Bitter Harvests: The Gaza Ceasefire
Twinning the terms “ceasefire” and “Gaza” seems not only incongruous but an obscene joke. This is largely because the ceasefire announced on January 15 between Israel and Hamas could have been reached so much earlier by all the concerned parties. But will was lacking in Washington to force Israel’s hand, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was repeatedly of the belief that Hamas had to be unconditionally defeated, if not extirpated altogether, for any such arrangements to be reached.
A general outline of the ceasefire terms was released by Qatar, a vital broker in the talks between Hamas and Israel. According to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs release, there are to be three phases in the agreement. The first phase will involve the release of 33 Israeli detainees in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. The second and third phase “will be finalized during the implementation of the first phase.”
The first stage will last for six weeks and see, should things pan out, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from all populated areas of Gaza and the return of Palestinians to their neighbourhoods. (To say homes, in this regard, would be monstrously distasteful, seeing that many would have been flattened.) Humanitarian aid deliveries will also be increased and distributed “on a large scale” through the Strip, while hospitals, health centres, and bakeries will be rehabilitated. Supplies of fuel for civilian use and shelter for displaced persons deprived of their homes will also be facilitated.
The second stage envisages a conclusion to the war, a full withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from the Strip and the return of all remaining living hostages in return for another allotment of Palestinian prisoners. The third entails reconstructing Gaza and the return of any remaining bodies of the hostages.
Despite his habitual impotence in the face of Netanyahu, US President Joe Biden saw the agreement as a masterstroke. Oddly enough, he insisted that the plan resembled almost to the letter a plan he had advanced in May 2024. “I laid out the precise contours of this plan on May 31, 2024, after which it was endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council.”
He omitted to mention the US vetoing of no fewer than five ceasefire resolutions proposed at that same body, not to mention those foggy “red lines” he insisted Netanyahu never cross when waging war against Hamas and the Palestinian populace. Such gestures as delaying the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs for fear that they might be used by the IDF in such areas as Rafah were purely symbolic in nature.
As Netanyahu had no interest in being bound by any such lines of engagement, Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, could only crankily remark to reporters that it was all a media obsession. “The whole issue of the red line, as you define it, is something that you guys like; it’s almost become a bit of a national parlour game.”
While Biden clawed and scraped for credit, it was incoming US President Donald Trump claiming the lion’s share. And why not? With his inauguration on January 20, the timing of the ceasefire, with Israel finally relenting, was no coincidence. “This EPIC ceasefire agreement,” Trump stated in a roaring post on his Truth Social platform, “could only have happened as result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signalled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies.”
While Biden and his officials fumed at this claim, it was clear that Trump had a sharp point. His incoming Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has had a busy January interposing in the negotiation process, spending time in Doha as part of the discussions on the Israeli hostages, then meeting Netanyahu in a January 11 encounter that was reported to be “tense”.
According to the Times of Israel, Witkoff was most insistent that the Israeli PM accept essential compromises. Two nights after their meeting, the negotiating teams of both Israel and Hamas notified the mediators that they had accepted the deal on hostages in principle. In the view of two Arab officials cited in the paper, Trump’s envoy had done “more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year”.
Whoever claims credit for these latest developments hardly lessens the bitterness of the harvest. The prevarications, delays and obstructions have permitted massive destruction and loss of life to take place. Cowardice and bad faith have been the hallmarks of the process. It remains unclear how all the relevant parties will behave. Netanyahu will remain bitter that his goals of eliminating Hamas have not been achieved. It’s a point that his cabinet colleagues on the far right, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, are all too readily reminding him of.
The question of who controls Gaza after the phases conclude remains a thick encumbrance. Then comes that big issue after Trump’s inauguration. How far will his involvement be constructive in achieving a lasting peace, or merely default to the exclusive security goals and interests of Israel? If history is a reliable guide on this point, the omens are not good.
Friday 17 January 2025, by Tariq Kenney-Shawa
The agreement may reduce the intensity of Israel’s killing spree, but it is likely to usher in a grueling new phase of ethnic cleansing with Trump’s full support.
