After the U.S.-brokered Gaza ceasefire went into effect on Oct. 10, 20 living Israeli hostages held by Hamas have been released, and Israel released some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, some held without charge or trial for months or years. But on Oct. 19 renewed fighting broke out with Israel and Hamas accusing each other of violating terms of the ceasefire. Israel says it launched multiple airstrikes after two IDF soldiers were killed by an anti-tank missile. Hamas claims that 97 Palestinians have been killed and over 230 injured as a result of 80 ceasefire violations committed by Israel.
As of Oct. 21, 13 of the 28 deceased Israeli hostages’ remains have been returned to Israel. While 15 hostages’ remains must still be returned, Hamas claims that locating hostage remains is difficult because they’re buried under tons of rubble. But Israel has reduced the daily number of humanitarian aid trucks it allows into Gaza to 300, from the 600 agreed to in the ceasefire, for what they say are delays in Hamas locating and releasing the bodies of deceased hostages.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke Phyllis Bennis, director of the Institute for Policy Studies’ New Internationalism Project. Here she shares her views on the dangerous omissions and flaws in the fragile Gaza ceasefire agreement, including the lack of specificity on a number of key issues such as a timeline for Israel’s Gaza withdrawal, when reconstruction can begin – and no details on enforcement mechanisms, or international guarantees.
PHYLLIS BENNIS: This was just a ceasefire. It was going to be impossibly fragile right from the beginning, and as we’ve seen, it’s always on the verge of collapsing. There was always a strong possibility that Israel would go back to its assault on Gaza once the living hostages were released. With all of that, there were no guarantees, for example, that despite the fact that Israel promised, it signed off that it would provide at a minimum 600 trucks a day of humanitarian aid—of medicine, of food, of water, of electrical equipment. All those things that are needed for survival for this population that has been suffering a famine for months now.
But there was no guarantee from outside, from the US in particular that if they didn’t do that, that there would be any consequences. So when Israel announced on Saturday that they now intended only to allow 300 trucks in, the U.S. didn’t do anything about it, it just allowed that to happen.
And when the Israelis said that Hamas was violating the ceasefire because it had produced, right, as required, all of the living hostages the 20—but had said, and it was understood in the signing ceremony, when the Israelis and Hamas signed off, they understood that they would not be able to provide all of the bodies and return them to Israel—that the 28 bodies of hostages who had died while they were being held—because they simply don’t have the equipment, the heavy duty machinery, bulldozers, the fuel for the bulldozers, all the things that are needed for digging them out from under the rubble. This is the same rubble under which somewhere between hundreds—which is the latest estimate, which nobody believes, and 10 to 15,000, which is probably already an underestimate, but maybe closer to the truth—of Palestinians who are buried under the rubble and have been for the two years of the genocide.
So they have no capacity to do that. But instead of accepting that, the Israeli position was, “Well, that’s a violation of the ceasefire and that’s our reason for cutting back the aid access.” So that they were agreeing that they were punishing the entire population of now probably less than 2 million people are left for actions, which were not the fault of anybody there and that they had agreed was going to be necessary.
So it was from the beginning a very fraught arrangement. It was classic Trump in a certain way, that he wanted to go through the motions. He wanted to have the big celebration. He wanted all the congratulations. He wanted a Nobel Prize. He got all that except for the prize. But the ceasefire’s weaknesses are showing now and whether it survives at all, we don’t know whether that’s going to be possible. Certainly without discontinuing the so-called Phase Two, which is all the governance issues, is not even on the agenda.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Phyllis, we only have a couple of minutes left. I just wanted to ask you this last question. In September, important European nations like the United Kingdom, France, as well as Canada recognized the Palestinian state for the first time. Was this just symbolic or is there any hope that that recognition can be of substantive help in brokering some longer term peace here?
It is important. It’s important for two reasons. One, it provoked a break between the close allies of the U.S. and the U.S. And that’s important on this issue because it was always fear of the U.S. position that has kept other countries from allowing any kind of solidarity to go forward.
The other reason it’s important is that the reason it was happening, starting in early last spring and then right through ’till September, is that the movements in all those countries, movements in support of Palestinian rights have been escalating, have been more powerful than ever, have been more influential than ever, and it’s because of those movements and the fear of those movements in those countries that are under enormous pressure from their own populations: “You’ve got to do something We cannot sit by and just accept this genocide that’s underway.” The pressure was growing and growing and growing, and to their discredit, what they decided to do was something that would be the least problematic relative to the U.S.
They wouldn’t pay a bigger price than they would, for example, as what some countries have done. The South Africans, of course, taking the lead, going to the International Court of Justice to hold Israel accountable. Colombia cutting off its source of coal to Israel, which Israel depended on for production of some of its weapons. Those kinds of actions, of course, are much more important. But not all these countries were prepared to do it. The question is, will they now, now that they’ve made one step, will they go further and move to begin real sanctions against Apartheid Israel, the way they in the past imposed sanctions against Apartheid South Africa? Will they impose an arms embargo?
And all of that is going to depend on our movements, just like it did in the 1980s around South Africa. Going to capitals and demanding that they change and eventually enough of them will do so that the U.S. will be too isolated not to follow suit. The question is, “How many people in Gaza will have to die before that happens?”
For more information, visit The New Internationalism Project at ips-dc.org/project/new-internationalism.
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