Total blockade in Gaza
According to data released by the UN, in the last two months Israel violated the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip more than 350 times, causing the deaths of more than 121 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians. This data gives a clear picture of the fragility of the ceasefire that President Donald Trump negotiated with Israel and Hamasand announced in October.
One of the Palestinians killed is Raed Saad, one of Hamas's top leaders in the Gaza Strip, assassinated last Saturday in an incident that the United States criticized because it was carried out without coordination with Washington, according to the US news website Axios. According to this outlet, the White House protested directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
And what is the general situation today and its foreseeable evolution? Israel's systematic violation of the ceasefire does not appear likely to stop anytime soon. Israel says Hamas has not fulfilled its part of the agreement, as there is still one Israeli dead under its control. He was a young man who was held hostage by Islamic Jihad before dying and being buried in the Gaza Strip.
For its part, Islamic Jihad claims it doesn't know where he was buried because it lost track of the grave's location during the two years of war, an explanation Israel rejects. The Israelis say they have given the Palestinians the names of a handful of Islamic Jihad militants who, according to Israel, know the exact location of the grave.
In any case, since this latest body has not been returned to Israel, Netanyahu's government believes it is not violating the ceasefire with the bombings it is carrying out on the Gaza Strip, an argument that doesn't entirely satisfy the White House, although it tolerates them, albeit with some isolated protests.
A second phase that never arrives
The second phase of the ceasefire agreement is being delayed, and Donald Trump doesn't like it, although there's not much he can do. The pressure the US president can exert on Israel is limited. Recall that during the war, Trump repeatedly asked Netanyahu to end the indiscriminate bombing of the Gaza Strip, but the ceasefire didn't come until the Israeli prime minister deemed it favorable to his interests. To complicate matters, Hamas is unwilling to disarm until it has guarantees that a Palestinian state will be created in the occupied territories. The Islamist organization says that international law protects the resistance's weapons, a situation that would only change if a Palestinian state were created. And that scenario is an impossible dream with Netanyahu in power. And there are still more complications: the White House is finding it difficult to recruit the international force that should be deployed in Gaza during the second phase of the ceasefire. Numerous countries consider sending troops to the Gaza Strip too risky, so the tentative date for this deployment, mid-January, is uncertain. In short, there is no reason for much optimism in either the short or medium term. On December 29, Netanyahu will travel to the United States to meet with Trump, but it is not clear that a meeting between the two leaders will resolve the outstanding issues, not least because Netanyahu is already happy with the current situation.