Brokering peace in the Middle East

A ceasefire deal over Gaza has been on the table since June. So why are Israel and Hamas still at war?International calls for a ceasefire in Gaza started in October last year. Why is it so hard to get a peace deal? In the past week, Israel sent the head of its spy agency to Qatar for negotiations, and Hamas agreed to begin talks about releasing Israeli hostages.But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also said that a ceasefire deal must allow his country to keep fighting, and Hamas accused him of obstructing progress.For much of the past nine months, since Hamas's initial attack on Israel on 7 October and Israel's near-immediate retaliation, it's been one step forward, one back for peace talks.This latest is more of the same.The deal currently under consideration was proposed by US President Joe Biden in late May, and passed by the United Nations Security Council in June. It has three phases. "My understanding is that the sticking point around this current agreement is basically Hamas wants there to be some sort of guarantee that the ceasefire -- as in a stop, a halt in fighting -- will go on beyond that first phase of the agreement and it won't be subject to more negotiation. That's not something that Israel is willing to accede to as yet," says Marika Sosnowski, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne Law School, who studies the dynamics of ceasefires. In today's episode of The Detail, Sosnowski explains why it's taking so long to reach a truce, and how a deal like this is brokered. "I think the easiest way to think about it is probably a ceasefire deal is like a really complicated contract between these parties."You want to make sure that the terms of the agreement are really well spelled out."For a ceasefire to be enacted, the minute details of this contract are essential. "They will go literally off the terms that they have negotiated in the contract. "What my research suggests is that the more detailed the terms, the better chance there is logically of the parties implementing the ceasefire, because they know exactly what they're meant to do at particular times and kind of how they're meant to do it. "And that's exactly what we saw back with the truce in November. The terms were super-specific and basically highly choreographed. "Both Hamas and Israel, but also the Red Cross (that helped facilitate the release of the hostages and the prisoners), Egypt (where prisoners and hostages were released and exchanged along their border) - everyone knew exactly what the dance was. That's why basically the terms of the agreement are so important." …Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details