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ARA · 2025-10-19
The article argues that the Gaza ceasefire is fragile and lacks a shared political horizon or guarantees to sustain it, despite being presented as a diplomatic success. It reviews several threats hanging over the deal, including continued killings after the truce began, disputes over the return of bodies, the continued presence of Israeli troops in large parts of Gaza, restrictions on humanitarian aid, and the absence of an agreed plan for the day after the war.
The article argues that the Gaza ceasefire is fragile and lacks a shared political horizon or guarantees to sustain it, despite being presented as a diplomatic success. It reviews several threats hanging over the deal, including continued killings after the truce began, disputes over the return of…
## The agreement has no shared political horizon or guarantees to sustain it
Special correspondent in JerusalemDonald Trump is a master at producing headlines even when they do not fit the truth. This week he proclaimed that the Middle East has entered a new golden era of peace thanks to his mediation for a ceasefire in Gaza. But the reality is very far from that. After two years of devastation, the only thing there is is a fragile truce: Trump has persuaded Netanyahu to stop the bombings and Hamas to hand over the hostages. Trump has turned the diplomatic machinery upside down. Normally, agreements are forged through hours and hours of meetings among advisers to discuss the details behind closed doors until finding a basis for understanding, which is then ultimately certified with the signature of the political leaders. But in this case everything has gone in reverse: the leaders initialed an agreement in a ceremony in the Egyptian city of Sharm al-Sheikh that only staged international support for the American initiative. A ceremony in which the protagonists were not present: neither Hamas nor Netanyahu, and both have made it clear that there is no common political basis for moving forward.
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As the Palestinian analyst Omar Shaban, founder of the Pal-Think for Strategic Studies center in Gaza, recalls, the current situation “is not a political solution, but a pause imposed by exhaustion and international pressure.” A European representative involved in the negotiations told Reuters that “it is a truce of survival, not of reconciliation.” Below, we review the threats hanging over the ceasefire.
## Will peace reach Gaza?
The warlike disposition has still not been broken, despite the halt in the bombings: according to the official count, Israel has killed 34 Palestinians in Gaza since the beginning of the ceasefire — among them seven minors, two women and two men from the same family — and has left 122 injured. Israel accuses Hamas of violating the agreement by maintaining armed positions and active tunnels, while the Islamist movement denounces that Israel is carrying out selective military operations. Israeli military sources, cited by the newspaper Haaretz, admit that the truce “does not imply the end of operations,” but rather a “strategic reorganization to prepare the next scenario.” Trump has proclaimed the end of the war, but Netanyahu has not.
## Will the exchange stall over the bodies?
Hamas has returned the 20 living hostages it had held since October 7, 2023, but it has handed over only the bodies of 10 of the 28 hostages who died that day or during captivity in Gaza. The Islamists had already said they were not in a position to do so and it had been agreed that international forensic teams would go to the Strip to help locate them, but Israel has nevertheless regarded this as a violation of the ceasefire. “If Hamas fails to return all the bodies, or if Israeli society perceives that it is not doing everything possible to return them, the already fragile trust between the parties will be further undermined and implementation of the next stages of the agreement will become more complicated,” warns Danny Citrinowicz, a former member of Israeli military intelligence.
Israel has not complied with its part either regarding the return of the bodies of Palestinians who died in captivity in its prisons. It has returned 135 corpses, many of them with marks of torture or signs of having been executed alive. Many of them were not identified despite having been held for months or years in prisons. Moreover, the prisoners most popular among Palestinians and who could play a political role, such as Marwan Barghouti, have not been released.
## Will Israel withdraw its troops from Gaza?
Israeli troops have withdrawn to the yellow line defined by Trump’s plan and still occupy 53% of the territory of the Gaza Strip, which is no larger than El Maresme. The plan gives Israel room to maintain a military presence in Gaza to ensure that Hamas cannot reconstitute itself. Israeli security sources insist that it is necessary to maintain control of strategic areas, such as the Philadelphi Corridor, on the border with Egypt.
As Daniel E. Mouton, a researcher at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, recalls, the far-right partners in Netanyahu’s government oppose any withdrawal. In their view, the agreement represents only “a reduction of fire, not a total ceasefire.” Official Israeli sources admit that the troops “will continue inside Gaza” and that the most realistic projection is a partial and tactical redeployment, while maintaining control of the corridors and border areas.
## Will enough humanitarian aid enter Gaza?
Gaza’s population is experiencing a devastating humanitarian crisis, with a famine caused by the Israeli siege, the health system destroyed, successive forced displacements, and basic infrastructure such as water purification plants and the electricity grid razed by the bombings. And all of this on the eve of the third winter since the beginning of the war. The latest ceasefire agreement allowed the entry of food, but not shelter materials. Thousands of wounded people must be evacuated to be treated in other countries, and heavy machinery is needed to reopen the roads and remove the rubble. Israel controls how many trucks can enter the Strip and by which routes, especially the corridor that goes from Rafah to the Kerem Shalom crossing. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced this Saturday that the Rafah border crossing will remain closed until Hamas fulfills its part of the agreement to return the bodies of the dead Israeli hostages.
The Palestinian militia signed the agreement under heavy pressure from its regional allies (Turkey and Qatar) and has already expressed its opposition to disarming, arguing that it will hand over its weapons only to a future Palestinian state. The plan envisages the deployment of an unspecified international armed force to guarantee security (the big question is which country is willing to send soldiers to Gaza), and it also remains unclear in whose hands the government of the Strip will be left: the Islamists have accepted a technocratic Palestinian government, while Trump is betting on a colonial government led by himself and former British prime minister Tony Blair with the prospect of a future Palestinian state, which Netanyahu is in no way willing to accept: in fact, he prides himself on being the Israeli leader who has made it impossible.
Neither Israel, nor Hamas, nor the Palestinian Authority has a plan for the day after the war. Israel demands the complete destruction of Hamas before negotiating a permanent truce. Hamas demands the total withdrawal of the troops and recognition of the Palestinian right to self-determination. The Palestinian Authority, weakened and delegitimized, is watching from a distance.
As former Palestinian negotiator Hanan Ashrawi has warned, “Israel wants a truce without political consequences, while Hamas wants political recognition without concessions. This contradiction makes progress impossible.”
Text © ARA — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source