoured around Israeli demands and Israeli interests of Palestinians being a mere afterthought.
01:40And this makes sense, basically, because also the Arab states and the media has no clue about some of the changes that Netanyahu made at the last minute.
01:47And this is also part of why they are furious about it in, you know, private leaked meadows.
01:52But the thing is about it is that there's absolutely no guarantees that Israel will abide by it.
01:57Even if Hamas decided to go to the letter and do everything, there are absolutely no guarantees.
02:01Everything in the language is vague.
02:03It's imprecise.
02:04It's saying there might be a path towards statehood.
02:06They're saying it's pending on reformations.
02:08And these are very big, you know, loopholes or gearing space areas where Netanyahu could very simply say,
02:14well, I'm not satisfied and I want to break it.
02:17And we saw this.
02:18Israel unilaterally broke a ceasefire in March of this year.
02:21And it could very easily do that somewhat more.
02:24It's not exactly the most reliable partner to be negotiating with since it's tried to assess a multiple negotiating teams.
02:32So I'm sure that Hamas and other groups in Gaza are discussing this, but I don't have any illusions about them thinking that this is going to be some kind of deal that will actually end the genocide that is currently going on,
02:45especially considering that they want Hamas to disband all of its weapons, disband itself, basically surrender unilaterally and to give up all the prisoners that they have within 72 hours,
02:55after which there's absolutely no reason why Netanyahu could not go back to war.
02:58And as we saw earlier, nobody's stopping him.
03:00There have been no repercussions really from the United States.
03:02And every red line that was spoken about was crossed with barely any kind of consequence.
03:07What do you think, Fatih, Hamas will do at this point?
03:10I mean, clearly, if this is calling for the disarmament of Hamas, it's basically calling for the abolition of Hamas as a military force,
03:18as a force that could respond to any kind of attack in any way, shape or form.
03:23One might argue that it's been flattened already, but there are obviously reports that say that Hamas is still existing,
03:29is still there and is still resolute to continue.
03:32What do you think Hamas will do?
03:35Well, it's difficult to speculate really what Hamas and other groups are doing.
03:38They're taking their decision with other groups as well, not by themselves,
03:41because they have access to information we're not privy to.
03:45They also have access to the actual deal with more details that we're also not privy to.
03:49We have just the broad points of what it is.
03:52And I think the mechanism of everything, of how it is going to look in reality,
03:56that will also be an important part if they want to agree or not.
03:59But generally speaking, I think the biggest point of this deal is that it doesn't look for root solutions to what's going on.
04:08It's looking mostly for Band-Aid solutions.
04:10It's going to recreate the same exact condition, which is foreign occupation of a territory
04:14that led to the creation of Hamas to begin with in the 80s.
04:18Hamas has not been that long in the conflict.
04:20It's a very recent phenomenon, only in the late 80s.
04:23So this didn't start with, it didn't end with Hamas.
04:26It won't end with Hamas for sure if they decide to disband, which I'm very skeptical about.
04:30And I think it's important that we place everything in its historical context.
04:34It's not the first time that these kinds of deals are kind of trying to be imposed on Palestinians.
04:38Agree or disagree seem to have very little effect on it.
04:41I mean, the Palestinian Authority is completely complying with everything Israel wants in the West Bank.
04:45And look at it today.
04:46It's being devoured completely by over 700,000 settlers.
04:50There have been communities that have been ethnically cleansed of all of its residents in the last few years.
04:54So it's not exactly any kind of situation where Palestinians can trust either the United States or Israel.
05:01And as usual, the United States is acting more as Israel's lawyer than as some kind of neutral third party
05:07that can actually bring arbitration to what's going on.
05:10We saw this in Oslo.
05:11We saw this in Camp David.
05:12And it continues to this day.
05:14I think many people hear what you're saying, Fatih.
05:17But in terms of what we've heard over the past 24 hours from the White House,
05:23from that briefing by Trump and Netanyahu, there was this possibility, they said,
05:30that the investment in Gaza will be to the benefit of Palestinians.
05:34And they can choose to stay.
05:35And if they leave, they can achieve the right to come back, the right of return.
05:39Do you view that as something positive?
05:41And I suppose it all comes down to whether you believe what they're saying or not, doesn't it?
05:47Well, I mean, I think it's a bit of a red flag that they're saying that, you know,
05:51they're not going to be ethnically cleansing all the people of Gaza.
05:53I mean, that should probably be the baseline, you know, international law,
05:56which has completely been broken on the back of the last two years of genocide.
06:02These ideas of investment, these ideas of free trade zones, they all sound, you know, lovely on paper.
