Cease, fire

On Wednesday — the 466th day of the war, and the sixth-to-last of Joe Biden’s presidency — the word came down from Jerusalem¹ : Israeli and Hamas negotiators had reached an agreement on the terms for a tentative ceasefire. Celebrations broke out in Gaza, where experts now estimate the death toll has passed 64,000 Palestinians killed by direct violence, and with untold more having died by hunger, disease, and privation. Biden and Donald Trump, whose advisors worked together on the agreement, took competing victory laps; signaling to their fan bases that they should follow suit.

But, as always, things aren’t that simple. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet immediately cut his legs out from under him, postponing a meeting to consider ratifying the deal until tomorrow. Once again it’s the settler colonialist hardliners, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and the Kahanist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, refusing to stop the killing. Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party says it will only agree to a pause in the mass murder so long as Netanyahu agrees to start bombing Gaza again by the end of February, once the first tranche of hostages are released. Ben-Gvir announced his Jewish Power faction will quit the government if the deal goes through.

The centrist leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, offered to prop up Netanyahu’s government if the hardliners quit, but that would leave the prime minister at the mercy of his rival. (As I’m writing this, Netanyahu has announced in a pre-dawn message the hostage release will go through, though it is not clear what internal political arrangement he reached.)

Finally, even if the deal is ratified, Israel’s track record of honoring ceasefire agreements is not good—a fact underscored by its relentless assault across Palestinian lands even as its negotiators have agreed in principle to ceasefire terms. Last night alone, the Israelis killed at least 53 people, most of them women and children, in a single strike in Gaza City, while simultaneously carrying out deadly airstrikes on the occupied West Bank. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says that 81 people were killed and 188 wounded over the last twenty-four hours, Haaretz reported. (Hamas has also historically broken ceasefires, though they hardly seem to be in a position to in the near term.) Israel will still control the sea and skies. And under the draft agreement, their ground forces will remain inside the borders of Gaza, likely including the so-called Netzarim Corridor — a line of occupation bisecting the strip from which they stage attacks and control the flow of people between the north and south. At the slightest provocation, or even without one, it can all start up again.

Despite all this, Ben-Gvir, who earlier this week openly bragged about having torpedoed past deals to free the hostages on multiple occasions, is trying to paint the agreement as a victory for Hamas. It wouldn’t be. But it would at least deter his, and Smotrich’s, and sometimes perhaps Netanyahu’s maximalist ambition for the war: the annexation of the Gaza Strip, the re-ethnic cleansing of its people, and the re-establishment of extremist Jewish settlements along the last piece of coastline to remain in Palestinian hands after the nakba of 1947-49. It would also, as friend of The Racket Spencer Ackerman wrote earlier this week, confirm the failure of Netanyahu’s total war, with its oft-stated aim the destruction of Hamas.

The proof is right in the headline: it’s an agreement between Israel and the still very much existing Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah, a.k.a. Hamas. As Biden’s outgoing Secretary of State Tony Blinken told the Atlantic Council in a farewell address this week, “We assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost.” Indeed, the impossibility of bombing a resistance into submission is the lesson of every counter-insurgency of the 21st Century. Spencer, who knows such things, called that in October 2023. I did too.

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