Steven Witkoff, Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, reportedly didn’t bother with pleasantries when he informed the Israelis that he would be arriving to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Saturday. When told his visit coincided with Shabbat, meaning the prime minister would be unavailable until the evening, Witkoff made it clear that the Jewish holiday would not interfere with his schedule. Netanyahu, understanding the stakes, went to his office that afternoon to meet the envoy, who subsequently jetted off to Qatar to press further on a ceasefire deal for Gaza.
Little is known of the details of their conversation, but it is clear that Witkoff managed to move Netanyahu more in a single meeting than the entire Biden administration did in over 15 months. On Jan. 15, Israel and Hamas agreed to a multi-phase ceasefire deal that would see Israeli hostages exchanged for Palestinian prisoners and captives, along with an eventual full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
It is too early to tell if this agreement will hold. Israel’s long tradition of violating ceasefires, coupled with the demands of Israeli ministers to continue the genocide, give us reason to be skeptical. But news of the truce has brought indescribable relief to millions in Gaza who have faced a campaign of annihilation for over a year.
If the ceasefire in Gaza does hold, it will be the material result of dynamics introduced by the incoming Trump administration — a reminder of how easily Washington can influence Israel’s actions if it actually wants to. President Joe Biden, blinded by his commitment to a mythic Zionism that exists solely in his imagination, was unwilling to see how the war was not only morally grotesque in its own right, but also detrimental to both American and Israeli interests in the region. In many ways, Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its campaign of regional destabilization also became the Biden administration’s own war.
Trump operates without the same ideological constraints, and he is far more concerned with what he can gain from a given relationship. Trump sought a ceasefire deal not only because it would serve as a massive PR coup — he can brag that he solved a problem Biden never could, and rightly so — but more importantly because it will allow his administration to get on with other priorities, such as brokering a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
In other words, for the president-elect, a ceasefire isn’t a matter of principle or morality; it is transactional. While Biden was happy to let Israel’s genocide in Gaza impede on a wide range of US and regional interests, Trump was determined to remove any obstacles standing in the way of his broader agenda.
But the president-elect and those he surrounds himself with have also made it clear that they intend to make Netanyahu’s cooperation worth the trouble. If the Israeli prime minister sees the ceasefire through even just its first stage, he will expect a return on his investment — and his price will be further mass displacement of Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank.
A ceasefire gift bag
Still, we shouldn’t give Trump too much credit. Little fundamentally changed when it came to the leverage he was willing to use to influence Israel’s conduct. As far as we know, Trump never threatened to condition military aid to Israel. Nor did he indicate that he would reconsider his predecessor’s practice of ignoring international law in order to shield Israel from accountability on the world stage.
Some will argue that Trump’s threats and the collapse of several resistance fronts across the region forced Hamas to make concessions in the negotiation process. But it wasn’t Hamas that needed convincing — they had already agreed to earlier ceasefire proposals that were largely indiscernible from the current deal, going back to May 2024. In the end, it was Israel that needed the push, and Witkoff likely signalled to Netanyahu that despite not sharing Biden’s blind fealty to Israel, Trump would actually do more to reward cooperation.
The fact that Netanyahu has so far decided to refrain from scuttling this ceasefire agreement shows that he is confident he can gain something significant in return. The Israeli media is already reporting that Trump’s ceasefire “gift bag” to Netanyahu could include a long list of treats, from lifting sanctions on Israeli NSO Group’s spyware Pegasus and on violent Israeli settlers, to giving Washington’s blessing to major West Bank land theft or outright annexation, and permitting or even facilitating a direct attack on Iran.
But it’s not just about what Israel is getting in return for a ceasefire. It’s also about what it has already received.
In the eight months since Israel first rejected an almost identical deal, to which Hamas had agreed in principle, its army has slaughtered tens of thousands of Palestinians and decimated large swaths of the Gaza Strip. This was the price of Israel achieving its true objectives: not eliminating Hamas or securing the release of hostages — many of whom were killed while Israel stalled on a ceasefire — but the destruction and “thinning out” of Gaza and the reshaping of the Middle East.
