Around 2am on Tuesday 18 March, the people of Gaza were awakened by a sound that had become all too familiar: the music of war. Israel’s military machine was back up and running, its tanks, drones, and war planes coursing into the Strip. Before long, more than 400 people, including many children and families, lay dead. Many more were injured. It was Gaza’s bloodiest day since November 2023, when 548 people perished. Now, we are witnessing a full relapse of the devastating beginning of this war: Hamas firing volleys of rockets towards Tel Aviv, while Israeli ground troops surge in what looks like a fresh ground invasion.
The entire ceasefire accord Hamas and Israel signed on 15 January – it took effect four days later – has now been derailed, perhaps even destroyed. Nothing in politics and war is inevitable, but anyone who’s surprised by what’s happened hasn’t been paying attention. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to the ceasefire with great reluctance, an inauguration offering to the newly re-elected Donald Trump. Ending the war jeopardised Netanyahu’s cherished goal of destroying Hamas, but the prime minister also feared that the hardline ministers in his coalition government would bolt if he cut a deal with an adversary that killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, and captured another 251. He was right to worry. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and two other cabinet members from his Otzma Yehudit party quit. And the far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionist Party, would have followed suit had Netanyahu not assured him that the agreement with Hamas wouldn’t preclude a resumption of the war. Even so, Smotrich vowed to resign if it did.
Of the accord’s three 42-day phases, the first was a bitter pill for Netanyahu. But he saw that its provisions had some upsides. They required Hamas to release (in instalments) some but not all of the Israeli hostages, even if this came in exchange for the IDF’s redeployment from Gaza’s most populated areas to narrow buffer zones inside its borders, along with the release, in batches, of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. The initial response to the returning hostages was public joy, relieving political pressure from Netanyahu, who before 7 October had faced mass protests against his rule. He regarded the IDF’s redeployment and the prisoners’ release as an acceptable price to pay, though he refused to evacuate the Philadelphi Corridor, which runs along Gaza’s border with Egypt.
That refusal was an early sign that the agreement was in trouble. Another was Israel’s decision to delay the release of the next group of 620 Palestinian prisoners and its demand that Hamas, which has just handed over six hostages as required under the January accord, free more of them. That move stemmed from Israel’s outrage over Hamas’s triumphalist hostage release ceremonies. These processions, during which hostages were forced to thank their captors from stages dominated by looming Hamas gunmen, seemed designed to humiliate Israel, highlighting that Hamas had not only survived but had forced the Middle East’s foremost military power to the table.
If Netanyahu saw the terms of Phase 1 as painful, he considered Phase 2’s provisions downright poisonous. They included the IDF’s exit from Gaza and, after all remaining hostages and the bodies of those who had died were released, an agreement on a permanent peace – with Hamas’s future role left uncertain. Quite apart from his opposition to these stipulations, Netanyahu knew Smotrich would resign rather allow their implementation.
This helps to explain why Netanyahu started to gum up the works as the end of Phase 1 approached. Though indirect talks with Hamas on implementing Phase 2 were set to begin in early February per the ceasefire agreement, he failed to send negotiators. Instead, he wanted to extend Phase 1 – in effect rewriting the terms of a deal he had accepted – and threatened to restart the war if Hamas refused. And to force Hamas’s hand, on 2 March Netanyahu announced a blockade on aid deliveries to Gaza, despite having agreed to increase the entry of aid trucks to 600 per day. Before long, panic-buying and hoarding caused vegetables and bread prices to skyrocket. In mid-March, World Food Program warned that its stockpiles for supporting Gaza’s bakeries and food pantries would last for only another month and that the ready-to-eat meals it provides to 500,000 people would run out in a fortnight. A week later, Israel stopped electricity supplies – which had resumed following the ceasefire deal – to a desalination plant that supplied 18,000 cubic meters of water daily to Gaza’s central region of Deir al-Balah.
