Ceasefire in Gaza: how we got here… and where we go next

But with that comes the burden of hope. Those burdens are shared by Israelis, Palestinians and the international community. They include the practical: will Israel allow in all the promised aid? Who will enforce the ceasefire? How will Gaza be run? But they also include the existential: what becomes of Israel? Will there ever be a Palestinian state? And will there, one day, be a reckoning?

This is the third ceasefire since 7 October. The last one, which lasted two months, broke down in March this year after the agreed number of hostages had been released and before it moved to the more intractable parts of the deal. Netanyahu pulled the plug, then imposed a siege on Gaza that the UN said led to famine in Gaza City and beyond.

“The road to genocide was paved with ceasefires signed and not implemented,” said Muhammed Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

There are numerous potential tripwires this time around. An early version of the Trump peace plan spoke only of decommissioning Hamas’s offensive weaponry. The version signed last week states that “all military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt.” There is no agreement on how this will be judged, potentially allowing Israel to claim that Hamas has broken the terms of the deal.

Aid is another issue that is less straightforward than the plan suggests. 170,000 metric tons that was already in Jordan and Egypt is ready to cross the border from today. Under the terms of the deal, 600 aid trucks should enter Gaza every day.

But given that 500 trucks were necessary before the war — and that was when Gaza had a functioning economy and agricultural sector — there are understandable fears this will not be enough. The need for a population suffering from famine, where almost all medical care and basic infrastructure has been destroyed, is also far, far greater.

Nor is there much hope that the figure will be reached. “There is a long record of Israel putting on all sorts of restrictions,” said Amjad Iraqi, a senior analyst at Crisis Group. “At any given time, Israel can tighten the noose or stall the trucks.”

Donald Trump has claimed that Gaza will be run by a “Board of Peace”, that he will chair and will also include former UK prime minister Tony Blair. That has not gone down well with Palestinians. “They are creating an intermediary to manage Israel’s occupation,” said Iraqi. “it’s a neocolonial construct.”

There are further challenges in trying to work out which Palestinians will be involved. Hamas has agreed they will have no formal role, but they will remain a power broker if only because they still retain an infrastructure in Gaza. The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, though supported to an extent by the international community, has no presence and little support inside Gaza.

“My concern isn’t that Hamas is going to try to hold on to power,” said Khaled Elgindy, visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, “it’s that [Palestinian president] Mahmoud Abbas and his leadership will try to insinuate itself in Gaza and monopolise the conversation.”

“If ever there was a moment for competing Palestinian factions and civil society to come together, this is it,” said Elgindy. “Only Palestinians will have their interests at heart.”

Since 7 October, Benjamin Netanyahu has been fighting for his political survival, making decisions not on whether they help achieve Israel’s war aims, but whether they increase his chances of maintaining his coalition and staying in power.

Elections are due to be held within the next 12 months but they could take place sooner. “The election campaign starts the moment the hostages are back,” said Yossi Mekelberg from Chatham House. Netanyahu will face a challenge from the far-right members of his coalition, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who will accuse him of selling out (both voted against the ceasefire). He will also have to contend with a new party formed of ex-reservists angry about how the war was conducted.

The election campaign will be “ugly, very ugly,” said Mekelberg. It is also likely to be devoid of new ideas – no mainstream party will call for a two-state solution, and no party will be prepared to say they will go into coalition with any party representing Israeli Palestinians.

Were elections to take place today, Netanyahu would probably lose power (as indeed might Smotrich and Ben-Gvir) – a Maariv poll last week suggested he would win 27 of the 120 seats in the Knesset.

His hope will be that the return of the hostages boosts his popularity. But he will also fear that attention in Israel will finally turn towards the long-promised inquiry into the state’s failure to prevent the Hamas attack on 7 October – an inquiry that would place Netanyahu himself in the dock as much as the military and security services.

Both the director of the Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, and the military chief have already fallen on their swords.

In his resignation letter earlier this year, Lt Gen Herzi Halvei said the IDF had “failed in its mission to protect the citizens of Israel … My responsibility for the terrible failure accompanies me every day, every hour, and will be so for the rest of my life.”

One of the driving forces behind the ceasefire deal was united Arab anger about the Israeli strike on the Hamas negotiating team in the Qatari capital, Doha. “Gulf leaders all felt they had gone too far,” said Iraqi. At a meeting on the fringes of the UN they made their views known to Trump, who forced Netanyahu to call the emir of Qatar to apologise.

But that was the easy part. “The Arab states all have divisions when it comes to what to do next for Gaza and their relationships with Israel.”

