Key regional governments that the United States relies on to mediate and promote the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip issued a new warning on Saturday and called for progress in consolidating the plan before it collapses. Qatar, Turkey and Egypt, which signed as guarantors the truce agreement that last October ended the main hostilities between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militia in the enclave, have expressed fear that the cessation will not reach the second phase due to what they interpret as Israeli violations of the ceasefire.
Representatives of these three countries and other Arab and European states, including Spain, met this Saturday at a conference on ways to achieve peace in Gaza organized in Doha, the Qatari capital. The summit, which comes as the first phase of the fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is about to end, revealed the doubts that several governments involved in the plan have about moving on to the second half of the project, which is to include the consolidation of the cessation of hostilities, the disarmament of Palestinian militias and the deployment of an international security force.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al Thani assured during his presentation that the cessation comes at a “critical” moment, and warned that it is not even a truce: “It will only be when Israeli troops have completely withdrawn, that Gaza will have stability and Gazans will be able to enter and exit, which has not happened yet.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told Reuters from Doha that the members and mission of the international force (ISF) are still unknown. For his part, his Egyptian counterpart, Badr Abdelatty, insisted that the ISF would soon become a reality “because one of the two parties (in conflict), Israel, violates the truce on a daily basis.”
The words of these governments, which are part of the structure that supports the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, contradict the statements coming from Washington, where they insist on the solidity of the judgment. Representatives from the United States, where President Donald Trump considers peace in Gaza a personal matter, told the Israeli newspaper on condition of anonymity on Thursday. Israel Times that the transition to the second phase is imminent.
Nearly two months after the ceasefire took effect, Hamas is on the verge of ending its obligations under the first stage of the agreement. The militia freed the 20 living hostages it had left in its possession – it returned them all at once, on October 13 – and returned the remains of the dead captives as they found them. There were a total of 28 bodies. Now, after handing over a Thai citizen on Wednesday, Palestinian fighters only have to return the remains of an Israeli hostage. When they do, the requirements of the first tranche of the deal will have been met.
The return alive of the twenty hostages at the start of the truce, which Hamas presented as an act of good faith, did not prevent the cessation from continuing to weaken. Israel, which unlike Hamas has not declared an end to the war, has maintained daily hostilities in the Gaza Strip and launched multiple lightning offensives, justifying them as a response to violations committed by Palestinian militias. While continuing to restrict access to basic necessities in violation of the agreement, in a decision that collectively punishes two million people.
Israeli hostilities killed 367 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the truce, according to the Gaza Health Ministry on Saturday. Five of those people died Saturday, in two separate incidents that an Israeli military statement linked to its soldiers’ response to “terrorists” approaching the Yellow Line, which demarcates the half of the Gaza Strip controlled by Jewish troops under the current phase of the agreement.
A resolution that does not dispel doubts
The United Nations Security Council approved a resolution last month approving the second half of the US plan for Gaza. The plan envisions the formation of a technocratic administration composed of Palestinians that would be overseen by a Peace Council led by Trump. At the same time, the resolution grants an international mandate to the ISF to deploy in Gaza in order to strengthen the disarmament of Hamas and the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers.
The resolution, however, did not dispel the doubts of some countries that Trump trusts to implement the peace plan. The text does not detail how to proceed in the face of the Palestinian militias’ refusal to disarm if there is no credible path to the creation of a Palestinian state. Fidan, the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, doubted this Saturday about the temporal order in which the various objectives of the ceasefire should take place. “(Hamas’ disarmament) cannot come first,” he said, contravening the wishes of the United States and Israel.
Instead, Turks cited an end to Israeli bombing as a matter of heightened urgency. “The number of daily violations of the truce by Israel is indescribable,” he protested, calling for American intervention to contain its ally. “All indicators show that there is a huge risk that this will slow down the (peace) process.”
Abdelatty, the Egyptian foreign minister, and José Manuel Albares, his Spanish counterpart, also denounced the Israeli actions. “It is unacceptable that the ceasefire is definitively violated,” declared the socialist, present in Doha. “Every week, dozens of innocent Palestinians are killed and displaced. »
The Spanish minister spoke of the need to aim for a two-state solution – one Israeli, the other Palestinian – an element that Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Abdulrahman al Thani described as central. From his point of view, the second phase of the truce “is only temporary” on the path to a “lasting solution that brings justice to both peoples”. “If we only resolve the catastrophe that has occurred in Gaza over the past two years, it will be insufficient,” anticipated the Arab leader, key to the negotiations that led to the truce. “There is a root of the conflict,” he concluded, “and that root has to do with the right of Palestinians to have their own state.”