Peace in Gaza has hit a snag. Actually it has hit three, but one is bigger than the others.
This is not surprising. No one but a total naiveté could have thought that total peace and harmony would have descended once Donald Trump had spoken.
There are decades of mistrust, hatred, violence and lies to overcome. In fact, more than a century if one goes back to the Balfour Declaration and the Jewish settlements of the 1920s.
But back to the present day when both sides have been accusing the other of bad faith and breaches of the ceasefire/peace agreement. Hamas has accused the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of continuing to fire on their fighters. They also complain that the promised aid has not arrived. The Israelis are angry that Hamas is slow in returning the bodies of dead hostages.
The IDF admits that since the ceasefire it has shot and killed Hamas fighters. Hamas claims that 24 have died. The Gaza Ministry of Health puts the death toll at four. The number, however, is less important than the fact that Palestinians who should be alive are dead.
Israel says that the Palestinians who died attacked Israeli soldiers and that they reserve the right to defend themselves. They probably did attack. How they attacked we do not know because journalists are now allowed inside Gaza. But we do know that the IDF has a reputation for shooting boys who throw stones. Hamas, however, has a reputation for ruthlessness and an inability to control its fighters.
Hamas’s other complaint is linked to a complaint from Israel—the supply of aid. There are three crossings from Israel into Gaza: Rafah, Erez and Kerem Shalom. All aid must go through these land crossings as Israel maintains a tight naval blockade. Two of the crossings are still closed by Israel. Therefore not enough aid is getting through and the Gazans are continuing to starve to death.
The Israeli government, however, is under pressure from the hostage families to withhold aid until all the bodies of the dead hostages are returned.
But the problem is that the Hamas leadership does not know where all the bodies are. Some are held by splinter groups who oppose the peace deal negotiated by Hamas. Many of them, however, are dead because they were killed by collapsing buildings and tunnels bombed by Israeli missiles and artillery shells. Hamas has asked for Turkish experts in earthquake rescue work to help in the recovery of bodies. But this will take time. In the meantime, Gazans continue to starve and Israeli hostage families grieve without the bodies of their loved ones.
The above are just some of the immediate problems facing the implementation of Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan. The long-term ones involving governance, security and the rebuilding of Gaza appear insurmountable.
One of the key element of the plan is the International Stabilisation Force (ISF) which will be responsible for building a police force without Hamas representation and providing overall security for Gaza until the Palestinians can assume full control. So far, Qatar, Indonesia, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, have offered help. But the establishment of ISF is still months away. Who acts as policemen in the interim? Is it Hamas who is supposed to be disbanding and disarming and at the moment is conducting public executions of opponents? It cannot be the IDF.
The UN estimates that it will take at least five years and cost $67 billion to rebuild Gaza. Eight-five to ninety percent of Gaza’s buildings have been reduced to rubble. Sixty million tons of debris has to be cleared. It cannot be done be quickly because the rubble contains unexploded bombs and human remains.
Clearing the debris is a recycling engineer’s dream. All 60 million tons will have to be sorted and separated. Plastic, steel, wood and household effects will need to be removed. When that is completed the remaining concrete can be ground up and re-used.
Once the ground has been cleared of debris, builders can start reconstructing infrastructure such as sewage pipes, water and electricity. More than 70 percent of Gaza’s essential infrastructure has been destroyed.
Moving the equipment and supplies needed for reconstruction is another major logistical headache. The land crossings from Israel are inadequate and, besides, the transitional government, will want to reduce dependence on the Jewish state. That means they need to build a deep water port so that supplies and equipment can be delivered by container ships.
The cost and organisational skills required, to say nothing of the goodwill requirement from Israel, is staggering. Next month, Egypt is expected to host a donor conference at which the world’s governments will pledge donations. Unfortunately, past such conferences in other parts of the world have been long on promises and short on delivery.
American diplomats are keen to stress that the peace plan is on track despite problems over hostage bodies, aid and occasional clashes. They are right to do so because it maintains momentum which—hopefully—will lead both sides, Palestinian and Israeli–to realise the benefits of peaceful coexistence.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Debt-ridden graduates claim they are seen as cash cows
Why non-fiction books need their indexes
Changes in status: Local Elections wrap up
AM
Ben Wood
Ed Sanderson
Jack
8 Comments
Tom: ‘There are decades of mistrust, hatred, violence and lies to overcome … back to the Balfour Declaration … Palestinian and Israeli to realise benefits of peaceful coexistence’. Correct
In November 1917 foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, stated that the British government “view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people without prejudice to the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish community”.
