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Belated ceasefire

Binoy Kampmark
Tuesday, Jan 21, 2025

Twinning the terms “ceasefire” and “Gaza” seems not only incongruous but an obscene joke. This is largely because the ceasefire announced on January 15 between Israel and Hamas could have been reached so much earlier by all the concerned parties. But will was lacking in Washington to force Israel’s hand, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was repeatedly of the belief that Hamas had to be unconditionally defeated, if not extirpated altogether, for any such arrangements to be reached.

A general outline of the ceasefire terms was released by Qatar, a vital broker in the talks between Hamas and Israel. According to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs release, there are to be three phases in the agreement. The first phase will involve the release of 33 Israeli detainees in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. The second and third phase “will be finalized during the implementation of the first phase.”

The first stage will last for six weeks and see, should things pan out, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from all populated areas of Gaza and the return of Palestinians to their neighbourhoods. (To say homes, in this regard, would be monstrously distasteful, seeing that many would have been flattened.) Humanitarian aid deliveries will also be increased and distributed “on a large scale” through the Strip, while hospitals, health centres, and bakeries will be rehabilitated. Supplies of fuel for civilian use and shelter for displaced persons deprived of their homes will also be facilitated.

The second stage envisages a conclusion to the war, a full withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from the Strip and the return of all remaining living hostages in return for another allotment of Palestinian prisoners. The third entails reconstructing Gaza and the return of any remaining bodies of the hostages.

Despite his habitual impotence in the face of Netanyahu, US President Joe Biden saw the agreement as a masterstroke. Oddly enough, he insisted that the plan resembled almost to the letter a plan he had advanced in May 2024. “I laid out the precise contours of this plan on May 31, 2024, after which it was endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council.”

He omitted to mention the US vetoing of no fewer than five ceasefire resolutions proposed at that same body, not to mention those foggy “red lines” he insisted Netanyahu never cross when waging war against Hamas and the Palestinian populace. Such gestures as delaying the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs for fear that they might be used by the IDF in such areas as Rafah were purely symbolic in nature.

As Netanyahu had no interest in being bound by any such lines of engagement, Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, could only crankily remark to reporters that it was all a media obsession. “The whole issue of the red line, as you define it, is something that you guys like; it’s almost become a bit of a national parlour game.”

Excerpted: ‘Bitter Harvests: The Gaza Ceasefire’. Courtesy: Counterpunch.org