06:07So does trickle down economics.
06:09It doesn't always work out that way.
06:11And there can be no real growth under occupation.
06:13They've been trying for 30 years.
06:15There's been so much investment in the West Bank to try, you know, kickstart the economy.
06:18But as long as Israel has a military presence there,
06:21and there's no indication that they will retreat out of all of Gaza,
06:24even if they have these forces, these foreign-funded forces,
06:28God knows who they're coming from.
06:30There's no indication that this will actually, you know, lead to any kind of economy.
06:35They've been talking about this since also.
06:36They called it a piece of evidence.
06:38This will, like, open up investment.
06:40It will open up so much, you know, opportunities for work.
06:42It's never materialized.
06:44And it's because you can't have any growth under occupation, under control,
06:47when your borders are under control, when your airspace are under control.
06:50You can't.
06:51You have very small kind of maneuverability.
06:54And that's even if the promises are actually true
06:57and it's not revoked on some kind of technicality or some kind of, you know, slight that Netanyahu detects.
07:01How about the position of the Palestinian Authority on this?
07:07Well, the Palestinian Authority has already welcomed this decision.
07:11I believe that the United Kingdom's embassy had a statement about this.
07:17The Palestinian embassy in the United Kingdom, I mean,
07:20because they see themselves as eventually they could replace this international force in Gaza.
07:25And they see no problem with basically coming on the back of the tanks of the Israelis and Americans at this point,
07:31which is a huge break with the rest of the Palestinians in general.
07:35So they see it as an opportunity.
07:36That is, if the plan goes through as it is set.
07:40But Netanyahu has already said multiple times that he would never allow the Palestinian Authority to rule Gaza or to run Gaza.
07:46He said he would never allow a two-state solution.
07:48He would never allow any of the things that are supposed to be the incentive for Palestinians to sign on to this deal.
07:53So it seems like a lot of it is a non-starter before we even talked about.
07:57I mean, they're talking about, like, open statements to Likud hours after the plan was publicized.
08:04So it's not like it's something hidden or off the agenda.
08:07It's very obvious that Netanyahu is not interested.
08:09He has not been interested in any ceasefire for the last two years.
08:12And I don't see any change in that position.
08:14So in terms of what we have, three to four days, says Trump, for Hamas to give its reply.
08:20If it doesn't comply with this, then basically things could get a lot worse for people in the Gaza Strip.
08:27You've mentioned genocide and many authorities are saying it is genocide which is happening.
08:32And certainly the figures, if you look at them, 66,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, killed since October the 7th, 2023, when Hamas launched its attack on southern Israel.
08:44I mean, clearly there is a major, major death toll.
08:48And people are suffering.
08:50And there is famine in places as well.
08:52It is a horrible situation by any stretch of the imagination.
08:55Is it not perhaps time for Hamas to look to, in some way, shape or form, to stop what is happening by perhaps agreeing to this deal?
09:07Listen, it's easy for me to sit here and kind of pontificate about this.
09:11I have a full belly.
09:12I'm sitting in my own home.
09:14I'm not sleeping in the streets.
09:16Ultimately, the decision will be taken by the people of Gaza.
09:19And Hamas is not some, you know, foreign or alien body.
09:22Hamas is made up of the people of Gaza and Gaza are made up of the people of Hamas and other factions.
09:27And it's very popular at this point.
09:30And it's difficult to see what they are planning because, again, they are privy to information we do not know.
09:39And they have their own, you know, calculus of how everything goes.
09:43You could argue that if they surrendered, everything will go okay.
09:46But, again, I give you the West Bank as the counterfactual.
09:49The counterfactual is the West Bank is completely, unprecedentedly under attack in every single way.
09:55So, again, there's very little indication on even if Hamas agreed to all of this, that situation will actually get better.
10:02It's very, it's like this is not something that's just happening.
10:06This is something that's been going on for decades and decades.
10:08And we have such a long kind of memory of this.
10:11And I think it will be a mistake to just look at the last two years if it was a separate escalation or a separate kind of deal because it's not.
10:17Fatih Nima, we appreciate your time and we appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us.
10:22And I would add that you're joining us from Ramallah in the West Bank.
10:25You say you're sitting there somewhere comfortable, but, you know, you're seeing things on a day-to-day basis.
10:29And what you're telling us is basically informed by the experience that you've lived through.
10:34So, thank you so much for sharing that with us.
10:36And we, of course, just seeking to understand what is going on because from the outside, sometimes it just seems to be incomprehensible.
10:41Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Fatih Nima, the Palestinian Policy Fellow at the Al-Shabaka think tank in Ramallah.
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