The Gaza Cease-fire Is a Major Step—But the Fight for Palestine Must Continue
After 15 months of carnage, a cease-fire agreement offers a desperately needed respite. There are many obstacles, yet the movement to stop U.S. support for Israel goes on.
Phyllis Bennis and Khury Petersen-Smith
A cease-fire agreement in Gaza has finally been announced. If it works, it will be incredibly important.
But this chapter of genocide and displacement isn’t over yet. Following President Biden’s press conference claiming credit for the deal, Al-Jazeera reported that Israeli attacks had killed more than 100 people in Gaza in the first hours after the announcement. And even if this chapter ends, there is still a long story ahead left to be written.
The cease-fire would mark the end of an incredibly brutal 15 months of death, destruction and genocidal onslaught. Its end would bring incredible relief — the bombing will end, truckloads of desperately needed aid will surge into the besieged area, and illegally detained Palestinian prisoners and Israeli hostages will come home. Maybe.
Hopefully, it will happen soon enough that some of the babies suffering from hypothermia as they shelter in leaking tents will be provided enough warmth to survive. Hopefully some of the children and elders buried in the most recently collapsed buildings can be dug out soon enough to survive. And hopefully some of the people with horrific injuries will get to functioning hospitals soon enough to save their limbs.
Three phases, no guarantees
The terms of the cease-fire agreement are complicated and will be implemented in stages. The bombing, shooting, and tank-fire are supposed to halt immediately, and 600 truckloads of humanitarian assistance will be allowed in daily.
If all goes according to plan, by the end of the six weeks of Phase One, about 1,000 Palestinian detainees and 33 Israeli hostages will be released, the Rafah crossing from Gaza into Egypt will reopen, Palestinian civilians will be able to start returning to their neighborhoods, Israeli troops will have started withdrawing and discussions for a permanent cease-fire will begin.
In Phase Two, more Israeli troops will be withdrawn (though some details remain unclear), all remaining hostages will be returned, and discussions of governance for Gaza will begin.
Phase Three continues discussions of governance and arrangements for the permanent cease-fire while the remains of hostages who died in Gaza are returned and an internationally backed plan for reconstruction is announced. Supposedly, both sides agreed that if plans for a permanent cease-fire are not finished by the end of Phase Three, the ceasefire will continue as long as negotiations are underway.
But only Phase One is actually agreed upon — negotiations will have to be held for Phases Two and Three. As CNN described it, “the cease-fire is not guaranteed to continue beyond the first phase of the deal.”
Netanyahu failed
Israel has not achieved its stated goals after 15 months of bombarding Gaza — and has actually lost ground in some of its political aims. Before October 7, 2023, Israel was hoping for — and had already achieved some traction towards — a new level of recognition in an “international community” of U.S.-friendly, pro-Western countries.
Through the U.S.-initiated Abraham Accords, Israel had been in the process of normalizing its relations with Arab countries, most importantly Saudi Arabia, and effectively erasing Palestine and the Palestinian people from the region’s and the world’s agenda. But the carnage in Gaza made that impossible. As outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew recently warned Israelis, “You go to the international space … all you see is the civilian impact in Gaza.”
After October 7, Israel set out a series of goals — starting with eliminating Hamas. Yet despite Israel assassinating its leaders and killing probably thousands of its fighters, the military resistance inside Gaza continued until hours before the cease-fire was announced.
Throughout its offensive, Israel announced specific military goals. One was to maintain control of the Netzarim Corridor that divided the Gaza Strip into north and south sectors, but the cease-fire calls for Israeli troops to begin withdrawing from that area during Phase One.
Another goal was the complete removal of Palestinians from northern Gaza in keeping with Israel’s “Generals’ Plan” to force out the entire population and begin settlement construction in that area. Hundreds of thousands were forced south, while those who remained faced the complete cut-off of food and water, assaults on hospitals and healthcare workers, and extraordinarily high levels of death and destruction. And yet, just two days before the cease-fire was signed by Hamas, five Israeli soldiers were killed and eight wounded in Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza.
Finally, Netanyahu also rejected any role for the Palestinian Authority (which nominally governs Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank) in the post-war governance of Gaza, and yet that appears to be the most likely call from regional and international actors.
Gaza remains besieged
That Hamas remains standing after Israel’s apocalyptic onslaught is remarkable — and a commentary on the impossibility of Israel achieving its political ends through military force.
But Hamas didn’t achieve all of its goals either.
After the short-lived cease-fire and prisoner-hostage exchange of November 2023, Hamas had asserted the need for a permanent cease-fire — not simply another short pause. While that goal of a permanent end to the war remains on the table within the text of the current agreement, it is far from a done deal. If talks to make the cease-fire permanent go on beyond six weeks, both sides agreed to continue them as long as the negotiations are underway.
But that leaves open the possibility that Israel could simply walk away from the negotiations and resume its offensive. The idea that the United States would prevent Israel from doing so remains profoundly unlikely.
At an earlier stage, Hamas had also demanded an end to Israel’s now 17-year-long siege of Gaza, with free movement of people and goods into and out of the enclave. The agreement does call for a return to 600 trucks per day of humanitarian goods, but the border still remains under Israeli control. Crossings for Palestinian medical patients into Egypt will be limited and Israel will continue to surround the Rafah crossing into Egypt. Gaza would remain besieged.
