Multiple time bombs likely to threaten a Gaza ceasefire from day one

 

Credit: MintPress

By James M. Dorsey

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Gaza’s desperately needed but increasingly elusive ceasefire, if achieved, is likely to be fragile, threatened by multiple ticking time bombs that could explode at any given moment unless it is embedded in a political process that culminates with the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

The time bombs are ticking with or without a ceasefire but will likely be accentuated if and when the guns fall silent.

For starters, the ceasefire agreement being negotiated includes no provision for who will administer Gaza from day one.

As a result, control of Gaza is at the core of the gap between Hamas’ demand for an end to the war and a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Strip and Israel’s insistence on a continued military presence and a continuation of the war once the Hamas-held hostages have been released.

A US-Qatari-Egyptian proposal to narrow the gap has done everything but close the gap, despite Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s assertion after three hours of talks with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that Israel had accepted the plan.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu tells US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel accepts a ceasefire deal. Credit: EPA

“Netanyahu endorsed the US proposal — which incorporated several of his updated demands — knowing Hamas would reject it. His public statement that Israeli negotiators were "cautiously optimistic"…was political posturing. Any gaps that were narrowed in Doha were between the US and Israeli positions, not Israel and Hamas,” journalist Barak Ravid quoted Israeli officials as saying.

Meanwhile, Mr. Netanyahu has ruled out a return of Hamas or the international community’s preferred candidate, President Mahmoud Abbas’s West Bank-based Palestine Authority.

In their place, Mr.  Netanyahu has spoken vaguely about an administration of non-aligned Gazan clan leaders and businessmen operating under Israeli tutelage.

Last week, Mr. Abbas announced in an address to the Turkish parliament his intention to visit Gaza. There was no indication that Israel would allow him to assert his authority in the Strip.

Taking issue with Mr. Netanyahu’s war strategy, Israeli military leaders, convinced that Mr. Netanyahu’s goal of destroying Hamas is unachievable, have gone as far as suggesting they could live with Hamas’ temporary return to power, while Hamas has indicated it would accept a non-aligned government populated by Palestinians approved by the group and the Palestine Authority.

The United States’s Arab allies, including the United Arab Emirates, insist they will only contribute to an international peacekeeping force if there is a credible, irreversible pathway to an independent Palestinian state, a concept Mr. Netanyahu and the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, have ruled out.

Moreover, US President Joe Biden’s ceasefire proposal envisions the unfettered flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza from day one but has relegated reconstruction of the devastated Strip to the plan’s third phase.

The US-Qatari-Egyptian bridging proposal pushes back to the ceasefire’s second phase a lifting of the Israeli siege of Gaza and discussions about reconstruction, according to a Hamas official.

The proposal suggests that whatever administration emerges from Gaza’s rubble will be unable to immediately rebuild essential infrastructure, such as water and electricity facilities, hospitals, schools, and shelters.

Failure to meet Gazans’ basic needs, coupled with the lack of a political process that holds out the promise of a Palestinian state, is likely to perpetuate Palestinians’ belief that they have nothing to lose.

Failure to meet those needs, coupled with the lack of a political process that holds out the promise of a Palestinian state, is likely to perpetuate Palestinians’ belief that they have nothing to lose.

As a result, any ceasefire, even if deemed permanent, is likely to be temporary. The only question is for how long.

For Palestinians, the ceasefire will be little more than a breathing space to alleviate suffering. It will not be a long-term acceptable status quo. The same is likely to be true for Mr. Netanyahu and Israel’s ultra-nationalists.

Adding fuel to the fire is Israel’s long-standing failed effort to quash Palestinian national aspirations that involve collective punishment, an apparent key driver of the military’s indiscriminate destruction of Gaza. In doing so, Israel is Palestinian militants’ most effective recruitment tool.

Experts say it’ll take 10-15yrs just to clear the rubble. Forget reconstruction. #Hamas couldn’t have hoped for better conditions to secure its future,” tweeted Middle East analyst Charles Lister.

Like Israeli punitive operations in the West Bank, where bulldozers destroy the homes of families of Palestinians suspected of resisting the occupation, Israel doesn’t just hunt down Palestinian fighters in Gaza. It destroys their homes on an industrial scale.

In the last 48 hours, Israeli attacks targeting residential buildings, makeshift shelters for displaced Palestinians, and groups of people across Gaza killed at least 74 people, including at least 20 children.

Yousef, a Hamas supporter and wannabe fighter in what remains of Al-Shuja’iyya, east of Gaza City, once home to 100,000 people, recently recalled watching an Israeli drone track five members of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, as they gathered in front of a restaurant.

Within seconds, three missiles hit the group, killing the five fighters. Yousef said the fighters’ homes were subsequently believed to have been targeted and destroyed. The policy of destroying family homes is likely one explanation for the continuous Israeli bombing of residential buildings, causing high civilian casualties.

“Whenever I got the chance to meet up with them or spend time with them when they weren’t out fighting, I knew what I wanted to do next. I want to fight like them,” Yousef, who buried the fighters after the attack, told Mondoweiss, suggesting Israel’s policy of collective punishment was backfiring.

Fighting in Al-Shuja’iyya. Credit: Mehr News Agency

It’s impossible to assess how representative Yousef’s aspirations are. Even so, Yousef seems to be a mirror image of Israelis, who, in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war, blame all Gazans for the group’s atrocities and are unable to empathise with the plight of innocent Palestinian civilians.

“Israel thinks that it is terrorizing us with its crimes, but we no longer want anything except revenge for the blood of our people. We want revenge for the people Israel killed and let their flesh be eaten by dogs in front of us, and we could not save them. They shot anyone on sight. This is a criminal army, and we must confront it. Everyone on our land must fight it until we eradicate it,” said Yousef, who, although not a fighter, owns an AK-47 and has received basic military training in Hamas summer camps, attended by many young Gazans.

The training involved military and scouting skills, shooting with live ammunition, assembling and disassembling assault rifles, Civil Defense basics, and first aid courses.

“The camps prepared us for such moments, to be ready to face this criminal army that killed our families. Now we are ready, and we are waiting to engage in the fight,’ Yousef said.

Gaza children train in the use of weapons. Credit: Hamas

“All the sadness and the destruction motivate me, and all those I love are in Paradise. They’re martyrs who fell before me, and they’re waiting for me to join them. The occupation is creating generations that want to be free at any cost, no matter how much blood it sheds,” he added, sentiments reflective of a generation with nothing to lose and little to look forward to.

“When I talk to anyone in Al-Shuja’iyya, they all want the same thing. They want to leave an impact instead of dying helplessly and getting cut up into pieces or being eaten by dogs in the street,” Yousef said.

The Al-Qassem Brigades claimed it trained 25,000 people each year before the war.

Yousef’s attitude suggests that rebuilding Gaza will have to entail far more than the physical reconstruction of destroyed homes and infrastructure.

It suggests Mr. Netanyahu’s notion of “reeducation” to ensure Palestinians buy into Israel’s version of the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations is not only morally and politically wrong but also a non-starter.

Much like addressing Israel’s Gaza war trauma expressed in Israeli perceptions of security is central to ceasefire negotiations and thinking of a pathway to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestinians’ trauma will have to be tackled by acknowledging their national aspirations on a mirror-image basis. In other words, what is true for Israeli concerns is equally valid for Palestinian anxieties.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.