Negotiations for a ceasefire continued behind the scenes, mediated by Egypt, even as TV screens worldwide were flooded with the latest round of images of Palestinian casualties and Israeli firepower. To talk about the future of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, a fundamental fact must be first acknowledged. Israel’s political and military leadership are primarily concerned with collective punitive action against the population of Gaza. It is a common theme in Israeli popular discourse, especially in areas closer to Gaza, and it runs like this: those who elected Hamas must be punished for its unwillingness to come to terms with Israel, for failing to follow the lead of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. This theme of collective punishment in Gaza has been repeated time and again by public figures in Israel’s leadership, sometimes with shocking explicitness.

The context for ceasefire negotiations is further complicated by the fact that both Egypt and Israel, for their own reasons, would rather have Hamas in place than have the Gaza strip dissolve into complete lawlessness. It is conceivable, in theory, that Israel could “destroy” Hamas completely. For one, this would require the use of much indiscriminate force against Gaza’s civilian population which has never been one of the top concerns for the Israeli leadership. However, the consequences of destroying Hamas authority in the Gaza would be highly unpalatable for both Israel and Egypt. The survival of the Hamas administration in some form is an ideological imperative for Egypt’s government, drawn from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood like Hamas itself.

Moreover, the Egyptian military is already engaged in operations
against the ultra-militant jihadist groups operating in the Sinai desert. Israel itself, despite having no love lost for Hamas, would rather have to deal with the Islamic-oriented national liberation agenda of Hamas than the indiscriminate and unpredictable attacks which international jihadist groups are capable of.

As of Thursday afternoon, November 22, 2012, a ceasefire agreement has been in effect for 24 hours already. The major stumbling block in negotiations was over the scope and nature of the ceasefire itself. The Netanyahu government insisted that Hamas provide some form of guarantee of good intentions. For the Israeli leadership, this means that the ceasefire must hold for at least 90 days before a more permanent ceasefire is reached. Considering that Israel operates a tight siege of Gaza and essentially chose to initiate this particular round of violence by assassinating Hamas military chief Ahmed al-Jabari, it is quite absurd of Netanyahu’s government to make such conditions. The ghastly irony of this is not lost on Hamas.

Another major point of contention is Israel’s demand that Hamas cease not only the rocket-fire from its own armed wing, the Ezz-el-din al-Qassam Brigades, but also from the other armed organisations in Gaza.
It must be noted that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and other organisations in Gaza maintain their own political leadership and armed wings and are quite capable of launching attacks on the Israeli occupation forces by themselves. Even if Hamas were to somehow fully agree to the need for curbing their activities, it would find it difficult to actually stop them.
Israel also demands that weapons no longer be smuggled into the Gaza strip through tunnels connecting it to Egypt. This is a frivolous demand as long as the Israeli blockade of Gaza continues. The tunnels serve as Gaza’s economic artery, and contributed (along with investment from Arab states) to something of a boom in Gaza’s economy until this current round of escalated violence. There is no reason to suppose that these tunnels will be closed any time soon, or that the goods being trafficked through them will exclude military material.

In short, it should be clear to any observer that the ceasefire cannot last in the short-term and might well be ripped to shreds tomorrow by a fresh round of bombardment from Israel.

This brings us to the larger question of what this current round

of violence against the people of Gaza means for the larger cause of the Palestinian national liberation and the Israeli occupation. An increasing number of informed analysts of the conflict have been pointing out that the two-state solution (an independent Palestine within the 1967 borders alongside Israel) is essentially dead. The Oslo Accords, which led to the mirage of a two-state solution, are now relevant only in highlighting the political impotence of the Fateh-led Palestinian Authority administration in the West Bank. The PA administration is known to be corrupt, repressive and thoroughly dependent on Israeli and Western goodwill.

Hamas itself cannot offer a way out under the current circumstances. It adheres to its policy of refusal to surrender before Israeli diktat, it holds on with grim determination in Gaza and it continues to talk of resistance. In military terms, the rockets launched by Hamas and others from Gaza are of the same significance as the stones thrown by Palestinian children at Israeli occupation tanks: that is, symbolic.

Increasingly, there is talk of a one-state solution. At the risk of doing injustice to this proposed solution by summarising it so much, it essentially involves a struggle to get Israel to lift its occupation of all Arab land, allow refugee Palestinian Arabs the right of return to their homeland and set up the framework for a democratic polity which treats Jew and Arab as fully equal citizens.

More and more global leaders and public intellectuals have begun describing the Palestine conflict in terms of a struggle against apartheid, as represented by the Zionist Israeli state. Representatives of Palestinian armed groups (including those from Islamist-oriented factions) are now on record having taken a positive view of such a solution. What is unclear, however, is whether the Palestinian national movement can set up the institutional and intellectual framework for such a solution. And, perhaps, even more importantly, it remains to be seen what will convince Israel’s political leadership and general public to countenance a solution which has so far been anathema to them.

Until then, it is painfully easy to foresee many more rounds of terror against the Palestinian people, especially in crucified Gaza. Ceasefires do not hold unless they are meant to.