Gaza ceasefire, a ray of hope after 15 months of war, 46,700 Palestinian deaths and a regional conflagration

The agreement in principle for a ceasefire in Gaza announced on Wednesday, and which Israel’s Cabinet has yet to vote on, represents the most hopeful step toward a possible end to a war that has claimed more than 46,700 lives in the Palestinian enclave, which lies in ruins and shaken by the most serious humanitarian crisis in its history. Never before in the more than 15 months of conflict following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, which killed some 1,200 people in Israel, had both sides, driven by negotiators from Qatar, Egypt, and the United States, been closer to a cessation of hostilities. The last truce, a brief pause in the midst of a never-seen-before conflict with consequences throughout the Middle East, was agreed in late November 2023.

Until now, the war plans of Benjamin Netanyahu and the attempts at a ceasefire have been two sides of an irreconcilable coin. The main obstacle to opening the door to a possible peace process and the reconstruction of the Strip has often been the Israeli prime minister. Netanyahu had placed his institutional and judicial survival ahead of achieving an agreement that could free the nearly 100 remaining hostages — many of them already dead — who remain captive in the Strip and end the siege of 2.3 million Gazans. To date, both external and internal pressures have been of little use in oiling the wheels of negotiations.

Late Wednesday, loose ends remained and some disagreements still lingered, but it is certain that progress has never been so significant. At Netanyahu’s insistence, according to a statement from his office, “Hamas folded on its last-minute demand to change the deployment of IDF forces in the Philadelphi Corridor [which separates Gaza from Egypt]. However, several items in the framework have yet to be finalized.” However, on Thursday morning, the Israeli Cabinet delayed a meeting to discuss and vote on the proposal, claiming Hamas was seeking 11th-hour concessions. A senior member of Hamas’s Political Bureau, Izzat al-Rishq, was quoted by Reuters as stating that the Palestinian party-militia remains “committed to the ceasefire agreement announced by the mediators.”

According to reports from the various parties involved, these had been on the verge of reaching a successful conclusion on several occasions in recent months, although plagued by challenges and threats. The final obstacle had almost always been the same — Netanyahu — even when the highest Israeli authorities had been extremely optimistic. What has now been agreed in principle by the two opposing sides had been on the table since at least last summer. The change of direction that has led, pending the official signing of a truce, to the silencing of weapons and the acceptance of the release of hostages has occurred, not uncoincidentally, on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States on January 20.

Netanyahu celebrated Trump’s resounding victory last November. The Israeli prime minister, along with the most extremist members of his government, understood that this was a safe-conduct to continue with his war plans. But ahead of the inauguration next Monday, contacts have accelerated — in which even the Republican’s entourage has participated — to reach a truce. This does not mean, however, that the new Republican administration will not promote the Israeli policy of the occupation of Palestine, with the army and the settlers at the head. But Trump has already given clear signals that, in his own way, he wants to end this war and the one in Ukraine.

As time went by and the number of dead Israeli soldiers and hostages increased, so too did the protests in the streets and the grave consequences of the conflict, adding to the pressure on the Israeli Prime Minister. Netanyahu has finally had to give in and accept a ceasefire without achieving his objective of completely eliminating Hamas, something that was considered utopian from the beginning even by some of his closest associates. But that was the essential pillar of what he termed “total victory,” and that he has now had to shelve.

Hamas continues, at least for the moment, to govern the Strip and to confront Israeli troops on the ground after almost 500 days of intense fighting, while it has sat at the negotiating table with the hostages as its trump card to try to bring about an end to the conflict. This — the gradual return of hostages — is seen as one of the keys that will determine the fate of what has been agreed in the coming weeks.

Clinging to the blockade, the Israeli prime minister has remained firm all this time before members of his own government, senior army officers and part of Israeli society, with the families and supporters of the captives at the forefront. On the other hand, he has also ignored pressure from the international community, including from his main ally, the United States, and the European Union. At the same time, accusations have been mounting from institutions such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), the United Nations, and numerous humanitarian organizations that have witnessed the horror on the ground.

Since the end of November 2023, when hostilities were halted for a week and the first exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners took place, the negotiations have failed to bear fruit. Two Hamas leaders have been assassinated by Israel, Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar; several Israeli ministers, including Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, have been dismissed by Netanyahu; nearly 500 Israeli soldiers have been killed, the most recent five in the north of the Strip last Monday, as well as dozens of hostages and over 46,700 Gazans, most of them women and children.

What began as a military operation in the face of the Hamas-led massacre of some 1,200 people in the attack on October 7, 2023, has morphed into an out-of-control campaign. Under the justification of the right to self-defense and of militarily and politically ending the Islamist movement that planned and carried out the most serious attack in Israel’s history, its authorities have launched the largest offensive in the history of the region, provoking accusations of violating the norms of international law. The reproaches come from different quarters under the accusation of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In response to these accusations, the ICC has ordered the arrest of both Netanyahu and his former defense minister.

There are also question marks about the logic of having taken the military campaign in Gaza to the extreme, where Hamas has consistently managed to reorganize itself in areas where Israel claimed to have wiped out the militia throughout the war. These doubts ended Gallant’s tenure as minister and, together with the abandonment of the hostages, also led to more than 100 soldiers making their complaints public and refusing to wear their uniforms. Another of the pillars on which Netanyahu continues to rely is the decision to target the largest UN agency in the area, UNRWA, the main source of support for millions of Palestinian refugees in Gaza, whose ban has been approved by parliament. The future of this United Nations institution, with 13,000 of its 33,000 employees deployed in the Strip, will also mark the peace process and the reconstruction of the enclave.

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