The clock started ticking at Noon Palestine Time today on implementation of the 6-step ceasefire + captive-release agreement negotiated in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, by Pres. Trump and his three Muslim-state mediation partners. Those talks were held on a “proximity” basis with, presumably, the Israeli negotiators in one room, the Palestinian resistance alliance led by veteran Hamas negotiator Khalil al-Hayya in another, and various groups of mediators shuttling between them.
(That’s Khalil Al-Hayya, above.)
The negotiators in Sharm had reached agreement on their 6-step plan on Thursday, but per Step 2 therein, implementation awaited the approval of the Israeli government. That was achieved this morning.
The prescribed ceasefire and many signs of an Israeli military pullback started at Noon today (local.) By that time, thousands of Palestinians whom the Israelis had previously expelled south from Northern Gaza under fire were already streaming back toward their homes in the north.
By 4:20 pm local, the Times of Israel was reporting that uniformed, Hamas-affiliated internal security force units were being seen on the streets of Gaza City. They had not been seen in public there since March 2, when Israel and its military broke completely broke away from the ceasefire plan then in operation and started targeting the Hamas-affiliated police units. (Israel abruptly resumed its blockage of aid goods into Gaza at that point, too.)
Yesterday’s 6-step plan covers only the earliest stages of the extremely– indeed unrealistically– ambitious “20-point plan” that Pres. Trump loudly proclaimed back on September 29, when he was hosting Israeli PM Netanyahu in the White House. Then, on October 3, the Hamas leadership issued a very smartly worded response (text here) in which they expressed their appreciation for the efforts of Pres. Trump and the other mediators that called for (as they described the plan):
- an immediate halt to the war on the Gaza Strip,
- the exchange of prisoners, the immediate entry of aid,
- the rejection of the occupation of the Strip, and
- the rejection of the displacement of our Palestinian people from it.
… And on that basis, they announced their approval for “releasing all ‘Israeli’ captives, living and deceased, according to the exchange formula mentioned in President Trump’s proposal, provided that the field conditions for the exchange process are secured.”
By some accounts, Trump was much surprised by Hamas’s acceptance of these portions of his plan. But he enthusiastically welcomed that Hamas statement from last Friday, and the scene was thus set for the negotiations conducted in Sharm this week. The main mediators there were high-level representatives of the governments of Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, along with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, representing Trump.
The 6-step plan agreed yesterday covers only points 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8 of Trump’s earlier 20-point plan. It notably makes no mention of any effort to “de-radicalize” the population of Gaza, or of the other portions of Trump’s plan that envisaged a colonial-style administration being installed in Gaza under the viceroy-ship of widely discredited former UK prime minister Tony Blair.
It was smart diplomacy for Hamas’s impressively collective leadership to (a) put nice words about Trump into their Oct. 3 announcement; and (b) to signal therein their readiness to release all the Israeli captives in one tranche, upfront, in return for a complete ceasefire and a broad though still far from complete withdrawal of Israeli forces.
That latter position caused some Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists around the world to express concern that maybe the Hamas leaders were giving away far too much, too soon. In the days after October 3, however, Hamas leaders fanned out across numerous Arabic-language and English-language media outlets to stress that their main concern was absolutely to end the genocide and the suffering in Gaza. Many Palestinian rights leaders and activists also pointed out that the continuing steadfastness of the Palestinian resisters on the ground in Gaza does gives the resistance leaders continuing leverage in the negotiations.
And so, too, do the large-scale solidarity movements all around the world, which place continuing– quite possibly growing?– pressure on governments to act firmly to prevent yet another Israeli breakout from the ceasefire regime.
It’s important to note that the Palestinian resisters on the ground in Gaza– and in the West Bank– manifest their continuing steadfastness in a range of different ways. One of these has been through the ability their armed wings demonstrated almost right up the hour of the ceasefire, to continue undertaking extremely courageous and focused operations that inflicted a steady stream of casualties on the massive, and massively armed, Israeli military occupation presence in Gaza.
As the journalist Jeremy Scahill described it in his great appearance on “Electronic Intifada” yesterday,
The first factor we have to recognize is that a nuclear armed serial killer masquerading as a nation state [that is, “Israel”] with the full backing of the United States has failed to impose a surrender on Palestinians wearing Adidas flip-flops, track suits, and operating with largely domestically manufactured weapons. They have failed to militarily defeat the armed Palestinian resistance, primarily from [Hamas’s] Qassam Brigades and [Islamic Jihad’s] Saraya al-Quds.
But the Palestinians of Gaza have demonstrated their steadfastness in a number of other ways, too. I would describe these ways as stemming from the deep commitment that most Gazans have learned over the course of generations– and especially during the many Israeli attacks and oppressions they lived through, during the 56 years of Israeli military occupation that preceded October 7, 2023– to maintaining and strengthening the ties of community life. The soup kitchens they generated and supported whenever supplies became scarce. The readiness they show to helping dig neighbors out of the rubble of collapsed buildings. The way that on Fridays, Muslim worshipers line up in rows to pray amidst the rubble of the mosques the Israelis have bombed and destroyed… And the steadfastness with which the Strip’s civil authorities, such as the Ministry of Health, the Civil Defense Organization, or the Gaza City Municipality, have continued to try to serve the public even amid the horrors of genocide.
Also, yes, the police that, among other tasks, has helped ensure the safety of aid shipments and their distribution.
Just a couple of additional notes here. One is to salute the people in the Health Information Committee of the Ministry of Health who on Tuesday (October 7) issued these three, painstakingly compiled and powerful infographics that chart the human losses of the two years of genocide. (Click on any of them to enlarge.)
Another thing to note is that as the ceasefire went into effect today and the Israeli military started to withdraw, the foreign and native mercenary fighters who’d been running the odious, Israeli-installed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation all reportedly just “vanished into thin air.”
If true, that is great news, as it would mean the end of the whole plan that Israel and the United States have pursued that aimed to replace and eject the very experienced UN and other aid international bodies that have worked with partners inside Gaza for decades, and that know how to deliver the aid that is so sorely needed in an effective, helpful, and nonviolent way.
(Also of note: the whole GHF plan was cooked up by a coterie of deeply pro-Israeli and opportunistic people in consulting companies and banks– of whom Tony Blair was one. So hopefully the evaporation of the GHF’s forces on the ground will pose a huge setback to any prospect that Tony Blair and his foundation might have any role in Gaza in the future…)
There is a huge amount more, obviously, that can and should be said about the regional, indeed global repercussions of these developments of the past week. (I will do what I can!) For my part, I am delighted that there is now a real prospect that this horrendous U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza can be brought to an end.
The active participation of Hamas and its resistance allies in the processes of bringing to an end the genocide and hopefully also the occupation of Gaza is a great development! May this negotiation also soon usher in a era in which Israel’s many other aggressions across West Asia can also be terminated.
Two last short thoughts to finish off with here:
- It’s worth underlining, repeatedly, that the moment Pres. Trump decided Israel’s aggression needed to end, it ended. He could and should have insisted on this a lot earlier. And so, absolutely, could Pres. Biden.
- And where was that terminal sad-sack Mahmoud Abbas? Who cares at this point about him and his whole rickety structure of a “PA”– except inasmuch as it continues to work with the Israeli occupiers to oppress the Palestinians in the West Bank…
