On paper, the war in Gaza is ending. On the ground, it is not. Israeli airstrikes killed at least eighteen people in Gaza over the weekend, and the man who would know said plainly that there is no deal in place to stop the attacks. That gap, between the announcement and the ground, is the whole story of the moment.
The announcement was made by President Trump at the end of July: the agreement he announced as historic, reached through his Board of Peace, for the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza, followed by an Israeli withdrawal. Hamas confirmed it would disarm as part of a deal that requires Israel to end its strikes and pull out. The Israeli government has not formally acknowledged the agreement at all. It has said nothing about its details, its timing, or its existence.
The minister’s answer
On Sunday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, told reporters the government would give Hamas the opportunity to disarm, but that there was no deal to halt the attacks. The military offensive continues, he said, despite the Trump-backed plan. An Israeli official put the same point in different words to the BBC: troops will not pull back without genuine disarmament. The 14 days set aside to finalize the disarmament timeline are running, and the bombs are still falling inside them.
The weekend’s strikes are not the first sign that the agreement is not yet real. The day the deal was announced, Israeli forces kept operating. The military said it killed a Hamas commander in the Maghazi Battalion in a separate strike on Friday. Palestinian reports put the weekend death toll at eighteen, and there is no mechanism in the announced plan, as far as anyone can see, that stops any of this before the disarmament timeline is signed. The Board of Peace’s high representative, Nickolay Mladenov, says withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning. Lockstep, in practice, means nothing moves until everything is agreed.
Two sides playing for time
The striking thing is that both sides are behaving as if they expect the other to blink first. The disarmament is supposed to happen over a period of 200 to 350 days, a timeline that stretches deep into next year. Meanwhile, according to a Palestinian source quoted by Israeli public broadcaster Kan, Hamas has started distributing rifles to its operatives in Gaza, calling them personal weapons, to keep them out of any handover. Hamas will not disarm, the source said, full stop. Hamas says it will disarm; Hamas is handing out rifles. Both statements are true, and they are true at the same time.
The most instructive episode of the weekend involved a Palestinian politician, Mohammad Dahlan, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and the architect of the Gaza diplomacy. Dahlan said Saturday night that Kushner had assured him Israel had agreed to halt the attacks starting Sunday morning. The strikes came anyway. Dahlan then walked his claim back, saying Kushner had told him he was working with the Israeli side to halt the attacks. The sequence is a small, perfect model of the whole situation: an American assurance, an Israeli action that contradicts it, and a hasty correction. Nobody at the Israeli end confirmed any of it.
A ceasefire that has not started
The fair reading, the one that keeps the skeptic’s case alive, is that the framework is real and both sides signed up to it. Hamas confirmed its commitment to disarm in principle. The Americans say the mechanics are being worked out. Phased deals have worked before, and the alternative to this process, more war, is worse for everyone, including the people of Gaza and the Israeli soldiers who will have to keep fighting. It is possible that in a month this weekend’s strikes will look like the last spasm of a dying war.
But a ceasefire that requires weeks of negotiation to begin is not yet a ceasefire. The deal exists where it was announced, in Washington. In Gaza, it exists as a rumor that has not changed the sound of the sky. Trump said Israel was very happy with the agreement; Israel has not said so. The minister who speaks for Israel’s security cabinet says there is no deal to stop the attacks. The eighteen people killed over the weekend are the price of the distance between the announcement and the ground, and nothing in the announced plan says that distance is closing.
Source
- South China Morning Post (Reuters): Strikes kill 18 in Gaza as Israeli minister says no deal to halt attacks
- Reuters: Israeli strikes kill 18 in Gaza, minister says no deal to stop them
- AP News: Hamas says it will disarm but obstacles remain
- All Israel News: Israeli strikes in Gaza continue, despite announcement of Hamas disarmament