The ceasefire in Gaza is not the same as the end of the war. The conditions of the hostage/prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas are the most striking aspect of the current agreement, the one that best suits one of the parties, Israel. However, the social pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to unblock the release of the hostages, which has been subordinated from the first moment to his political interests to remain in power, is not what has made it possible. Much less the lukewarm international pressure in the face of genocide, although fewer and fewer voices discuss it.
because it has been forced by the only party that could do it, the United States, that is, its new president, Donald Trump, who thus in his farewell to the White House: what Biden did not take from Netanyahu in March, May and July, with conditions practically identical, Trump achieves it before taking office. The Qatari Foreign Minister smiled when he stated that the new mediation has been decisive.
In the history of Palestine and Israel, too many times has the United States forced a deal. Always in favor of Israel. On occasions, the Palestinians even rejected them (as in 1979, in the first Camp David, between Egypt and Israel) or sought less burdensome conditions (such as those that allowed the departure of the PLO leadership from Beirut in 1982). Then they gave up: in the words of Edward Said.
What happens today, 30 years later, comes from the Oslo farce. That is why it is disturbing to hear the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, insist on old formulas (strategic gains; the long road to peace; a provisional administration with responsibility in civil areas; a reformed Palestinian authority; the right to political self-determination with conditions ) for a new time. Although the ceasefire agreement must be separated from the plan for the day after Blinken, whose support has not been made public by Trump’s team.
The current ceasefire is not the same as peace, peace after 80 years of Palestinian dispossession. The main obstacle to peace, if not justice, continues to be the Israeli Government, in the hands of ultra-Zionists, who will pay dearly for signing the agreement: the intensification of attacks by settlers in the West Bank, subject to real pogroms.
The first two or three weeks of the truce will pass: the bulk of prisoners will be exchanged and possibly the Rafah crossing will be opened, which will somewhat alleviate the humanitarian crisis. In the second stage, the Israeli military withdrawal will not be carried out: the Gaza Strip will continue to be divided into isolated areas and the Palestinians will not be able to return to their homes. In the third, it is to be feared that we will return to square one, that is, to an intermittent truce, or to an intermittent war: this has been the case since 2008, although now with a safe “normalization” between the Saudis and the Israelis involved. , a real objective, let us not forget, of the incoming US Administration.
The surviving population is exhausted, emotionally and physically. The selective reconstruction of populations and infrastructure, carried out by “friendly countries”, will alleviate the annihilation for the moment. But Gaza will continue to be a ghetto, as the West Bank increasingly is. And as long as Palestinians continue to be confined, dispossessed, and disenfranchised—that is, dehumanized—no peace will be possible.
Luz Gomez She is a professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid. His latest book is Palestine: inheriting the future (Cataract).
