After 15 months of destruction, Israel and Hamas have reached a ceasefire agreement in principle to end the devastating Gaza war. The mediation of Qatar and Egypt has been indispensable during these last months of marathon negotiations, but the determining factor has been the pressure exerted by President-elect Donald Trump and his team in recent weeks. However, the agreement has more shadows than lights and its application appears enormously complex, given the division within Netanyahu’s own cabinet and the manifest weakness of Hamas.
In general terms, the compromise reached replicates the terms of Security Council resolution 2,735, approved on June 10 of last year, which provided for a plan in three phases that should lead, ultimately, to an Israeli withdrawal from the Strip. of Gaza and its reconstruction.
Neither one thing nor the other seems easy, given that neither the Netanyahu Government nor the Israeli military establishment are contemplating a complete withdrawal or ceding control of the strategic Philadelphi corridor, which separates the Palestinian enclave from Egypt through the Rafah crossing, and Nor do they seem too inclined to leave the Netzarim corridor, which divides the Palestinian territory in two.
In the last fifteen months, Netanyahu and his far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir have done everything possible to torpedo each and every one of the peace proposals put on the table. Both were clear that their objective went far beyond recovering the hostages and they intended to take advantage of the international situation after the October 7 attacks against Israeli territory to give an exemplary punishment not only to Hamas, but to the entire Gazan population. , as well as hitting the Axis of Resistance led by Iran.
Hence, it was the population that paid the highest price for the offensive unleashed against the Gaza Strip. Since then, at least 46,780 Palestinians have been killed and another 111,600 wounded, although a recent study published by The Lancet magazine considers that the number of deaths as a direct result of the bombings could be much higher and rise by 40%: in total, 18,680 more people.
On the other hand, 80% of the buildings have been damaged or destroyed, so their reconstruction seems like a herculean task, especially if we take into account that it is Israel that controls all the borders of the Palestinian enclave and could, as has done in the past, hindering the entry of reconstruction materials, alleging that they could have a dual use.
In this context, the only certainty is that the Gaza Strip will take decades, not years, to rise from its ashes if it is allowed to. The help of Western countries and, above all, of the Gulf monarchies will be essential for this process to be completed successfully.
But before launching the bells into the air, it is essential that the parties comply with what has been signed, which does not seem like a simple task, as is becoming evident in its first stages. The Israeli Government is deeply divided and Netanyahu’s own survival is threatened by his main coalition partners, since the supremacist and ultra-nationalist parties – Religious Zionism and Jewish Power – have threatened to leave the coalition and cause a government crisis. .
Netanyahu has delayed the vote in his cabinet to give a final yes to the agreement while both sides exchange accusations about last-minute demands. Additionally, since the deal was announced, Israel has killed at least 77 people.
Netanyahu’s position of strength and Hamas’s weakness
However, the approval of the ceasefire seems to be beyond doubt, since the main opposition leaders, Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, have committed to supporting it. Probably, Netanyahu’s green light for the agreement has a lot to do not only with the pressure from President Trump, but also with the good results that the polls predict for him, since they predict that he will be able to revalidate his majority in the event that hold early elections.
Hamas is in a much more delicate position, since Israeli attacks have decimated its military structure and beheaded its political leadership. His internal credibility has also been seriously eroded, since many of his traditional supporters reproach him for not having calculated the high costs that the October 7 attack could generate.
As if that were not enough, the Iranian regime, its main sponsor, is immersed in an existential crisis after the Axis of Resistance has been practically dismantled in recent months. Hezbollah has lost a good part of its troops and its leaders as a result of the Israeli attacks, which has reduced its ability to condition Lebanese politics, as demonstrated by the recent election of Joseph Aoun and Nawaf Salam as president and prime minister of the republic, none of them located in the orbit of the Lebanese party-militia.
On the other hand, the overthrow of Bashar Al Assad represents an unprecedented blow for Iran, which since 1980 had a strategic alliance with Syria, a country through which it supplied weapons to Hezbollah.
This being the case, it seems evident that Hamas has not emerged stronger from October 7, but rather much weakened, like its regional allies, which shows its enormous miscalculation. The ceasefire agreement does not contemplate that the Islamist organization will have any role in the post-war scenario and it will probably not be able to present itself in possible elections to renew the questioned Palestinian Authority, given the veto not only of Israel and the United States, but of the European Union itself, which continues to be the main financial support of Palestinian self-government.
Perhaps the main unknown to be resolved in the new period that is now opening is who will govern, once the third phase of the agreements is concluded, the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu has repeated ad nauseam that he will not allow the Palestinian enclave to become a Hamastan nor will it allow a Fatahlandin a clear allusion to the majority faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas.
Netanyahu’s top priority since he first took office in 1996 has been to destroy the Palestinian national liberation movement, following the policies pursued by his teachers Isaac Shamir and Ariel Sharon.
This is where the United Arab Emirates and Egypt come into play, countries that Netanyahu intends to involve in governance in the post-war phase. Specifically, the Israeli leader wants both countries to deploy forces on the ground and be responsible for guaranteeing security in the Gaza Strip.
In this way it would be possible to ignore the Palestinian Authority and Arabize, as happened after the Nakba of 1948, the Palestinian question, denying the role of the PLO as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and returning the Palestinian dossier to the Arab community, much more inclined, as the Camp David Accords (1979) and the Abraham Accords (2020) demonstrated, to present concessions at the negotiating table already trade on Palestinian national rights.
Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid and co-author of the book ‘Gaza: chronicle of a nakba announced’ (Catarata, 2024)
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