More than anything they want stability, but challenges lie ahead. They will probably fund some reconstruction, but the process will be long and drawn-out. “Reconstruction is a big business opportunity,” said Iraqi. “They’re envisioning a Gaza riviera on a Gulf model, but out of Palestinian control. It raises more concerns than hope.”

Some experts “say it will take 15 years to clear the rubble,” said Elgindy. “Where do people live in the meantime?”

Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are all set to take part in an international stabilisation force that will also include 200 US personnel. What their role will be and whether they even enter Gaza itself is still unclear.

“It’s very dicey for them,” said Elgindy. “They won’t want to be seen as an occupying power – or worse, as doing the old occupying power’s dirty work.”

After Trump first proposed his “Gaza Riviera” plan, which envisaged the ethnic cleansing of the territory, the Arab states proposed an alternative “day after” plan. “Where’s that plan now?” asked Elgindy. “They have an official plan - have they abandoned it?”

Normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which the Israelis had long hoped would change the course of the region, is off the table. “Riyadh isn't interested in normalisation with Israel,” said Dr H A Hellyer, senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. “Iran doesn't pose remotely the same kind of threat now as when the Saudis assessed when they were moving towards normalisation. Moreover, the Saudis are getting much of what they want from the US without having to normalise. And finally, normalisation with such an extremist Israeli government is definitely more of a liability than an asset.”

For the far right in Israel, this is the prize. The goal of a Greater Israel, of reuniting what they describe as Judea and Samaria with the current state of Israel, has long been an ambition of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. Smotrich announced in August 3,000 new settlements that would cut off the West Bank from East Jerusalem, something he said would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.

“Annexation is happening,” said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator who now leads the US/Middle East Project. “It’s moved further and faster than at any time in recent history.”

Any mention of the West Bank is absent from the Trump plan. “It’s absent by design,” said Elgindy. “It’s the epicentre of the Greater Israel project. The trade-off for Netanyahu to his coalition partners is ‘we had to let go of Gaza, we’re not going to expel the population and resettle it as you wanted - but we’re going to take the West Bank’.”

Iraqi agrees. “We will see military violence, settler violence, and the Gazafication of the West Bank. Smotrich is promoting the idea of annexing 82% of the territory and there is very little to stop him.”

If he tries this, he is likely to have the support of the Trump administration whose Israel envoy, Mike Huckabee, is an unashamed cheerleader for Greater Israel.

One of the surprising aspects of the past few days has been the absence of any real political opposition inside Israel to the deal. While Smotrich and Ben-Gvir voted against it in cabinet, they didn’t resign. “It makes one worried about what Netanyahu’s told them,” said Levy.

The two-state solution is the only option that has international support, but crucially two countries are opposed: the US and Israel.

“Israel long ago abandoned the idea of a Palestinian state,” said Iraqi. “Even centre-left parties are claiming the time is not ripe.”

If a two-state solution is dead, and a single secular state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians was never a viable option, what’s left? “The status quo will continue indefinitely,” said Elgindy. “Total Israeli control from the river to the sea, pursuing a Greater Israel project that envisages fewer and fewer Palestinians living in the area. Those that remain will be ghettoised and concentrated in areas they can control.

“If it’s just apartheid, then we’re looking at a permanent state of inequality. But the Greater Israel project is not just territorial, it’s demographic. It’s increasing the Jewish presence in the land and reducing the Palestinian presence.”

There is no guarantee international media will be allowed in – Israel did not lift the ban during the last ceasefire. But if the ceasefire holds, pressure may become too strong for them to resist. If that happens, said Levy, “there will be several weeks of ‘oh my God, what did they do?’”

Yet it’s not in the rest of the world where this could make a big difference – after all, western media organisations have been working with Palestinian journalists to get stories out throughout the duration of the war. Where it could have an impact is inside Israel, whose media has long tried to ignore or excuse the horrors of Gaza. They may find that impossible once journalists are allowed in. “I wonder if that will permeate Israeli society,” said Levy. “I don’t want to rule that out.”

The International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Netanyahu remains outstanding, theoretically preventing him from travelling to any state that has signed the Rome Statute. Accused of “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”, Netanyahu knows that if he loses power there is always the possibility that he one day ends up in the dock at The Hague.

Three Hamas leaders were originally also charged with war crimes for their actions on 7 October, but all three - Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh – have been killed by Israel.

The genocide case is still to be decided by the International Court of Justice and legal experts do not expect a swift decision. But regardless of the ICJ, other respected bodies have made their judgment. Numerous genocide scholars, international and Israeli human rights groups have concluded that Israel has committed genocide, while a UN commission of inquiry last month came to the same conclusion. Its chair, Navi Pillay, said: “The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza. It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”

Photography by Abed Rahim Khatib/Getty