Though Phase 1 of the ceasefire agreement had technically expired on 1 March, Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, proposed its extension into April, during which time Hamas would release 15 additional hostages in exchange for Israel’s lifting of the siege. Hamas depicted Witkoff’s formula as an attempt to “sidestep” the 15 January agreement. It called instead for a comprehensive peace, including the release of all hostages and the IDF’s full withdrawal from Gaza, though it did agree to free Edan Alexander, an IDF soldier who holds Israeli and American citizenship, and to hand over the bodies of four other dual nationals. The impasse between Hamas and Israel proved unbreakable.
In defending his resumption of the war, Netanyahu blamed Hamas for precipitating the ceasefire’s collapse by spurning Witkoff’s démarche. Hamas, for its part, pointed to Netanyahu’s creeping, calculated ploys to eviscerate the accord of 15 January. And once White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt revealed that the Trump administration had been consulted in advance of Netanyahu’s decision, it charged the American government with complicity. Leavitt’s threat that “all hell would break loose” – a phrase Trump used in February while demanding that Hamas release all remaining hostages within five days, something the ceasefire accord doesn’t require – has raised the temperature further. Leavitt has extended this threat to Iran and the Houthis, notable given that Trump had just ordered missile strikes against militant sites in Yemen – which have intensified – and warned Tehran that it risked “dire” retribution if Houthi attacks on ships plying the Rea Sea continued.
The ceasefire had been hanging by a thread for weeks and may now be beyond salvage. Its fate depends on Netanyahu’s calculations. Perhaps he reignited the war solely to force Hamas to extend the ceasefire and release more hostages. Or maybe he remains bent on destroying Hamas. If the latter, he has already had partial success: Ben-Gvir and two other ministers from Otzma have rejoined the coalition government.
The destruction of Hamas is, however, another matter altogether. Even assuming that goal is feasible, achieving it will require months of additional war. Netanyahu’s dogged pursuit of that mission will jeopardise the release of the hostages (more than 130 have been released by Hamas since January 19, but 59 remain in Gaza, though only about half may still be alive) and increase their families’ anguish. Gazans will pay a much bigger price. Those who have managed to survive the war – more than 48,000 have been killed – live in makeshift shelters amidst tons of rubble and, since the Israeli siege, lack the bare essentials needed to sustain life. Their lives will now become immeasurably harder, and many will perish, especially if Netanyahu ups the ante by extending ground operations.
No matter what Netanyahu does, he can count on the backing of Trump, who has never criticised his manoeuvres to reshape the ceasefire deal. Trump has also approved $12bn worth of foreign military sales to Israel since returning to the White House, and has reportedly accepted Netanyahu’s argument, advanced during the prime minister’s February visit to Washington, that Israel needed the freedom restart the war despite the ceasefire deal. Even if Netanyahu realises that Hamas can’t be destroyed, he may be betting that renewed war will place Trump’s mooted idea to depopulate and annex Gaza, which the Israeli leader hailed as “revolutionary” and “creative,” back on the front burner. (Though Trump later reportedly disavowed any intention to expel Gazans, Israel and the United States have reportedly broached their resettlement with Sudan and Somalia.)
The Gaza ceasefire accord’s possibly irretrievable breakdown comes at a particularly dangerous time. Israel has been stepping up its attacks on Lebanon and Syria. Tensions between the United States and Iran and the Houthis are rising. Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are among some of the nations that have condemned Israel’s apparent defenestration of the ceasefire. Netanyahu has warned that the resumption of the war was “just the beginning” and that though he was open to continued talks with Hamas, they would be held “under fire”. And yesterday (21 March) Netanyahu’s defence minister, Israel Katz, ordered his troops to “seize more ground”, and threatened partial annexation of the Strip. As the Ukrainian negotiations have come to dominate the news agenda, much of the West has world has averted its eyes from this developing horror. Now we will see if they will respond – beyond watching on.
[See also: Nato on the brink]
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