In a long-awaited development, Israel and Hamas have inked a ceasefire deal aimed at ending their 15-month war in Gaza. The question on everyone’s mind now is: Will this agreement finally bring a measure of peace and stability to the beleaguered Palestinian enclave, or will it crumble like so many failed truces before it?
The Road to a Shaky Ceasefire
The path to this ceasefire has been long and bloody, with nearly 47,000 Palestinians killed and claims of genocide leveled against Israel at the international court of justice. On the Israeli side, an October 2023 Hamas attack left some 1,200 Israelis dead and 250 taken hostage. A previous ceasefire to exchange 100 of those captives for 240 Palestinian women and children prisoners fell apart after just one week last November.
What’s in the New Deal?
The current agreement unfolds in three phases, starting with a 42-day halt to all fighting. During this time, Israeli forces will pull back to a “buffer zone” on the Gaza border, displaced Palestinians can return home, and aid deliveries to Gaza will ramp up significantly.
Phase two involves Israel releasing the remaining living hostages in exchange for freeing a proportional number of Palestinian prisoners. The Egyptians will reopen the Rafah border crossing for wounded Gazans to seek treatment. Israel is supposed to fully withdraw from Gaza in this stage, but the timeline remains unclear.
In the potentially years-long third phase, the two sides will negotiate swapping the bodies of slain hostages and Hamas fighters, as well as hammering out a plan to rebuild Gaza. Much remains up in the air, including the issue of whether the Palestinian Authority might regain some control of Gaza, which Israel adamantly opposes.
Devil in the Details
A closer look at phase one reveals the fragility and complexity of the arrangement. Over the next six weeks, Israel will free 33 hostages and about 1,700 Palestinian detainees. The specifics of who gets released when depend on opaque criteria like whether the hostages are soldiers or civilians.
Meanwhile, humanitarian agencies say Gaza requires a bare minimum of 500 aid trucks per day, but the deal provides for 600 daily, and supply levels now average a paltry 18 trucks. It’s also still unclear when or if Palestinians will regain control of the vital Rafah crossing.
Will It Stick This Time?
With so many crucial details still to be ironed out, diplomats and observers are skeptical this ceasefire will hold. The core terms differ little from a draft brokered by then-president Joe Biden way back in May 2024. At the time, Israel’s right wing revolted, and PM Benjamin Netanyahu added a “red line” – maintaining forces on the Gaza-Egypt frontier indefinitely, torpedoing that deal.
The collapse of the week-long ceasefire in November 2023 was reportedly because Hamas could not provide any more women or children hostages to exchange. It is possible this may happen again.
Under intense international pressure and shifting political winds in the US and Israel, the parties have returned to the table once more. But with so many key sticking points simply pushed off to later negotiations, it seems sadly inevitable this ceasefire too will splinter – only to be replaced by another flimsy pact, continuing the cycle of violence and misery for the battered peoples of Gaza and Israel.