The facts on the ground in Gaza today paint a picture that we cannot yet fully comprehend. Israeli forces have demolished entire neighborhoods in order to widen the buffer zone that encircles the Strip, expand the Netzarim Corridor that bisects the territory, and ultimately carve up the enclave for a future of perpetual control. In doing so, they have seized over 30 percent of Gaza’s pre-genocide territory, while rendering much of the rest of it uninhabitable.
Meanwhile, Israel has largely completed the so-called “General’s Plan” — the ethnic cleansing of the entirety of northern Gaza above Gaza City. Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya, and Jabalia, cities that were once collectively home to over 300,000 people, have been reduced to rubble, as part of a campaign to depopulate the area and entrench Israeli control while laying the groundwork for building Jewish settlements.
Elsewhere, Israel closed its front with Hezbollah, and the fall of Assad allowed it to seize more land in the Golan Heights and the eastern slopes of Mount Hermon/Jabal A-Shaykh. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, state-backed settler attacks on Palestinians have increased in frequency and brutality, while the Palestinian Authority serves as a full partner in the Israeli army’s intensifying crackdown on resistance in Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarem.
Clearly, Netanyahu allowed the ceasefire agreement to move forward knowing that the stage is set for Israel to turn its attention to annexing the West Bank, confronting Iran, and solidifying its future as an embattled fortress state.
Cementing a new reality
Even if the ceasefire agreement does not survive past the initial 42-day period, it will no doubt save countless lives and give Palestinians a chance to breathe, eat, grieve, and receive medical treatment. Yet while the phased approach to the agreement is supposed to make reneging difficult for Israel, that depends on enforcement. Right now, the only thing standing in the way of the resumption of the annihilation once the ceasefire starts to take hold is an international community that has abandoned Palestinians for more than a year.
Key members of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition have already warned that they will not accept anything less than a continuation of Israel’s assault on Gaza after the first phase of the agreement is completed, even at the expense of the remaining hostages. And after taking credit for achieving the ceasefire in the first place, there is no indication that Trump will hold Israel accountable or pressure Netanyahu to follow through with the second and third phases of the agreement.
While the ceasefire may halt the immediate bloodshed, it also cements a new reality: Gaza as a fragmented, uninhabitable prison. The vast majority of Gaza’s population has been forced into highly securitized and surveilable concentration camps in the south and center of the Strip, where their survival is determined by Israel’s whim.
Genocide is not carried out with bombs and bullets alone, and it does not end when the guns fall silent. Disease, malnutrition, and trauma — untreated by a healthcare system turned to rubble — will continue to claim lives for years to come, while making the land liveable again after the devastation and toxification will take decades. And Israel is not finished: it has created the conditions for the complete and permanent ethnic cleansing of Gaza, guided by the century-old Zionist ethos of “maximum land, minimum Arabs.”
This ceasefire will reduce the intensity of Israel’s killing spree, but it is likely to usher in a grueling new phase of this ongoing genocide that we have yet to fully grasp — one that is fully supported by the incoming Trump administration. The ethnic cleansing of Gaza might not be carried out in one go, but rather in a piecemeal process that takes shape as we take stock of the extent of Israel’s systemic destruction of all things that sustain life in the Strip.
Regardless of what the future has in store, we should hold on to the words of the late Refaat Alareer: “As Palestinians, no matter what comes of this, we haven’t failed. We did our best. And we didn’t lose our humanity … We didn’t submit to their barbarity.”
+972, 16 January
Tariq Kenney-Shawa
Tariq Kenney-Shawa is a US Policy Fellow at Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian think tank and policy network. He holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Middle East Studies from Rutgers University. Tariq’s research has focused on topics ranging from the role of narrative in both perpetuating and resisting occupation to analysis of Palestinian liberation strategies. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, +972 Magazine, Newlines Magazine, and the New Politics Journal, among others. Twitter: @tksshawa.
International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.
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