Politics are changing rapidly, but policies aren’t
Over the past 15 months, social movements across the United States have joined those around the world in standing with Palestinians to demand an immediate and permanent cease-fire.
The conversation about Israel and Palestine is in a profoundly different place today than it was before October 2023. With Israel’s sheer brutality on display to a wider audience of Americans than ever before, the taboo around criticizing Israel has been broken. It is ironic that President Biden is claiming credit for the cease-fire deal and for protecting Israel when in fact his administration presided over Israel’s genocide and created a turning point in American public opinion — with large majorities now standing against Israel’s assault and U.S. military support for it.
This has opened up a dynamic that will stretch well beyond this moment — and its arc throws the sustainability of the U.S.-Israel relationship into question.
“Joe Biden is the last president of his generation,” notes Jack Lew, referring to those who grew up with the founding myth of Israel as a righteous underdog to be protected by Washington. “You can’t ignore the impact of this war on future policymakers — not the people making the decisions today, but the people who are 25, 35, 45 today and who will be the leaders for the next 30 years, 40 years.”
But that is the long term. The immediate situation is extremely complex, with a number of potential pitfalls.
One of these questions surrounds the uncertainty of what the Trump White House wants in the Middle East. Is Trump’s main goal the expansion of the “Abraham Accords” and relations with oil-based Arab governments? Or will Jared Kushner, Trump’s son in law who sees Gaza as merely prime real estate, prevail? That question aside, the clear pressure that Trump brought to bear on cease-fire negotiations—and on Netanyahu in particular — shows that the incoming president does not want the catastrophe in Gaza to continue to grab headlines, at least during his inauguration.
Trump’s choices of appointees, however — from Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, who called Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in July “spiritual,” to the proposed next U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who once said “there really is no such thing as a Palestinian” — signal green lights from Trump for Israel to commit all kinds of horrors.
With a first term in office that gifted items on the Israeli far-right wish list—such as moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and declaring that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and its annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights are legal — we should not mistake Trump’s push for Phase One of a cease-fire as anything other than a tactical move in a vision for continuing U.S. and Israeli supremacy in the Middle East.
Israeli obstacles to a cease-fire
Another wild card is how the cease-fire deal plays out in Israeli politics.
As the cease-fire deal was announced, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir took credit for sabotaging negotiations again and again in the past and vowed to thwart the current agreement as well — while inviting Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to join him. This comes despite the overwhelming support across an otherwise divided Israeli society for any deal that secures the return of Israeli hostages. The resistance to a deal from the Israeli far-right is becoming untenable for Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, who face relentless pressure from hostages’ families demanding action to get them out of Gaza.
But the major sticking point on the Israeli side is that while Netanyahu may agree to a temporary cease-fire to get captives back, he claims the “right” to resume the bombardment of Gaza. Moreover, a very significant population of Israeli hardliners — who are well represented in the government—want to force Palestinians out of Gaza and re-introduce Jewish-only settlements there.
These same elements have blocked trucks delivering aid to Gaza and violently defended Israeli soldiers who faced possible consequences (however minimal) for torturing Palestinians. They would likely support continuing the genocide at full force once Israeli hostages are returned home.
That said, the ongoing Israeli bombing and seizure of territory in Syria and Lebanon (despite a cease-fire declared there), an intensification of Israeli aggression in the occupied West Bank, and a live conversation about carrying out airstrikes in Iran, may leave Netanyahu willing accept a situation in Gaza that falls far short of his stated goal there in the interest of a broader strategic offensive in the Middle East. His considerations may be informed by his meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago weeks ago—and what, if anything, Trump may have offered in exchange for Netanyahu agreeing to a cease-fire before the incoming president’s inauguration.
It is also worth remembering that Netanyahu’s own corruption trials are still underway. How that plays out and its impact on Netanyahu’s political career, his ability to stay out of jail, and Israeli politics overall are hard to predict — though it is worth noting that anger toward the prime minister and demands that he and other officials answer for their failures on October 7 are only growing.
Lastly, we should remember that weeks ago Israel agreed to a cease-fire in Lebanon that Israeli forces are violating constantly. Even if the Israeli government agrees to a Gaza cease-fire in word, it is a different matter for it to honor such an agreement in practice.
What “cease-fire” means today
If it is implemented, the cease-fire is only the beginning.
The movement demanding a cease-fire in the United States — the largest and broadest mobilization we have ever seen in support of Palestinians — managed to maintain the demand while simultaneously redefining what the call for cease-fire meant. “Cease-fire” today certainly means an end to bombing, tank-fire, airstrikes and all other attacks. But it also means massive, unlimited access to crucial humanitarian goods and the re-funding and re-recognition of UNRWA to distribute it. And finally, it requires an end to U.S. military transfers to Israel.
Without all three of those requirements, our work demanding a cease-fire is not done — even if the terms of the new agreement are actually implemented. We need to keep fighting — starting with implementing the agreement, and stopping, in these last days of the Biden administration, his last effort to send an additional $8 billion worth of weapons to Israel.
And then to keep up that fight when the new administration takes over.
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and serves as international adviser for Jewish Voice for Peace. She is the author of the new book Understanding Palestine & Israel, forthcoming from Interlink.
Khury Petersen-Smith is the Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), researching U.S. empire, borders and migration.
