Gaza ceasefire at crucial crossroad
The first phase of the deal between Israel and Hamas for a ceasefire and exchange of captives is set to expire on Saturday, March 1, after what is supposed to be the final exchange on Thursday of the bodies of four Israeli captives for the freedom of several hundred Palestinians held by Israel. But, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu engaged in an active campaign to sabotage the internationally brokered deal that officially went into effect on January 19, the future of the deal is anything but certain.
Negotiations over the implementation of the second phase of the deal—which stipulates the Israelis must withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt at the end of Phase 1—were scheduled to begin no later than February 3, but Netanyahu refused to authorize Israeli negotiators to begin talks. Instead, Netanyahu traveled to Washington, D.C. where he was the first foreign leader to meet with newly re-elected President Donald Trump. At their joint press conference, Trump made his surprise announcement that he intended to seize Gaza as a U.S. territory and build it up as a “Middle East Riviera.” Since that visit, Netanyahu has escalated his threats to resume a full-scale war in Gaza while grudgingly continuing to participate in weekly exchanges of Israeli captives for Palestinians snatched or imprisoned by Israel.
That all changed on Saturday. After Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions released six Israeli captives—one of whom, Omer Shem-Tov, kissed two Qassam Brigades fighters on stage during the handover ceremony—Netanyahu subjected hundreds of Palestinian families awaiting the freedom of their loved ones to an agonizing game. After the Israeli captives were back in Israel, Netanyahu announced he was delaying the release of 620 Palestinians scheduled to be freed. Palestinians cleared for release had already boarded buses at a prison in the occupied West Bank.
Then, on Sunday, Israel announced that no more Palestinians would be released until Hamas agreed to end “ceremonies that demean our hostages’ dignity and the cynical use of our hostages for propaganda purposes.” Israel was also furious over a video released by Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, revealing that it had taken two other Israeli captives to the handover ceremony in Nuseirat on Saturday and filmed them from inside a van as they watched their countrymen released. On tape, the Israeli captives appealed to Netanyahu to comply with the terms of the ceasefire deal to ensure their release from Gaza.
Of the 620 slated to be freed this past Saturday, more than 400 are Palestinians from Gaza taken prisoner by Israel, including 23 children and one woman, along with 110 Palestinians serving life sentences or lengthy prison terms.
“By postponing the release of our Palestinian prisoners according to the Phase 1 ceasefire agreement, the enemy government is acting [rashly] and exposing the entire agreement to grave danger,” said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, in a statement. “They talk about the way in which the Israeli prisoners are handed over, which expresses our respect for them in a manner consistent with our values, but in return all our prisoners are subjected to severe torture and isolation before their release, their families were threatened if they even expressed any kind of joy for the release of their sons and daughters from prison.”
Hamas said on Sunday it would not resume indirect negotiations on the broader ceasefire deal with Israel until the Palestinian captives are freed, though it also said it is open to proposals from international mediators to resolve the impasse. If Israel does not release the Palestinians they were supposed to on Saturday, Hamas said, “All options are on the table,” including delaying Thursday’s scheduled return of the bodies of four Israelis taken to Gaza on October 7.
Netanyahu has also used the events that unfolded last week surrounding the return of the bodies of Israeli captive Shiri Bibas and her two small children to justify a potential end to the deal. Ariel and Kfir were 4 years and 9 months old when fighters from the Mujahideen Brigades—another Palestinian armed group—took them back to Gaza on October 7. It has been clear for over a year that Netanyahu and his supporters have been using the family as an emotional weapon to stoke Israeli anger. Since November 2023, Hamas has maintained that the three were killed in an Israeli airstrike, but Israeli officials and media consistently implied they could be alive.
After the bodies were returned, Israel claimed a combination of forensics and Israeli “intelligence” had determined the children were “murdered” in captivity. Netanyahu claimed, without evidence, that their captors had “strangled the tender children with their own hands.” No public evidence has been produced to support this allegation.
Then, compounding an already intense situation, it emerged after forensic examination that the casket purportedly housing the body of Shiri Bibas did not actually contain her remains. Netanyahu accused Hamas of an evil and cynical act of psychological terror and implied the group had deliberately given Israel the body of a “Gazan woman.” Hamas responded by saying it would investigate and soon announced that the return of the wrong body was a mistake due to the fact that Shiri Bibas’s remains had been kept with those of Palestinians killed in the same strike. Within 48 hours, her remains were located and handed over to the Red Cross.
“Some unfortunate mistakes may occur, especially since the Zionist bombing resulted in corpses of Israeli prisoners mixing with corpses of Palestinians, thousands of whom are still under the rubble,” said Naim. “We would like to remind the world that we received thousands of bodies from the Zionist enemy in blue bags without any identification on them and without any respect for their humanity, and we did not hear any condemnation of these crimes from international officials and the official western media did not care about Palestinian human rights.”
Trump’s point person on the Gaza negotiations offered a more nuanced picture of the current situation. “We will get to Phase 2. I’m very focused on that and I think it’s going to happen,” said billionaire businessman and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff on Sunday, adding that he was confident the negotiations and ceasefire would continue.
Since it was signed, Netanyahu has repeatedly told his cabinet that he viewed the three-phase deal as only one phase, aimed at freeing as many Israeli captives as possible while stymieing any efforts to force a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza or a reconstruction plan that includes Palestinians remaining in Gaza. On Sunday, Witkoff acknowledged, “We have to get an extension of Phase 1.”
According to the deal Israel signed with Hamas, Israeli forces are supposed to begin their full withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt at the end of phase one. For months, Netanyahu has stated that Israel has no intention of doing so, despite the agreement. Analysts in Israel believe Netanyahu will reject a full implementation of the terms of Phase 2 and keep the situation in limbo through a series of mini-deals aimed at freeing more Israeli captives and bodies. Thirty-three Israeli and international captives in total were supposed to be released in phase one of the deal. There are currently believed to be 61 Israelis held in Gaza and Phase 2 provides for the return of all of them in exchange for a permanent ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the freeing of thousands of Palestinians.
Under the deal signed by Israel, some 60,000 mobile homes and 200,000 tents were supposed to enter Gaza along with heavy equipment to clear rubble. Israel has almost entirely blocked these shipments since January 19 in a clear sign that Netanyahu does not want to allow Palestinians the capacity to make any significant improvement in their living conditions.
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