The Gaza Cease-Fire Was Always Going to End
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/03/gaza-cease-fire-palestine-israel/682083/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo
Posted by theatlantic
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Yair Rosenberg: “When Israel and Hamas finally agreed to a cease-fire in January, many outside observers credited the agreement to Donald Trump’s commitment to peace. Unlike Joe Biden, the story went, America’s new president was willing to put the screws to Israel to compel quiet in Gaza and would keep the deal on track.
“These claims completely misread the map. Trump was less interested in ending the war than in being able to say he’d gotten some hostages out by the time he was inaugurated. Hamas was willing to release those hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, but it was never going to agree to permanently lay down its arms. Israel, for its part, sought to extract as many of its people from Gaza as possible and wanted to stay on Trump’s good side so that he might grant them sweeping policy wins later on.
“Two months in, this confluence of interests has come apart, and so has the cease-fire. The deal had been on life support for weeks, with no hostages coming out of Gaza and no humanitarian aid going in. No longer willing to grant Hamas a reprieve without receiving anything in return, Israel launched extensive air strikes across the Strip last night, reportedly killing hundreds, including civilians and top Hamas officials. The Trump administration supported the move—the National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes told reporters that ‘Hamas could have released hostages to extend the cease-fire but instead chose refusal and war.’
“More war is not what the people of Gaza or Israel want. But Gazans have no ability to control or restrain Hamas, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not responsive to the preferences of the Israeli public … [Netanyahu’s] coalition relies on the Israeli minority that prioritizes destroying Hamas over returning the hostages, and its far-right members hope to seed Gaza with Israeli settlements. Absent any real pressure from Trump, Netanyahu was always going to follow his base. And far from reining Israel in, Trump has floated relocating Gaza’s population, abolished Biden’s sanctions regime targeting violent Israeli settlers, and sanctioned the International Criminal Court over its prosecution of Israel. Likewise, Hamas’s patrons in Qatar have been seemingly unwilling or unable to get it to adopt a more conciliatory position.
“But setting aside the interests and intentions of Hamas, Netanyahu, and Trump, the Gaza cease-fire was never going to hold for a more fundamental reason: Neither side is willing to tolerate the other’s continued existence.”
Read more here: [https://theatln.tc/6yRd9NH3](https://theatln.tc/6yRd9NH3)
Analytically true, however that dosen’t execuse the fact this is ultimately a political and strategic diaster for Israel and unhelpful for American interests.
>But Gazans have no ability to control or restrain Hamas
Why everyone assume that the gazans even wants to restrain or get rid of them? And why people tend to speak about Hamas as if it’s bunch of outsiders which came out of nowhere to Gaza and made the gazans lifes miserable? Hamas is made out of gazans and Hamas was created because many gazans wanted it.
Nothing about it is happening randomly, Hamas is the cause for all of this destruction and the “ordinary gazans” are the cause that hamas could’ve exist and be terrorists to begin with.
israel never agreed to phase 2, the terrorists got a ceasefire for free and still did not release any additional hostages
Every released hostage, every single one speaks of the hatred and abuse they got from Palestinian “civilians”.
It’s already confirmed they’re torturing and murdering hostages right now, so yes the terrorists get the sword
https://embassies.gov.il/holysee/AboutIsrael/the-middle-east/Pages/The%20Hamas-Covenant.aspx
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