Is the Gazan ceasefire doomed? The future looks bleak

Despite appearing all but doomed, the precarious 15 January ceasefire between Israel and Hamas held over the weekend. Yet Benjamin Netanyahu could still decide that the deal no longer serves Israel’s interests.

For one thing, Netanyahu rejects his generals’ assessment that Hamas cannot be defeated. And in order to keep the hardline finance minister Bezalel Smotrich in his cabinet, he has assured him that a ceasefire wouldn’t end the war permanently. If Netanyahu does restart the war, he can count on even more political and material support from Trump than he received from Biden — which, in both spheres, was enormous and virtually unqualified.

Last week, the ceasefire seemed done for. Hamas and Israel accused each other of violating its terms. And, true to form, Trump sprung a surprise, declaring that Israel should resume the war if Hamas failed to free all of the remaining hostages — at that point 76 remained, including those presumed dead — by Saturday 15 February. He seemed not to know, or care, that the deal stipulates a staggered handover during its first two phases.

Netanyahu increased the confusion by initially intimating that he agreed with Trump and might return to war now that the American president had given him political cover. Hamas, for its part, listed 270 Israeli violations of the ceasefire, some verified by independent sources, and threatened to withhold the three hostages scheduled to be freed on Saturday — though it eventually relented. Netanyahu forwent the opportunity Trump gave him, confirming his commitment to the agreement, providing Hamas released the next batch of hostages, which it did.

Of course, Hamas could also defenestrate the deal, and recently nearly did. But, leaving brinksmanship aside, Hamas lacks a self-evident motive to tear it up. The terms meet all of its longstanding demands, and the end of the war allowed it to demonstrate that it remained unvanquished and had won. With Trump back in the White House, Hamas could end up with a much worse result if turned back to fighting. Though Hamas’s current standing among Gazans remains unclear, exposing them to even more death and destitution certainly won’t improve its popularity.

Yet dwelling on the ceasefire’s fate can obscure a larger question: what will happen in and to Gaza even if the agreement survives? Trump’s answer is to expel Gazans en masse to Egypt and Jordan forever, claim American ownership of the Strip, and build a second Riviera on its coast. This scheme is unworkable, and an attempt to implement it would be a flagrant violation of international law, not to mention elemental ethical principles. No Arab government has endorsed it — nor would any dare for fear that “the street” would erupt, especially now that Netanyahu, in his Sunday meeting with Secretary Marco Rubio, praised it once again, this time as “a bold vision”.

Still, the question of Gaza’s postwar governance must be resolved by negotiation, most likely during the ceasefire agreement’s third phase. That will create new complications. Hamas remains standing, but Netanyahu has ruled out its return to power. And yet he also doesn’t want the Palestinian Authority in charge. Israeli rule will be rejected by Palestinians and the Arab states, who will see it as a pretext for expelling Gazans — something that has significant support in Israel, not just on the far-Right but also among Jewish Israelis generally. A government comprised of Gaza’s notables, perhaps? Possibly, but only if Israel can be convinced that they won’t be stalking horses for Hamas.

Then there’s the fact that Israel’s war hasn’t ended. It has shifted to the West Bank, targeting armed Palestinian groups, whose presence there increased following the Gaza War. Since 21 January, the IDF’s “Operation Iron Wall” has killed dozens of Palestinians, displaced 40,000 more — mainly in the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas — and bulldozed or blown up numerous buildings. Add to that the increase in armed Jewish settlers’ long-running attacks on Palestinian communities, and the Israeli government continuing evictions of Palestinians from their homes and greenlighting of new settlements and housing blocks.

The West Bank consists of three areas: areas A and B, small islands run by the Palestinian Authority, are separated by area C, which comprises 60% of the territory and is ruled solely by Israel. This political geography has eviscerated the two-state solution, which, in any event, has lost even more support in Israel following October 7. And the one-state solution, favoured by many supporters of Palestinians’ rights on the Left outside Israel, has very little purchase among Israelis. In December 2022, only one-fifth of Israelis favoured it. Even those on the Left want Israel to remain a Jewish state.

What the future holds, then, is continued upheaval and violence. Israel will revert to its standard “mowing the lawn” strategy: quelling intermittent Palestinian uprisings but leaving their underlying source, the occupation, intact. That strategy will empower extremists on both sides.

In Israel, far-Right groups and parties, whose members believe that the West Bank is among the lands divinely bequeathed to Jews, have become increasingly influential, reflecting a trend that long predates October 7. A 2015 Pew poll found that nearly half of Israeli Jews backed the expulsion of Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza; the proportion was substantially higher among Jews who are Orthodox or strongly religious. Support for expulsion has increased even further since the war began. In a January poll, 43% of Jewish Israelis said that Trump’s Gaza plan was practical and should be pursued. Another 30% liked it but doubted its feasibility. In all, then, nearly three-fourths of them backed Trump’s population transfer proposal, which some in Israel have labelled “Trumpsfer”.

Extremism will increase among Palestinians as well, especially if Israel continues to rely on repression, thereby decreasing Palestinians’ hope — which by now barely exists — in a political settlement that gives them a full-fledged state. In 1993, the Palestinian Liberation Organization recognised Israel as a Jewish state, renounced violence and pledged to pursue the two-state solution. Not only does today’s Palestinian Authority (PA) have nothing much to show for its efforts, but it has become Israel’s enforcer (note, for example, its active role in Iron Wall, the IDF’s West Bank military offensive). Most Palestinians consider it feckless and corrupt. That, too, benefits the proponents of armed resistance. Israeli leaders often complain that they lack good-faith interlocutors, but that, in part, owes to the conditions they have created in Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel’s continued reliance on force will increase its already considerable international isolation, including in Europe. That will make it even more dependent on the United States — a safe situation to be in but only as long as American attitudes toward Israel stay unchanged. They may not. Opinion polls show that the Gaza war has cost Israel considerable goodwill in the US — though the decline in support precedes it. The extent varies considerably by age group, and is most apparent among Millennials, including American Jews. Less than half of Jewish Americans under 30 expressed a strong attachment to Israel in 2020.

Palestinians will face a different, albeit familiar, form of isolation. The major Arab states will continue to voice support for them while accepting their domination by Israel. Their focus will remain on preventing the ripple effects of upheaval and bloodshed in Gaza and the West Bank from breaching their borders. Iran will provide rhetorical support but lacks the wherewithal to alter the overwhelming imbalance of power between the Palestinians and Israel — the more so after the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. And with Trump’s return, Netanyahu, who has long wanted to attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, may, as recent US intelligence reports concluded, be emboldened to give it a go.

When it comes to Israeli-Palestinian matters, then, there is little hope that the dark clouds will dissipate. On this much, Israel Jews and Palestinians do agree.

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