ByGERSHON BASKIN

I am writing from the comfort of my air-conditioned home in Jerusalem. Even though we are facing another extreme heat wave this week, I am not really affected by it. In the past days I have been chatting with a friend in Gaza. She has no air-conditioning, but even if she did, she only has electricity for an average of six hours a day, and those hours are not usually during the peak heat times. Life in Gaza is a disaster. I don’t know of anyone who would agree to continue to live under the conditions that exist there. Israel denies responsibility for the situation in Gaza by stating that the Hamas government is responsible because of its refusal to recognize Israel and its insistence on investing its limited resources on rockets and tunnels rather than on improving the life of its people. Hamas blames Israel for the siege on Gaza, for stealing Palestinian land, for turning the Palestinian people into refugees. Hamas defends its right and its obligation to resist against Israel with all means at its disposal. Both sides are right and both sides are wrong.

Palestinians in Gaza have a right to resist against Israeli aggression and against the siege and for the recognition of their collective national rights. Israel has the right to protect its citizens against aggression from Gaza, rockets aimed at the civilian population and attempts to tunnel across the border to wage attacks against Israeli civilian communities inside of Israel. But the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be determined by the continued rounds of violence between Gaza and Israel. Despite the ongoing violence since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, there have been repeated attempts to reach some kind of a long-term ceasefire. Until Gilad Schalit was returned home from Gaza in 2011 there was no real chance of any kind of negotiated long-term ceasefire. As long as an Israeli soldier was held hostage in Gaza, Israel was not prepared to make any compromises with Hamas. In 2012, Israel assassinated Hamas military commander Ahmad Jaabri, who was engaged in behind-the-scenes negotiations for a ceasefire. Two years later, Operation Cast Lead, the summer war, once again led to postponement of possibilities for any kind of deal. And since the summer war of 2014, the bodies of two Israeli soldiers – Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin – have been held by Hamas, while Israel re-arrested almost 70 Palestinians who had been released in the Schalit deal. Later, two Israeli civilians – Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed – entered Gaza and were captured by Hamas. They are presumed to both be alive and mentally unwell, and are being held as hostages. Israel is still holding about 40 Palestinians re-arrested from the Schalit deal. They are hostages as well along with the bodies of other Palestinians killed in combat.

Following each round of violence, Israel and Hamas, through Egyptian intelligence mediation, negotiate a ceasefire that includes significant measures for easing the siege of Gaza and making life there a bit more livable. But as we have seen for years, there will be no implementation whatsoever of Israeli commitments to ease the siege as long as the four Israelis remain in Gaza. There are ongoing attempts to negotiate a deal for their return, but the gaps between the two sides remain unbridgeable. The number of prisoners that Hamas is demanding for a deal is way higher than Israel is willing to consider and the demand to release prisoners who have killed Israelis is completely rejected as well. Hamas sees as one of its primary missions to release Palestinian prisoners. There are 4,850 Palestinian prisoners in Israel who the Palestinians define as “political prisoners” and Hamas has made public commitments to release all of them. Israel has tried for years to negotiate a deal for the release of the four Israelis that includes a humanitarian release of prisoners – meaning bodies for bodies, and a small number of prisoners who have not killed Israelis. Israel has offered repeatedly to include in the deal the measures to ease the siege, which are defined as humanitarian steps by Israel. Hamas has demanded to end the siege on Gaza entirely, not connected to any prisoner exchanges. Hamas refuses to combine the issue of the siege and the prisoner’s issue. Israel demands to combine the two issues. The end result is that there is no deal, the families of the Israelis missing in action and of Palestinian prisoners are suffering and the more than two million people of Gaza are suffering. Until the issue of the prisoners is resolved, there will be no significant change in the ongoing intolerable status quo of life in Gaza.

THIS DEAL is more difficult to reach than the Schalit deal because we are talking about the bodies of two soldiers, not living soldiers, and two civilians, presumed to be alive, although we have no evidence that they are in fact alive. The two civilians are seen by Israeli society as having a very low level of “social collateral” – an Ethiopian-Israeli and a Bedouin, both who are mentally unwell and have not lead to social solidarity within Israeli society. Without solving this problem, the situation in Gaza will continue to decline and the next round of violence is around the corner. This is a call to both Hamas and to Israel to compromise and find the formula for an agreement that both sides can live with. The issues facing both Israel and Gaza are much larger than the issue of the prisoner exchange.

There are 34 Palestinian prisoners who have already been imprisoned for more than 25 years – I imagine that they were convicted for doing some really horrible things. There are 80 prisoners who have been in prison for more than 20 years. Among that group of 100 prisoners there must be some who are ill, who have expressed remorse, who are no longer a risk to Israel’s security. There are 240 prisoners from Gaza who can be released to Gaza and pose less of a security risk to Israel from there. There are 70 prisoners who are citizens of Israel and 350 from east Jerusalem. Those prisoners are easier to monitor once they are released because they can be under the watchful eyes of Israel’s security agencies. There are 41 female prisoners and 225 minors also in prison. There are certainly large numbers of these who could be released.

It is unfortunate that we have to negotiate these kinds of deals. I have told people in Hamas that the best way to release Palestinian prisoners is to make peace with Israel and a general amnesty will be included in the deal, because that is what happens when enemies make peace. They of course are not yet prepared to accept that idea. Until then, we will unfortunately be confronted by the kinds of situation we have now. It is time to make a deal so that we can move on to confront the challenges of Gaza living in peace next to Israel. Hamas needs to compromise from their impossible demands and Israel needs to give into some of the Hamas demands. There is no other way to make a deal and we need a deal so that people on the Israeli side of the border can live with more security and so that people in Gaza can have a life worth living for.

The writer is a political and social entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to the State of Israel and to peace between Israel and her neighbors.