Gaza’s Ceasefire Without Peace: When Even Surrender Is Not Enough

From Our Special Correspondent in the Occupied Territories

There is something profoundly unsettling about the language now being used to describe Gaza. The word “ceasefire” suggests that the guns have fallen silent, that the parties have stopped fighting and that a political process has begun to replace violence. Yet Gaza remains a place where Palestinians continue to be killed, where Israeli forces retain control over a large part of the territory, where millions remain displaced and where the basic conditions for a normal civilian existence remain absent.

This is not what a ceasefire was supposed to mean. Since the ceasefire announced in October 2025, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to figures from Gaza’s Ministry of Health cited by United Nations agencies. By June, UN sources were reporting 1,005 Palestinian fatalities since the ceasefire announcement, while the UN Human Rights Office had independently verified hundreds of those deaths, including women and children. By July, the Palestinian Ministry of Health was reporting more than 1,100 deaths since the ceasefire.

The numbers tell only part of the story. Gaza remains overwhelmingly displaced. Infrastructure has been devastated. Access to essential services remains severely constrained. The so-called “Orange Line” has placed approximately 64.9 per cent of the territory under tighter Israeli control, according to the United Nations. The population is therefore living under what might more accurately be described as a ceasefire under occupation rather than a peace.

And that distinction matters. For almost two decades, Gaza has experienced a recurring cycle: escalation, bombardment, international mediation, ceasefire, temporary calm, renewed confrontation and another round of negotiations. The ceasefires have often succeeded in stopping large-scale fighting temporarily, but they have rarely addressed the political conditions that produced the conflict in the first place.

The historical record is instructive. The June 2008 truce between Israel and Hamas was followed by renewed violence and ultimately Israel’s December 2008 offensive. The 2012 conflict ended with an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire after Israel assassinated Hamas military commander Ahmed Jabari and Hamas responded with rocket fire. The seven-week war of 2014 ended with another Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. Further confrontations followed in 2019 and 2021.

It would be historically inaccurate to suggest that Israel alone has violated every ceasefire; Palestinian armed groups have also launched attacks and rockets during periods of supposed calm. Israel has consistently argued that its military actions are responses to threats and attacks against its citizens. But the broader pattern is undeniable: ceasefires have repeatedly proved temporary because the underlying political conflict has remained unresolved. A ceasefire without a political settlement becomes little more than an intermission. That is the tragedy of Gaza today.

What makes the latest development still more extraordinary is the intervention of President Donald Trump and his so-called Board of Peace. Trump’s earlier twenty-point framework was presented as a comprehensive blueprint for ending the Gaza war and creating a transitional political and reconstruction framework. The United Nations Security Council subsequently endorsed the broader plan, while the Trump administration established the Board of Peace to oversee its implementation. Yet the latest attempt at implementation has exposed the central contradiction that has haunted every peace initiative.

The Trump-backed fifteen-point proposal envisages a phased Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in return for the disarmament of Hamas and the establishment of an international stabilization mechanism. Hamas has indicated acceptance of the framework, although it has avoided accepting the word “disarmament” in the unconditional sense demanded by Israel and has tied the handing over of weapons to reciprocal Israeli withdrawal and cessation of attacks.

Then came the extraordinary response from Jerusalem. Israel rejected the proposal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israeli forces would not withdraw until Hamas had been “genuinely” disarmed, insisting that this meant all weapons. Israel’s position, therefore, is that withdrawal must follow disarmament, while Hamas’s position is that disarmament cannot be separated from Israeli withdrawal and the establishment of a credible political future for Gaza.

This is where the latest peace initiative begins to reveal its futility. If Hamas, after one of the most devastating wars in the history of Gaza, can contemplate surrendering its weapons under an internationally supported framework, yet Israel still refuses the proposed settlement because it does not regard the conditions as sufficient, then what exactly is the endpoint?

What would constitute an acceptable Palestinian concession? And, more importantly, what constitutes an acceptable Israeli concession? If the answer to the first question is the complete disarmament of Hamas, the second cannot simply be postponed indefinitely. Disarmament is meaningful only if the population being disarmed is given security, political representation, territorial integrity and a credible future.

A people cannot be asked to surrender its remaining instruments of coercive power while continuing to live under military occupation, territorial fragmentation and indefinite political uncertainty and then be told that peace has arrived.

That is not peace. It is unilateral pacification. There is a profound lesson here for those who continue to approach the Gaza crisis primarily as a problem of Hamas. Hamas is certainly part of the problem. Its attacks on Israeli civilians cannot be justified by the suffering of Palestinians, just as Israeli military actions cannot be justified merely by invoking the existence of Hamas. A serious peace must be capable of condemning violence against civilians regardless of who commits it.

