Will the much-needed ceasefire in Gaza endure?

Its success depends on parties to the agreement working in good faith, say political analysts

Jan 21, 2025

A Palestinian woman and a child carry belongings amidst building rubble in a ruined neighborhood of Gaza's southern city of Rafah on Jan. 20, as residents return following a ceasefire deal a day earlier between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (Photo AFP)


By Jean D’Cunha
“We will rise like a phoenix from the ashes. Nothing will take away our right to self-determination and our land,” said Palestinian Health Minister Maged Abu Ramadan at the 2024 World Innovation Health Summit in Qatar.

Ramadan’s words capture the spirit of Palestinians who fought resolutely against endless Israeli aggression that killed over 46,788 and wounded 110,453 Palestinians, mostly children and women, and has inflicted trauma on generations.

The accountability crisis of Western governments and their cohorts has never been more shockingly obvious. This is reflected in privileging narrow economic and political interests over Palestinian human rights and lives, and the deafening conspiracy of silence, restrictions, and punitive action against any support for Palestine.

The ceasefire agreement brokered by the governments of Qatar, Egypt, and the US, and finally ratified by the Israeli government on Jan. 11 offers necessary respite to Palestinians and Israelis. Effective from June 19, this war and ceasefire would have re-centered the almost eight-decade-long Palestinian struggle and resilience in world consciousness.

Despite likely setbacks to the ceasefire agreement, the stage has been set for a potentially longer-term transformation in the Israel-Palestine political dynamic.

Fourteen months of Israel pounding to annihilate Hamas' leaders after the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, has not destroyed the Hamas leadership, fighters, supporters, or operations.

Retired Israeli Brigadier General Amir Avivi said that the pace at which Hamas is recruiting and regenerating is higher than the pace at which the Israeli army is eradicating them. Israel's war objectives have been thwarted and its military frustrated. It has suffered incalculable political loss internally and globally.

About 80 percent of the Israeli population including sections of the right wanted the violence to end.

Palestine has won the support of large sections of people globally — youth, minorities, liberals — as never before, despite its territorial alienation and absence of strong political allies to break the siege for all this time.

Quoting the senior US official Jack Lew, the Middle East Eye editor-in-chief David Hearst said that more than one-third of American Jewish teenagers sympathize with Hamas, 42 percent believe that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and 66 percent sympathize with the Palestinian people as a whole.

Moreover, the International Court of Justice has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and genocide, besides a slew of other cases against complicit Israeli soldiers.

Israel ratified the ceasefire agreement against this backdrop, pushed by new US President Donald Trump, despite contention within its security cabinet.

The three-phased agreement has the following salient conditions: the return of Israeli hostages, including women, children, and the elderly, captured Israeli soldiers and the remains of soldiers killed, in exchange for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails; opening borders to provide humanitarian aid; full withdrawal of Israeli troops from populated areas of Gaza; the return of all Palestinians to their homes.

Ninety percent of Gaza’s 72 million people have been displaced and are reportedly waiting to return home, build tents at sites of destroyed homes, and move around freely. Should all this work amid ongoing negotiations, then reconstruction plans for Gaza would be set in motion with a permanent ceasefire.

Political analysts regard the ceasefire agreement with cautious optimism at best and stark skepticism at worst, saying that its success depends on parties to the agreement working in good faith. However, the situation is very fragile; trust-building is a long process, and a small misstep or perceived misstep by either side could derail the process.

At best, this could be a humanitarian pause where the hostage-prisoner exchange could be a symbolic gesture with successive stages of troop withdrawal, unimpeded return of Palestinians, and reconstruction.

Central to these concerns too, are questions such as what will it take for a withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza? Who will administer Gaza and ensure security? What are the discussions among the Palestinians on a proposal for united governance by Palestinians? What reforms are needed within the Palestinian Authority to ensure it reflects the will of the Palestinian people and how would these be operationalized? What role would Hamas play in reconstruction given that its elimination was a central Israeli government objective?

At another level, a section of political analysts say that the Israeli prime minister’s acquiescence to Trump’s push for a ceasefire could not have come without promising incentives — expansionism in the West Bank, restructuring of Syria, normalization of Israel’s relationship with other Arab countries.

What is clear is that the nuts and bolts of implementing the ceasefire agreement are complex and fraught and could derail the process. The ceasefire agreement is a framework for dialogue to implement short and medium-term actions.

But Palestinians unequivocally demand an end to Israeli occupation and a sovereign state of Palestine within a two-state framework — a longer-term project with a longer time for enduring peace to reign.

However, the promise of peace is strong if : (a) the global front for the liberation of Palestine that has evolved in countries of the South and North strengthens and endures; (b) if countries fulfill their obligations to the Rome Statute, especially to arrest and surrender anyone sought by an International Criminal Court warrant, including heads of states and regardless of whether the individual’s state of nationality is a party to the statute — in this case Prime Minister Netanyahu and others.

If in the words of Lew, “Gaza has become the prism through which the new generation of future world leaders see the Israel-Palestinian conflict,” then the promise of peace in time is much stronger.--ucanews.com

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