After weeks and months of hectic parleys and hard negotiations, the long-overdue Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal in Gaza was finally reached last Wednesday and came into force on Sunday. The ceasefire agreement has come far too late and is quite fragile; but it is welcome, given that it marks a significant point in the simmering conflict and enables a pause in merciless bombardment of Gaza. Hope has rarely felt so fragile or inadequate. But the deal long sought has nevertheless been met with apprehensions as well as joy by 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza, and among the traumatised families of Israeli hostages.
After 15 months of war, which has left over 2 million struggling to survive in most uninhabitable conditions, the Gazans are naturally relieved that the deal will provide a respite for civilians and allow them to return to what is left of their homes in the northern region of the war-ravaged enclave. Most of Gaza’s 2.1 million population is displaced and their homes and neighbourhoods are in ruins. Most Gazans are short on food and water, and hunger is a daily struggle. Hospitals and healthcare facilities have been destroyed, and tent cities have sprung up where real cities once stood. While according to the Gaza health ministry, more than 46,000 people have died, the actual death toll may be much higher.
Research in the Lancet medical journal recently suggested that the death toll recorded by the Gaza health officials was 40 percent too low, with an estimated 64,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces by last June. This is the compelling reason to welcome, implement, sustain, and build upon the ceasefire. However, relief and celebrations over the deal are tempered by fear about the future, and grief and anger over the present and immediate past. A blot on the world’s conscience, the world’s failure, particularly the US and European nations, to stop the slaughter of innocent Palestinians, many of them women and children, is unlikely to be forgotten.
Why the ceasefire agreement took so long to reach is a matter of dispute and varied conjectures. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been blamed by his political foes as well as the families of the hostages for blocking a ceasefire deal to stay in power. Others have blamed Hamas and its recalcitrant leadership for the delay. Isreal’s far right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, claimed last week that he had previously blocked the deal which he believes is ‘treasonous’. Incidentally, the deal that has been agreed upon is the mirror image of the ‘Biden Plan’ presented in May last year which the United Nations Security Council had endorsed on June 10, 2024, and Hamas had publicly accepted.
Even Isreal had agreed to the deal but the very next day put out a statement that it would not agree to the ceasefire unless Hamas’s military and governing capabilities were destroyed, all hostages were freed and Gaza no longer posed a threat to Isreal. So why has Isreal agreed to the deal now? Many in the Western media believe it is the Trump factor that tilted the balance in favour of an agreement or at least forced Isreal to change its mind. Trump’s stern message and earlier warning that “All hell will break out” seem to have tipped the scales in favour of the ceasefire. Trump did not want to begin his second term with the conflict going. And Hamas did not want to wait for a worse outcome.
Various actors have queued up to claim the credit for the ceasefire. President Donald Trump is at the fore. While he, reportedly, applied pressure on Israel to compromise on key aspects, such as troop withdrawals along Gaza-Egypt border, Qatari and Egyptian mediators deserve a lot of credit for persevering. Despite his disastrous failure to reign in Netanyahu, Joe Biden sees the agreement as a feather in his legacy cap, though in reality, it is an indictment of his failure to prevent mass murder of civilians on the pretext that Israel has the ‘right to defend’ itself. Trump, perceived as an arch foe of Palestinian rights, is unlikely to wear the mantle of a peacemaker for long.
Having done Trump’s bidding, it is expected that Netanyahu and the Israeli Right will expect reward from him in the form of US support over future control of Gaza and West Bank annexation. Israel may also seek support for its prized project of destruction of Iran’s weapons-making facilities. For Trump, resolving the Gaza conflict aligns with his larger strategic goal of countering Iran and fostering normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia. After 15 months of fighting, there is not much left to achieve in Gaza, while for the US and Israel, the more significant battle to be fought and won is with Iran, a common enemy for both.
The ceasefire deal is a complex agreement to be implemented in three phases. The first phase, which began on Sunday, lasts for 42 days; it includes a ceasefire, withdrawal, and redeployment of Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) outside densely populated areas, the release of hostages and exchange of Palestinian prisoners, the return of internally displaced persons to their places of residence in the Gaza strip and delivery of humanitarian aid. Talks on the conditions and implementation of the second phase are to commence on the 16th day of the first phase. Phase 2 will end on Day 84, with the complete withdrawal of the IDF from the Gaza Strip and a permanent ceasefire as well as the release of all the living and dead hostages held by Hamas. The third phase is all about the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the Gaza strip.
The success of the deal’s first phase is crucial as it will set the stage for future peace process. But the long-term future governance of Gaza has not been addressed in the deal because there is no agreement on what comes after that in Gaza and who would oversee it. It is difficult to say whether the deal will hold principally because agreeing to phase two will be very difficult. Therefore, amid a fragile pause, there is guarded optimism. It is hard to imagine a lasting peace while Netanyahu remains in power. However, in a crisis, a truce is still a step forward and must be embraced and built upon. Massive international support will be needed to reconstruct Gaza and to establish a system of governance there.
The writer is a senior independent Mumbai-based journalist. He tweets at @ali_chougule