Israel never had “the intention to reach this ceasefire agreement, because they have other plans”, Luciano Zaccara, a Middle East political analyst, has told Al Jazeera. He said Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s comments on Wednesday “made it very clear that the intention of Israel is to annex more territories, including [the occupied] West Bank and Gaza“. “So what is the point in allowing the creation of an entity, either with Hamas or without … that can represent Palestinians when the plan is already set that these territories will belong to Israel sooner or later?” he asked. “There is no way that Israel would agree to something with Hamas allowing them to survive politically, and allowing the Palestinian entity to be created,” he added. He said that despite the best efforts of mediators, “[for Israel] there are no more carrots in this conversation, it is only sticks. “Because the [Israeli] objective is not to negotiate anything, not to give priority to the release of the hostages … but to vacate the whole Gaza Strip in order to implement what they wanted to do, which is [to seize it as] Israeli territory”.