But reducing Gaza to the question of whether Hamas will surrender its weapons avoids the larger political question.  Why has Gaza remained trapped in this cycle for so long?  Why does a territory whose population has endured blockade, repeated wars and massive destruction remain without a sovereign political settlement? Why is the issue of Palestinian statehood still treated as something that can be indefinitely postponed? Why does the international community repeatedly demand that Palestinians accept another ceasefire while failing to establish the political conditions necessary to make the ceasefire permanent? And why, after decades of negotiations, does the region continue to oscillate between the language of peace and the machinery of war?

The answer is partly historical. Israel’s security doctrine has long placed overwhelming emphasis upon maintaining military superiority and preventing hostile armed groups from acquiring capabilities that could threaten the Israeli state. From Israel’s perspective, that doctrine is rooted in a history of wars, attacks and existential insecurity. But the problem arises when security becomes defined almost entirely in military terms.

A state can become militarily secure while the population living beside it becomes permanently insecure. That is not sustainable peace. Indeed, the history of Gaza suggests that military dominance has repeatedly failed to produce political stability. Hamas has survived successive campaigns. The territory has been repeatedly devastated, rebuilt and devastated again. Each war creates new grievances, new trauma and new recruits for the next confrontation.

The lesson should be obvious: you cannot bomb a political problem out of existence. Nor can you disarm a people into political submission and expect the resulting vacuum to remain peaceful indefinitely. This is why the latest Trump initiative deserves to be examined with both hope and skepticism.

Hope, because any credible mechanism capable of stopping the killing and beginning reconstruction should be welcomed. Skepticism, because peace plans designed primarily around security arrangements without resolving sovereignty, occupation, political representation and Palestinian self-determination are unlikely to survive.

The futility becomes even more apparent when the proposed mediator’s plan is itself rejected by one of the principal parties. Trump’s Board of Peace may possess considerable diplomatic and financial leverage. It may be able to mobilize reconstruction resources and establish transitional institutions. But no external body can manufacture peace if the principal parties do not accept the political destination. A peace process cannot be reduced to the management of Gaza. Gaza is not merely a humanitarian disaster waiting to be reconstructed. It is part of the unresolved Palestinian national question.

That distinction is crucial. Rebuilding houses without rebuilding political rights will leave the foundations of the conflict untouched. Providing food without providing freedom will alleviate suffering without ending the condition that produces it. Establishing security without establishing justice will produce another temporary calm rather than durable peace.

The international community has spent decades trying to manage the symptoms of the Palestinian question. Perhaps it is time to confront its cause. There is also something deeply revealing in the present Israeli rejection of the Trump proposal. If Hamas is genuinely prepared to enter a process leading to the surrender of its weapons, then the argument that peace is impossible simply because Hamas possesses weapons becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.

The issue then moves to the next question: what happens after disarmament? If the answer is continued Israeli military control, continued territorial fragmentation and continued uncertainty over Palestinian statehood, then disarmament does not constitute a peace agreement. It becomes merely a change in the method by which Gaza is controlled.

That cannot be the destination. The Palestinians deserve security. Israelis deserve security. But security cannot be constructed permanently at the expense of the other. The only sustainable peace will therefore require something more difficult than victory.

It will require reciprocity. Israel must be secure from attacks. Palestinians must be secure from military occupation and arbitrary violence. Israeli civilians must be protected. Palestinian civilians must be protected. Hamas and other armed groups must not be permitted to terrorize civilians. Israel must not be permitted to use security as an unlimited justification for indefinite military control.

These principles are not contradictory. They are the minimum foundations of a genuine peace. The tragedy is that Gaza has repeatedly been offered ceasefires when what it needed was a settlement. It has been offered pauses in violence when what it needed was an end to the political conditions that made violence recurrent. It has been offered reconstruction plans when what it needed was a future.

And now, remarkably, a proposal reportedly exists in which Hamas is prepared to contemplate surrendering its weapons while Israel refuses to withdraw until that surrender is complete and unquestionable. The circle therefore closes upon itself. One side says: disarmament first. The other says: withdrawal first.

And Gaza remains between them. Perhaps the world should stop asking which side will make the first concession and ask a more fundamental question: what political order would make weapons unnecessary in the first place?

That is the question every serious peace initiative must answer. Until it does, Gaza’s ceasefire will remain what it has tragically become—a cessation of full-scale war without the arrival of peace.

And history should warn us that when a ceasefire becomes merely a pause between wars, the word “peace” has been used long before peace itself has arrived.