After 15 months of brutal war and on the eve of Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, a long-awaited ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas got underway in Gaza on Jan. 19. Three Israeli hostages held by Hamas and 90 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel were released, part of the first phase of a fragile three-phase ceasefire agreement. Over the next six weeks, 33 more hostages are expected to be released, as are hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
As Israeli forces pull back into a buffer zone inside Gaza, displaced Palestinians can return to their homes and substantial humanitarian food and medical aid can be distributed to the territory’s 2.3 million residents afflicted by disease and famine. The Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped 240 hostages, triggered massive Israeli airstrikes and a ground assault that has now killed over 46,000 Palestinians, mostly civilian women and children.
Negotiations over the ceasefire’s second phase, set to begin in two weeks, would see all remaining hostages released and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Gaza. The goal of the third and final phase commits Hamas to return the bodies of deceased hostages and reconstruction of Gaza to begin under UN, Egyptian and Qatar supervision. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Jennifer Loewenstein, former associate director of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who assesses the ceasefire deal and its lack of clarity on the future governance of Gaza and the status of the Palestinian people.
JENNIFER LOWENSTEIN: The first phase, which should last 42 days or six weeks, involves every day, hostages from Gaza being released along with Palestinian prisoners. I believe that it’s 30 to 1. For each one person, 30 prisoners will be released.
I think the real problem comes with Phases 2 and 3, and Phase 2 you have a situation where the final wording of the document hasn’t even been decided upon and you’ve got the issues of the Netzarim Corridor, which cuts Gaza in half.
And that the Israelis in the last 15 months have gone in and they’ve got a road there, they’ve got military installations going up. By all accounts, there are buildings being built along this Netzarim Corridor. I think there’s no question that North Gaza was intended to be cleansed and resettled. At least by a big fraction, Israelis were expecting this.
The ceasefire Phase 2 gets rid of pretty much all of that. But the Netzarim Corridor and the Philadelphi corridor, that area of land between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, Israel does not want to relinquish those two areas. And I think that’s going to be a real sticking point in Phase 2, whether or not they do this.
In the meantime, they’ve got a buffer zone surrounding Gaza, but within Gaza. So in other words, they’re basically annexing 700 meters of land throughout its land border.
The other thing that’s really interesting is that for the last three months, we’ve watched a siege in place, you know, a near-starvation siege and the destruction of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, the arrest and detention of hospital staff, workers, killings, etc.
But now, in Phase 2 — I think actually Phase 1 of this ceasefire — Gazans are being allowed to go back to the north. And that is something that I’m sure that’s one of the reasons why the Israeli Minister (Itamar) Ben-Gvir, who’s so far to the right, resigned from the government because he don’t want to see Gazans going back.
It might be useful to remember that prior to this ceasefire, Netanyahu was basically saying either one, nobody can return north who’s been involved in any kind of “terror activity.”
And there was also just this, “We’re going to cleanse the North entirely.” It was never stated officially, but if you look at the general’s plan, which was what was in effect by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) for the past three months, that’s where it was leading — to the complete ethnic cleansing of North Gaza.
The ceasefire goes against that, allowing people to resettle in the north. Where are they going to resettle? They’re not going to find homes there. It’s utterly destroyed. But that’s part of Phase 2.
And as I said, it hasn’t been a completely agreed upon. Netanyahu has made it clear to both Biden and Trump he had the option of resuming the war if the second phase of the ceasefire doesn’t go according to the way it should go.
And that leaves a lot open to interpretation.
SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Jennifer, in terms of the reconstruction of Gaza, where 70 percent of the structures or more have been destroyed, utterly flattened, as you just said, where people will live, what civil governance will be implemented in Gaza is a big question mark. Who would govern this reconstruction and address the horrible disease and starvation that has a horrible hold on people of Gaza?
JENNIFER LOWENSTEIN: Yeah, I mean, these are all questions. These are all good questions. So, for example, 630 trucks were able to enter Gaza today, of humanitarian aid. And that’s vital. But we have to remember that before Oct. 7th ever happened, it was between 600 and 800 trucks per day that were going into Gaza and that was during a siege.
The other thing, as you said, in terms of governance, Israel doesn’t want the PA (Palestinian Authority) to govern. It doesn’t want Hamas to govern. It apparently wants a local force of some kind drawn from Gaza to rule.
But if we look at Israel’s history, the only kind of governance that they would allow would be a group of people completely beholden to the Israelis. And I don’t see that happening.
The fact is, the Palestinians of Gaza are the people who should decide what their future is. But you have Israel blocking it every step of the way and we’re still going to see that.
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