Podcast
The peace agreement reduced the martyrdom of Palestinians in Gaza and took the hostages into the arms of those who were waiting for them. This we know. There is no certainty about the disarmament of Hamas, nor about urgent reconstruction or a future model of government for the territory. Inter-Palestinian violence is intensifying, settlers threaten, beat and kill in the West Bank and Israel is no longer safe
The live hostages have already been handed over to the Red Cross, the bombings that we saw for two years are already the reality of people in Gaza and more help is coming in. And here the good news ends because everything else about the peace agreement signed by Israel and Hamas with mediation from the United States and several Arab countries is still unknown. And it is in these shadows that the danger of a new war lurks.
For now, no one wants to think about it. The horror experienced by Palestinians over two years, both in Gaza and the West Bank, and by Israeli families who saw their relatives kidnapped and taken to Gaza by terrorists is a collective trauma that will take many decades to be healed – if it ever is. But these are not the goals we are talking about now. We need to start by ensuring the basics: that the war will not return. And not even that point is that solid, in the opinion of Daniel Pinéu, who in this episode of The World at Your Feet explores in more depth the 20 points of the peace agreement, and those that, among these 20, may prove to be more difficult to implement.
As the first obstacle to peace, the professor, researcher in the field of International Relations, notes that Israeli troops are still present in 55% of the Gaza strip and will remain, for an indefinite period of time, in around 40% of the territory. “The vague language of the agreement means that Israel retains the ability to veto the entire process,” explains Pinéu. “Like the ceasefire in southern Lebanon, monitored by the international community of the United Nations, it has already been broken 1,500 times”, he adds. With troops on the ground, “whenever there is something that Israel unilaterally determines could be a threat to those troops or to Israel’s security, broadly understood, Israel can attack by claiming to have those security concerns.”
Another problem that is beginning to take over the Gaza Strip is inter-Palestinian violence, because, as Daniel Pinéu explains and has been Israel finances a militia with jihadist links that operates inside Gaza, allegedly to protect its soldiers, but which has been considered guilty of the depredation of humanitarian aid and even suspected of murdering journalists.
In this episode, we also explore the influence of far-right politicians in the Netanyahu Government, who continue to defend the permanent occupation of Gaza and the continuation of the war, the development model idealized for Gaza and the putative technocratic government that may be rejected by the population due to lack of legitimacy. There is also the “catastrophic” state, from a humanitarian point of view, of services and civil infrastructure, that Gaza is in, which makes any plan for stable governance “almost unfeasible”. Hence, Daniel Pinéu is not afraid to assume that he is “quite pessimistic regarding the following phases of the plan”. Not because they are not possible, but because of the “several destabilizing factors” that could hinder the path of these future phases.