In August 1919 Balfour wrote “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land”.
In 2017 Bezalel Smotrich, who keeps Netanyahu’s coalition going and denies the existence of a Palestinian people, was elected to the Knesset. He advocates new settlements there which will destroy any chance of a Palestine state.
Palestine options:
Israeli Jews support Netanyahu’s negative approach to the Palestinians.
Smotrich: ‘There’s a business plan on President Trump’s table on how this thing turns into a real estate bonanza. We have done the demolition phase, now we need to build’.
July 2025 at UN High-Level Conference Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: ‘A Land for All addresses the emotional and deep connection felt by both Israelis and Palestinians to all the land, from the river to the sea… and achieves all of this in a way that ensures Israel can maintain a Jewish voting majority.’
Ref. the complaint from Israel that Hamas are ‘slow’ in returning hostage remains and that one of those returned wasn’t that of a dead hostage…
Considering that Hamas were unlikely to kill their only bargaining hopes, I’d suggest that almost all hostage deaths were due to Israeli airstrikes..I’d also suggest that a 500lb bomb wouldn’t differentiate between hostages and their a captors…
I’m amazed that any have been identified ..
Even if Israel did walk away completely (unlikely), there would still be the huge ‘snag’ of rival militias and Hamas who are already fighting (literally) for control.
Unless that ‘International Stabilisation Force’ is put in place fast AND is able to control all the internal factions, it will be the same post-war mess as Iraq.
@ Tom Arms points out the clear difficulty Hamas have to find the remaining 16 Israeli bodies, considering some held by other groups and buried under the destruction, and Israel’s aim to wipe out Hamas -with any civil administration that reported to the Gazan political authority.
But although not a core part of the ceasefire terms, there’s also the return of Palestinian dead, so far about 120 out of c.450 dead Gazans due to be released with the 2000 out of the 13400 Palestinians including 400 children held in Israeli detention camps.
Unlike the 12 Israeli dead so far returned, of these 120 dead Gazans, Gazan medical forensics in preparation to try to identify the remains note most as “bound like animals, blindfolded and bore horrific signs of torture and burns “ and that “They did not die naturally; they were executed after being restrained.” Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor noted that remains released from Israel “bore clear marks of hanging, rope imprints around their necks, injuries from close-range gunfire, bound hands and feet with plastic restraints, and blindfolds”.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/outcry-after-israel-returns-palestinian-bodies-horrific-condition-gaza
Or for those who may only accept Western state media:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-hamas-hostage-body-9.6938888
Is it good enough for most of our media to ignore the behaviour of the Israeli Forces to ‘detained’/kidnapped Gazans while focussing on the return of the dead Israelis, and how the Israelis don’t show to be better behaved than Hamas- if not actually worse? And what does this say about how UK should be dealing with Israel?
@Cassie- Don’t forget that Israel made sure that the some other groups were given weaponry to fight Hamas when the IDF withdrew last week.
Perhaps some of those groups are the same enemies of Hamas, like the clans, drug gangs and ISIS- franchise groups that Netanyahu smirked about getting the IDF to co-opt such groups a few months ago during the “Global Humanitarian Foundation” food distribution by the American ‘UG Solutions’ staffed by “Infidels Motorcycle club’.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2zy4l8jgeo
It would fit entirely with the pattern of past Israeli govt policy to encourage murderous rivalry – as is often noted with the rise of Hamas at the expense of Fatah and the PFLP.
Thanks to Tom for a great explainers and all the additional comments too
Thomas H-J, You make some valuable points. I do think, however, that the veil covering Israeli actions has been permanently lifted from many Western eyes by Netanyahu’s actions.
That didn’t take long…
As expected Isreal manufactured an excuse to spend a day conducting air strikes on Gaza and then have the audacity to say “it will return to the cease fire”, ie. Whilst we agreed to a ceasefire we did ‘t really mean it.
The veil has been well and truly lifted…