The truce accepted by both sides a week ago under pressure from Donald Trump continues to hold, but there is no guarantee that this will last in the coming days. “The chances of the ceasefire being maintained are moderate: possible, but not yet likely,” says an analyst to CNN. Immediately, the US needs to give “explicit support” to Egypt and Qatar “to quickly respond to violations before they worsen.” Only this will allow “a long technical process” to begin with a view to implementing a true peace agreement
“Hearing President Trump tell the Israelis and Arabs on Monday that they are at the ‘historic dawn of a new Middle East’ was like watching Trump sell his bankers a plan to build the biggest, most beautiful, most incredible hotel in the world on a toxic waste dump. On the one hand, we thought, ‘This man must be crazy, doesn’t he know the history of this place? You can’t build a hotel here!’ On the other hand, a voice in our head whispers: ‘what if he succeeds?’”
So writes Thomas L. Friedman, international affairs columnist for The New York Times, in a piece titled “Mr. Trump, on the Middle East, Please Act Quickly and Change Things,” which highlights what many say is the gap between the US president’s rhetoric and the reality on the ground in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the occupied Palestinian territories.
A week after Israel and Hamas gave in to pressure from Trump and agreed to a ceasefire, the risks of the truce collapsing are greater than ever. Over the course of the week, Israel released around 1,700 living Palestinians (not including prominent figures in Palestinian society such as Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah politician considered the , and who was abducted by Israeli forces from a hospital in Gaza almost ten months ago) – and, as of this Thursday, it had returned the bodies of 90 dead Palestinians, several with , according to images obtained by BBC.
For its part, the group that controls the Gaza Strip returned to Israel the last 20 Israelis held in captivity alive and the bodies of some of the dead hostages, leading Israel to demand that it hand over the bodies still missing under penalty of resuming hostilities. The bodies, says the militant group, are impossible to locate, as they are located in areas destroyed in the Israeli attacks. Faced with pressure, Donald Trump said on Thursday that he has already given the green light to Tel Aviv to resume the armed offensive in Gaza “if Hamas does not comply” with what was stipulated.
“Trump’s declaration runs the risk of turning the ceasefire into a conditional threat, rather than a common commitment,” Houssein al-Malla, researcher at the German Institute for Global and Regional Studies (GIGA), told CNN Portugal. “The only way to stabilize it is through continued mediation and verifiable humanitarian progress. Ceasefires are sustained when they produce results that people can feel, not just promises that leaders can announce.”
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Absence of political mechanisms
For now, says the specialist in peace and security processes in the Middle East, “the ceasefire is holding, but remains precarious” – not least because there are high risks of “sequential disputes, localized conflicts and internal pressure on both leaders to show themselves intransigent”, he adds – in the case of Israel, “from political factions that see containment as weakness”, in Gaza “by groups other than the Hamas”, which “may try to undermine the truce to regain relevance”.
Some of this appears to already be happening. In his speech on Monday, when he announced that “the war in Gaza is over”, Trump told Israeli deputies that he authorized Hamas to rearm itself to police the enclave until an international force is created and deployed – which has resulted in what expert José Filipe Pinto classified a few days ago as , already proven by .
At the time of writing this article, Israel had not yet reopened the Rafah crossing, on the Gaza border with Egypt, and had only authorized the entry of a daily average of 300 trucks with urgent humanitarian aid, around half of what was agreed last week – maintaining the blockade on the evacuation of injured civilians in need of emergency medical assistance, as well as the entry of machinery necessary for the removal of rubble, to allow the start of operations to recover the bodies of more than 10,000 Palestinians who have disappeared in the last two years, according to .
The risk that violations will end the peace process before it begins is higher than ever. “The ceasefire will only be maintained if both sides believe that moderation serves their interests better than escalating the conflict – “which requires daily coordination on the ground, not political messaging from capitals,” stresses Houssein al-Malla. “Egypt and Qatar are now the main guarantors, but they need explicit US support to quickly respond to violations before they escalate.”
This arises from what the analyst considers to be the “absence of a clear political mechanism to continue the military pause”, a “vulnerability” with no solution in sight for now. “Unstructured ceasefires tend to expire with the slightest provocation. The chances of this lasting are moderate: possible, but not yet likely.”
Stage without a piece
The other vulnerability, already invoked by several experts, is the vague language of the 20-point peace agreement presented by Trump, a beacon of the Egyptian peace summit at the start of the week. Present were the leaders and representatives of 27 countries, including Western and Arab nations, as well as the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, the President of the European Council, António Costa, and the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit – with the notable absences of Israeli and Palestinian representatives, the two major interested parties.
“The Sharm el-Sheikh summit was largely symbolic, but it helped to clarify who will lead the process”, considers Al-Malla. In other words, the meeting helped to define that Egypt and Qatar are responsible for coordinating the immediate implementation of the next steps, the US responsible for supervising reconstruction planning and the UN and EU with supporting roles in “humanitarian verification” – although, as the analyst highlights, “no formal mechanism has been announced”.
“What has emerged is an understanding that regional actors will lead politically, while Western donors will provide funding. The real test begins when border monitoring and access arrangements move from speeches to logistics. The summit has set the stage, but not yet the play.”
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The script, that, remains largely undefined. It is in charge of technical teams of negotiators who are in charge of deliberating who will be responsible for ensuring that the agreement is implemented, who will govern Gaza during the transition and how disarmament and security will be implemented, namely through an international force with troops from Arab and possibly Western countries.
Spain has already said that as part of this international force, in what Houssein al-Malla sees as a “significant offer that demonstrates European willingness to move from rhetoric to responsibility”, to fill a gap that “neither Israel nor Hamas” can fill “credibly alone”. The point is that this mission also needs a “clear UN mandate, strict rules of engagement and legal accountability mechanisms”.
While Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of the world wait to see if the truce holds, the Hamburg-based expert anticipates that “what comes next will not be a major diplomatic breakthrough, but a long technical process” based on “procedural details” that may seem minor but that “will determine whether the plan survives.” And the biggest challenge continues to be political.
“A proposal [de paz de Trump] remains deliberately vague, leaving a lot of room for divergent interpretations”, considers Al-Malla. “Without agreement on the sequence and application [das medidas]the plan risks becoming a document of intent rather than a roadmap. The next phase will be evaluated on procedures, not on promises.”
