The agreement by Israel to end the genocide in Gaza, after being pressured by the emissary of President-elect Trump, Steve Witkoff, was proposed since last May and approved by Hamas in July. After Hamas’s acceptance of the terms, Prime Minister of Israel Netanyahu added new conditions. The discussions fell apart, with US Secretary of State Blinken blatantly lying by blaming Hamas for the failure, while tens of thousands of additional Gazan lives, mostly those women and children, were lost to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing. The signing of this agreement with substantially the same terms as that of last May demonstrate that Israel is indeed susceptible to American pressure, as demonstrated in the past. Throughout the 15-month genocide on Gaza by Israel, President Joe Biden, adamantly refused to apply any pressure on Israel, while Netanyahu repeatedly humiliated Biden by violating red line after red line set by him and in his ludicrous defence, leaked stories to the press about how angry he was with Netanyahu as Netanyahu thumbed his nose at him, again and again. Biden dutifully sated his Zionist cravings by sending more and more arms, including 2,000-pound bombs to be dropped on civilians, in complicity with the carnage.
The agreement consists of three phases. In the first phase 33 hostages being held in Gaza will be released, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israel will be freed, there will be a six-week ceasefire, Israeli troops will be withdrawn from populated areas in Gaza and there will be an increase in humanitarian assistance. In the second phase, which will be negotiated during the first phase, the remaining living hostages will be returned, all Israeli forces will leave Gaza and there will be a permanent end to the fighting. In the final phase, steps for the reconstruction of Gaza will be agreed and the remains of hostages will be returned.
There is wide speculation that the agreement will fail during the first phase because Israel will not remove its forces from Gaza. It has been noted that already Netanyahu’s office has indicated that Israeli forces will not leave the Philadelphi Corridor, which is the border between Gaza and Egypt. There is also speculation that Trump will not object if Israel resumes its genocide against Gaza once Israel suggests that Gaza has violated the agreement. Further down the road, it is believed that Trump will not oppose the annexation by Israel of parts of the West Bank. His Ambassador-designate to Israel, former Governor Mike Huckabee, does not recognize the existence of Palestinians. Whatever the outcome of the implementation process of the agreement, it is clear that further rough seas are ahead for Gaza and for the Palestinians, a delegation of which, visiting Guyana last week, was tucked away in Kingston, Georgetown, in a meeting with Infrastructure Minister Juan Edghill. A public lecture or press interview or press conference by the delegation would have demonstrated Guyana’s support for Palestine.
Israel did not win the war against Gaza. There were three main objectives, namely, the military defeat and destruction of Hamas, the ethnic cleansing of all or at least the northern part of Gaza so that Israeli settlements can be imposed, and the freeing of the hostages. Hamas countered Israel’s carnage by launching a vast guerilla war in a landscape that was never considered suitable, using its extensive system of tunnels from which its fighters emerged to deliver blows against the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). In classic guerilla style, as soon as the IDF left an area having allegedly ‘pacified’ it, Hamas resumed control of it. Today, reports from the Israeli press suggest Hamas has as large as force now as it has had on October 7 last year. Enhanced recruitment in conditions of the genocide was predicted. And today, it is Hamas that Israel is indirectly negotiating with.
The total destruction of Gaza – its buildings, homes, schools, universities, hospitals, water and sewerage systems, its agriculture, the killing of its journalists, doctors and medical staff and 46,000+ Gazans, starvation, were all designed to empty Gaza. When the population refused to leave, Israel began to concentrate on northern Gaza. The Hamas resistance together with the refusal of Gazans to leave, despite bitter suffering, starvation and the killing of their children, even as these words are being written, mark Israel’s genocidal campaign as a failure. The hostages have not been released by the military efforts of the IDF.
The turmoil in the Middle East is the product of Israel’s persistent campaign to dominate the region, mostly with US support. It failed in the Suez crisis in 1956. It failed to capture Lebanon in 1982 and was driven out of Southern Lebanon by Hezbollah. Its aims were not achieved with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. While it succeeded in decapitating Hezbollah, the organization remains intact and recently prevented the IDF from penetrating Southern Lebanon. Its planned war against Iran in this period of heightened tension is beginning to appear unfeasible without American support. Tensions are growing with a potentially more formidable enemy, Turkeye, over its military intervention in Syria. Its sense on invincibility generated by the Seven-Day War in 1967 has been battered, including by the Houthis of Yemen. Israel can be stopped in the sands of Palestine.