The ceasefires that Israel maintains in Gaza and Lebanon are facing tests of resistance these days, with a trickle of deaths in the Strip (eight in its five days in force, the last two this Thursday), Hamas’ attempts to establish its authority and a widespread Israeli raid in the city of Jenin, in the West Bank, which has caused 13 deaths and risks returning the center of tension from Gaza to that occupied territory.
In Gaza, this Thursday, rescue services announced the death of two minors from an Israeli tank shot in the west of the city of Rafah. Their bodies have already been buried. The Israeli army has not commented on the matter.
The truce holds, despite the daily number of deaths of Gazans, between one and three every day. A video captured shortly after it began how the troops opened fire on a teenager and, later, on a man who was trying to rescue the body. The soldiers “acted against threats,” the Israeli army stressed in a statement.
Rescue services are focusing this week on searching for bodies under the rubble that they could not recover during the 13 months of bombing since the previous ceasefire, shortly after the invasion began, in November 2023. The Government’s Ministry of Health of Hamas has announced the discovery of 120 more bodies, which brings the global death toll in 15 months of war to 47,283 (mostly women and minors), despite the end—whether partial or definitive—of the bombings. The number of bodies under the rubble is estimated to be in the thousands.
The ceasefire has also banished looting of humanitarian aid trucks, with 3,200 entering in the first four days.
Israel had been using hunger as a weapon of war, as it appears among the alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity for which the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, requested last May the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister during much of the invasion, Yoav Gallant. In recent months—as the already weak US pressure eased and attention turned to the Israeli offensive in Lebanon and the fall of Bashar El Assad’s regime in Syria—the Israeli Armed Forces allowed, by action or inaction, the almost systematic looting of trucks by criminal gangs that operated in their controlled areas. Their objective: to gain favors for the day after the war and, above all, to ensure that the Hamas civil police did not protect the convoys. He was killing the agents when they showed themselves in public and they ended up staying hidden.
This Thursday, in addition, and for the first time, Hamas Executive police and members of these gangs engaged in a shootout in the Rafah area, captured on video. This is new proof of the Islamist movement’s will to reaffirm its authority over Gaza, reflected in the open presence of militiamen and police and in the process of handing over hostages. Hamas won the last Palestinian elections in 2006, but the international community did not recognize the new government. A year later, he forcibly took control of the Strip after defeating the other major Palestinian faction, Al Fatah.
Challenges
This weekend, the ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon will experience two important challenges. In the first, on Saturday, when Hamas hands over four female hostages and Israel releases 120 Palestinian prisoners on the second day of the exchange. The hundreds of thousands of displaced people will then be able to move between north and south on foot along one of the roads, without inspection of weapons, the Islamist movement has indicated in a message to the population.
On Sunday, the 60 days marked by another ceasefire, the one signed by Israel and Lebanon (actually the conflict was with Hezbollah), will expire. It is the deadline for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the southern area that they invaded and the parallel deployment of the country’s Armed Forces, to prevent the rearmament of the Lebanese militia. As the handover has not been completed and the Netanyahu Government suggests that it will miss the deadline, Hezbollah has issued a warning, despite its weakness: “We will not accept any violation of the agreement and its guarantees, nor any attempt to breach them with excuses” , he noted, asking the Lebanese authorities to put pressure on the architects of the agreement: the United States and France. The Israeli army has continued to occasionally bomb Lebanon, with more than 600 violations of the ceasefire and 37 deaths since its beginning at the end of November.
According to the agreement, the tripartite Mechanism with the United Nations blue helmets (and the addition of Washington and Paris) “will coordinate the execution by the armies of Israel and Lebanon of the detailed and specific plan for the phased withdrawal and deployment in those areas , which should not exceed 60 days.” Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, has argued that the deadline “is not written in stone and was formulated with some flexibility,” which is why his country has asked its main ally, the United States, now with Donald Trump at front, “extra time for the Lebanese Army to truly deploy.” Thirty more days and remain in five positions, according to national media.
