The cease-fire in Gaza will not last without a political process, analysts warn | News about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Beirut, Lebanon – The ceasefire agreement agreement between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas has brought some optimism that Israel’s 15-month war against Gaza will finally end, and that Israeli prisoners and Palestinian prisoners will be freed.

But some analysts are still unsure that the deal, which was announced on Wednesday and is set to begin on Sunday, will go ahead as planned.

Israel’s security cabinet gave the green light to the deal on Friday evening, after postponing a meeting originally scheduled for Thursday. Still, dividing the deal into three phases opens up the possibility that its terms could be violated or that the parties – particularly Israel – would renege on its terms, analysts say.

The deal calls for the first 42-day phase – which will see the handover of some prisoners and detainees, an Israeli withdrawal from populated areas and an increase in aid – to be followed by additional phases in which more prisoner exchanges will also take place. as a permanent Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a sustainable ceasefire.

Experts who spoke to Al Jazeera fear that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is resisted the ceasefire agreement for months and insisted that Hamas must be destroyed, will resume hostilities after the prisoners are recovered to ostensibly “punish” the Palestinian group, bolster Israel’s security and ensure its own political survival, while somehow blaming Hamas for the deal’s failure.

“Israel is very good at breaking the truce and making it look like it’s not their fault,” said Mairav ​​Zonszein, an Israel-Palestine expert at the International Crisis Group.

Temporary relief

Ceasefire in Gaza was announced outgoing President of the United States Joe Biden and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani. US President-elect Donald Trump has also announced his support – and pressure from Trump, who is due to take office on Monday, is widely reported to have pushed the ceasefire talks over the edge.

The deal aims to end a devastating war that has prompted legal scholars, rights groups and United Nations experts to accuse Israel of “genocide” over its policy of starving Palestinians and destroying life-sustaining services. The Republic of South Africa also brought a case before the International Criminal Court accusing Israel of genocide, which was supported by a number of countries.

Israel killed more than 46,700 people – men, women and children – and forcibly expelled almost the entire pre-war population of 2.3 million people from their homes through attacks and so-called “evacuation orders”.

The war began after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which 1,139 people were killed and 250 captured.

Many of the Israeli prisoners were released under an earlier cease-fire agreement as early as November 2023, and those remaining are expected to be released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, an exchange that could take place over several weeks.

However, Zonszein believes the deal could fall apart after that point.

“This [deal] will provide immediate assistance by delivering humanitarian aid and ensure the release of hostages and prisoners. The [deal] it’s more of a temporary break than a long-term solution,” she told Al Jazeera.

Diana Buttu, a Palestinian legal scholar and former negotiator with the Palestine Liberation Organization, also fears that the agreement’s vagueness could allow Israel to overturn it at any time.

One condition, for example, requires Israel to pull back to the Gaza Strip’s “border” as opposed to the 1967 border, which marks Israel’s borders with the occupied territory.

This wording, Buttu says, raises concerns about whether Israel will really withdraw completely from the enclave.

“The agreement is very vague and there are many places where Israel can – and will – maneuver its way out of it,” Buttu told Al Jazeera.

Political fears

The ceasefire deal agreed on Wednesday is roughly the same as a previous one proposed in May, which was agreed to by Hamas but rejected by Israel, which immediately launched an invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza.

At the time, Biden warned Israel that Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians had gathered, was a “red line” for fear that an invasion would worsen the already dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza. However, the US did not follow through on its threat to punish Israel after sending troops to Rafah.

The Israeli move was part of a wider pattern of Netanyahu torpedoing ceasefire proposals, ostensibly to keep his fragile far-right coalition together until he regains enough popularity to run in new elections.

Far-right Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir they have exploited Netanyahu’s political fears to push their own agenda, such as keeping the war in Gaza going indefinitely, experts say.

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are part of Israel’s religious nationalist settler movement and have threatened to leave the coalition if Netanyahu signs the truce, a move that would potentially topple the government and trigger elections.

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are again threatening to leave the coalition if the current ceasefire agreement is implemented. It is uncertain whether these threats are mere showmanship or whether the two are willing to try to oust Netanyahu.

“Everyone sees Netanyahu as the dominant force in Israeli politics, but it’s amazing how much Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have been able to use his political fears to further their own goals,” said Hugh Lovatt, an Israel-Palestine expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Netanyahu appears to have regained much of his popularity since the October 7 Hamas-led attack that sent his popularity plummeting.

However, he still appears cautious about the ceasefire due to fear for his political survival.

on Thursday, Netanyahu said he was “postponing” the cabinet meeting demanded approval of the ceasefire and blamed Hamas for reneging on the terms of the deal. The Security Cabinet finally approved the deal on Friday.

Mediators said Hamas had already accepted the proposal, as it had done on several occasions since May.

“Today’s Netanyahu is not the one of the past. He is more afraid and unable to make decisions, which has led to strategic paralysis,” said Lovatt.

The day after?

Since the start of the Gaza war, the US has pushed for the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has some control over the occupied West Bank, to return to Gaza to govern.

The PA was born out of the 1993 Oslo Accords, signed by Israeli and Palestinian leaders, which launched a peace process with the ostensible goal of establishing a Palestinian state.

For more than two decades, the peace process has been stalled in large part because Israel expanded illegal settlements in the West Bank and imposed restrictions that politically, economically and territorially cut off Gaza from the West Bank, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

The PA is also largely led by Fatah, the Palestinian party that fought a brief civil war with Hamas in 2007, leading to a permanent split in the Palestinian national movement.

In the war, the PA was effectively kicked out of Gaza and confined to the West Bank, where it enjoys limited power under Israel’s entrenched occupation.

Israel has also designated Gaza as “enemy” territory and placed it under a land, sea and air blockade.

Any plan for the PA to return to Gaza worries Israel because it would politically and territorially reunite the occupied territories and revive calls for Palestinian statehood, according to Omar Rahman, an Israel-Palestine expert at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.

“If you have a unified Palestinian territory under unified Palestinian leadership, then Israel will be under pressure to participate in a political end game, and Netanyahu does not want that to happen,” he told Al Jazeera.

In addition, experts told Al Jazeera that they do not see a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in a vacuum, largely due to Israeli fears that Hamas could reassert control over the enclave and rebuild its capabilities.

Netanyahu previously said Israel should have “total security control” over Gaza for an “indefinite” period of time.

“Gaza’s sad history shows us that there is a cycle of escalation and de-escalation because there is no political framework to address the root causes,” Lovatt said.

“Those who want to continue fighting in Gaza will probably have the opportunity at some point.”