Hamas and Israel agree to continue ceasefire, Israeli press reports

BarcelonaThe ceasefire in Gaza seems to have saved its most critical moment. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz Says Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement in extremis to keep the truce alive. Hamas has agreed to release three Israeli hostages on Saturday, in what is expected to be the sixth exchange, and Israel will increase the flow of humanitarian aid into the Strip, especially tents, gas cylinders and medical supplies.

The deal comes after Donald Trump blew up the ceasefire he himself had helped to forge with his macabre plan to turn the Strip into a holiday resort without Palestinians, and put pressure on Egypt and Jordan to accept them. Hamas reacted by saying that paralyzed the release of the hostages scheduled for this Saturday, because Israel had violated the ceasefire with dozens of Palestinians killed and had not allowed the entry of promised humanitarian aid, which is needed by the exhausted population after 15 months of indiscriminate attacks and a siege of hunger. The Republican threatened to once again "open the gates of hell" in Gaza and Netanyahu was quick to take advantage of the opportunity to say that he will return to war until he defeats Hamas, to the horror of the relatives of the hostages who remain in Gaza. The truce has always been fragile because it does not respond to any political plan that draws a lasting solution.

In Gaza, Trump's words rather arouse sarcasm. "More hell than we already have? Is there anything worse than a massacre?" Abdul Najar, a construction worker from Khan Yunis, in the south of the Strip, tells ARA via WhatsApp. "We have struggled to survive a hell of bombs, hunger, thirst and disease. And now Trump says he will open the gates of hell for Gaza? And he has made it clear that if we leave we will never be able to return. This will not happen," he says. The man grew up with the stories of his parents, refugees from Nakba(the "catastrophe" of the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948-49), and does not want it to be repeated with him and his children and grandchildren.

Samir Zaqout, director of the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, told ARA from the centre of the Gaza Strip that the Republican's plan is out of touch with reality. "Trump shows that he has very little historical knowledge: Israel has been trying to expel the Palestinians for 76 years and has not succeeded, even now, with a genocide in the eyes of the world. Does anyone expect that the people of Gaza will stop defending our right to live, our land and self-determination despite everyone's demands for staying?" Zaqout believes that the aim of the US president's statements is none other than to strengthen Netanyahu within Israel. "The Palestinians of Gaza will resist Trump and the whole world as we have done until now," he proclaims.

Zaqout believes that the ceasefire will hold, at least during this phase, because it is also a response to the exhaustion of the human capacity of the Israeli army. "The Israeli military establishment has made it very clear that they can do nothing more in Gaza and they have also pressured Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire. Now it seems that it was only because of Trump, but that is not true: Trump is only covering up a military defeat after 15 months of indiscriminate war in which Israel has not been able to achieve its objectives."

That the ceasefire has stalled is not a surprise either. In fact, Netanyahu had already made it clear when signing the agreement that it was only temporary and that the second phase, which was supposed to lead to a permanent truce, would never be reached. "I think that the Israeli authorities have deliberately violated the terms of the ceasefire in order to block it," Yara Howari, from the Palestinian think tank Al Shabaka, told ARA. She warned that "Israel has not allowed even half of the promised humanitarian aid to enter, while they continue to defend mass displacement: indiscriminate bombing has stopped, but genocide continues." If Trump was supposed to be the arbiter of the agreement, he not only remained silent in the face of Israeli non-compliance, but added fuel to the fire by even demanding the release of "all" the hostages before Saturday, when the agreement was to do so gradually until the next phase and always in the form of exchanges with Palestinian prisoners. Howari does not hide a deeper criticism: "Nobody takes into account the Palestinians, who are seen only as pieces on a chessboard. But they are not: they have survived 15 months of genocide and everyone underestimates their determination."

Trump's mass deportation plan therefore faces two problems. The first is that many Palestinians in Gaza are not willing to leave and it will be difficult to convince them that their departure would be temporary. The second is who should take care of the refugees in Gaza. Trump can unleash another hell in Gaza, but he has not yet put a political solution to the war on the table. If the plan is to carry out ethnic cleansing, a place to expel the Palestinians is needed. The logical candidates are the neighbours, Egypt and Jordan, but so far the White House has not come forward to pressure them to collaborate with the forced deportation. Jordan's King Abdullah visited Trump at the White House on Tuesday, agreeing only to take care of 2,000 wounded, most of them children, and insisting that Gaza belongs to the Palestinians and must be part of a future Palestinian state. Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who rules Egypt with an iron fist, refused to travel to the White House on Wednesday.

What does Trump really want?

"As always with Trump, the big question is what exactly he means. One could interpret this as meaning that he wants a quick solution to the release of the hostages and to end the war once and for all, instead of the phased plan now planned, or that he has laid the groundwork for an endless war," he writes in Haaretz Israeli journalist Amir Tibon. What is clear is that since he was the first foreign leader invited to the White House in Donald Trump's second term, Netanyahu now has American blessing to do whatever he wants with the ceasefire. And also that Netanyahu is the most interested in continuing the war to avoid all questions about his management, including the security failure of October 7.

Palestinian analyst Xavier Abu Zeid explains by phone from Bethlehem that "Netanyahu never wanted the ceasefire, and now whoever pressured him to accept it has basically told him that he has the green light to go back to war." He warns that the Israeli prime minister "wants this to collapse," and that saving the truce is in the interest of the Palestinians, "who want peace in Gaza and the release of leaders who are in prison, like [the historic leader of Al Fatah] Marwan Barghouti." He claims that Trump "has given Netanyahu an incentive not only to carry out ethnic cleansing in Gaza but also to move it to the West Bank" and that with the passivity of European governments, the only positive thing for the Palestinians has been the common position of the Arab countries against forced displacement.

Pressure on Jordan and Egypt

The White House continues to put pressure on Egypt and Jordan to make possible the mass deportation of Palestinians from Gaza. Trump has threatened to freeze military aid, which is important for the survival of both regimes. This is the worst diplomatic crisis with these countries, historic allies of the United States since they signed peace with Israel (Egypt in 1974 and Jordan in 1994). Egypt has repeatedly said that it will not give in to Trump's threats and will not collaborate with any policy of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Rais Abdel Fattah al Sisi said on Wednesday that he will not attend any meeting at the White House while Trump insists on his plan for Gaza: the autocrat is not leaving himself much room for manoeuvre. And the security establishment also does not look favourably on the possibility of armed Palestinian groups establishing themselves on the porous Sinai border. Cairo has called an Arab League summit for the end of the month, a schedule that is not exactly an emergency, while hosting Hamas delegations to continue negotiating. Jordan is much more economically vulnerable than Egypt, but it also has a very big internal problem, because between half and two thirds of its population are of Palestinian origin.

Egypt and Jordan have their own problems and it would be very dangerous for both Al Sisi and the Hashemite monarch to appear as the architects of a second Nakba of the Palestinians in Gaza. The Gazan is clear that these two leaders are not resisting the plans for ethnic cleansing out of affection for the Palestinians, but because they do not want to expose themselves to a security problem: "As long as the Palestinians remain in Gaza, they are a lesser threat to Israel and the United States than if they now start distributing them around the world" ta Najar. Hamas did not want to play Trump's game and limited itself to saying that it hopes that the mediators will enforce the agreement, which they consider "solid".