Many news reports have focused on the disputes over how many Israeli hostages will be freed for how many Palestinian prisoners, during a cease-fire lasting how many days. But these matters are trivial. The crucial, much harder issue to resolve is what happens next.
Hamas is demanding that, in tandem with the exchange of hostages and prisoners, Israeli troops pull out of Gaza entirely and that the cease-fire turns into a permanent truce. Israel is saying it will resume the war after the hostages come home until Hamas is destroyed as a political and military force. Meanwhile, some of the outside powers—mainly the U.S., Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, as well as vocal observers in Europe and the United Nations—are pushing for a peaceful settlement of the wider, long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, preferably through the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will never stand for such a state. The leaders of Hamas don’t want one, either; they want to keep fighting their “war of resistance” until Israel and its 7 million Jews are wiped out.
That’s the problem in a nutshell. Hamas and Israel have opposing war aims. (This is why most wars throughout history begin and keep raging, despite unspeakable carnage and destruction.) And neither side, for different reasons, has any interest in the outside would-be peacemakers’ vision of a postwar settlement.