A Long Way To Go

When it was finally announced by the PM of Qatar (not Kuwait, as a senile US' outgoing President Joe Biden preened in his credit-gobbling speech referring to the Oct 7, 2023 attack as one perpetrated by Hezbollah, not Hamas!), my first reaction was "thank God"! Along with an instant prayer that war, decimation, destruction and the ongoing genocide of Palestinians wreaked by Israel and its leader Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu for 15 long months- the first such genocidal exercise on a mass scale to be played out in front of cameras and on TV screens globally- would finally end.

The war on Gaza and Palestinians by Israel killed an estimated 70000 civilians including over 25000 kids (The Lancet study), with many bodies still buried in the crumbling debris of Gaza. The official death toll by the Health ministry of Gaza is over 46000. This war has personally affected millions now displaced by a rogue nation although it has got only about a fraction of the attention from the global media that the war in Ukraine has..

Six hours later, though, after listening to and reading 360 degree analysis of how this three stage and highly complex ceasefire deal could play out (or not) and perhaps (a very MASSIVE perhaps) pave the way for a two state nation (not even remotely mentioned by anyone in the West but by Turkiye and W Asian analysts as remotely possible some day in the future) I am back to being wary, weary, cautious, anxious.

The prayers for my Palestinian comrades are frozen on my lips, and the anticipation has turned into a static trajectory for now.

Already, since the announcement of the ceasefire deal late last night after several hiccups, Israel has reportedly killed some 100+ Palestinians and promptly and expectedly accused Hamas of violating the agreement, which came into effect from January 20. Both #GenocideJoeBiden and #TerribleTrump rushed in ugly haste to jostle the other and garner credit with a mountainous display of hypocrisy and inbuilt deceit.

Trump did this even before the official announcement of the deal and without a single mention of the trauma (generational or otherwise) of Palestinians. Gaza is today the region with the highest number of physically disabled and killed children, globally, in a single war.

The anxiety was proven well placed. Netanyahu promptly delayed a Cabinet meeting to endorse the deal. #France24 reported that Netanyahu told his extreme RW Finance Minister (who threatened to resign if the deal went through, thus rocking the Bibi government's boat and threatening its survival) in private that war could well resume at the end of phase 1, 42 days from Jan 20.

That would keep happy his maniacal supporters and "extreme" Cabinet colleagues like the FM and Ben Gvir who want settlements reinforced in Gaza, permanent stationing of IDF there AND the eventual annexation of the W Bank, even while saving Netanyahu from probes into corruption and gross intel failure on October 7, 2023, which seek to pin accountability on him.

Over the 3 phases, some 1500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are scheduled to be released according to details emerging, many minors among them and many jailed post Oct 7, 2023 and an estimated 500 who have been jailed for 15 yrs and above. In the first phase alone, some 33 Israeli hostages, mostly women (including soldiers) and those below 19 are were freed by their Hamas captors.

Meantime, "Genocide Joe Biden" , who everyone knows set hollow deadlines for stopping arms supply to Israel (information on deadline mostly touted by the legacy media conveniently during Harris' election campaign) blatantly ignored that very deadline. He is now, in peak and brazen shamelessness, claiming that it was his regime's support to Israel for its strikes against Hamas and Hezbollah that clinched this so-called historic deal.

Under Biden, the US affected the ouster of Assad Jr, himself by no means a virtuous figure (and who has now granted refuge in Russia along with his family). It chose to prop up, with Israel cheerleading from the front rows, a leader in Damascus who was declared a terrorist by the US earlier but is now viewed as a "rebel leader" and "freedom fighter not owing allegiance to Hezbollah".

Joe Biden may have retorted "Is this a joke?" to a reporter who asked him who should get credit for the ceasefire deal now, but it was the first time that his government spokesperson gave credit, even if seemingly grudgingly, to President Elect (and first convicted felon to occupy the top post) Donald Trump.

Just hours after, the carefully architected spectacle of both current and incoming Presidents being on the same page over US' interests fell apart. Biden "warned" Americans that their country's government was being taken over big time, apparently a first, by a platoon of oligarchs (including, but not restricted to Elon Musk) who would design and steer policy to their advantage and that of the military-industrial complex. This from a man who has literally choreographed the ongoing and continual Russia-Ukraine war, pouring in billions of American taxpayer dollars, unbridled and unstoppable, and using younger and younger Ukrainians as cannon fodder, in alliance with Volodymyr Zelensky.

Biden's claims of credit for the ceasefire and empathy for Palestinians killed and devastated by this war (mentioned almost as an afterthought, in the marginals of his self-celebratory speech) ring especially hollow given that this very same ceasefire deal was reportedly proposed in May last year and almost went through in November but then fell through, presumably after he deceitfully turned a blind eye to his own deadline on arming Israel and, in fact, covertly backed its running rogue in the entire region.

Clearly, Biden was either completely submissive or totally complicit. Many, even in the US believe the latter is true. All this, even while the US-Israel duo's genocidal bromance continued its devastating rampage on ordinary civilians and key health infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank.

Trump chest- thumped on social media about how it was his warning to all stakeholders in the "Israel-Hamas war" that "there would be hell to pay all round" (naming Hamas but not Israel) if a ceasefire deal was not signed before Sunday that pushed the deal over the line this time round.

The western media has been at the forefront in maintaining that since Trump is transactional by intrinsic nature, he cracked the whip on Netanyahu and would not advantage Israel majorly unless such developments proved beneficial to the US. True, Trump has already chest-thumped about his intent to intensify the "friendship" with Saudi Arabia and reinforce the #AbrahamAccords (Bahrain, UAE, Morocco ties with Israel) , seemingly to the USA's big gains in the "New (defanged and deracinated, US-compliant!) Middle East" .

But beyond that, there is little to inspire confidence that under Trump's baton over the next four years, many mutually beneficial arrangements with Israel may not be in the offing. Big questions over a plethora of key issues relating centrally to the people of Palestine and their existence remain unanswered. Including the status of the W Bank and East Jerusalem.

Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2017, virtually recognizing the city as Israel's capital. As Col Lawrence Wilkerson (US Army, Retd) put it, Trump's plan for the future is not the future of Palestinians but the future of Israel.

Crucial questions also persist over the untapped gas reserves off the Gaza coastline. The Gaza Marine field, nearly 20 miles off Gaza's coast, has remained undeveloped despite holding an estimated 1 trillion cubic feet+ of natural gas. Israel gave preliminary approval for the development of a gas field off Gaza's coast in June 2023.

Amos Hochstein, Biden's energy security advisor, visited Israel in November that year to discuss the issue and it adds to the key reasons why Ben Gvir and others in the Netanyahu cabinet do not want the IDF to totally withdraw from Gaza and, in fact, want to reinforce Israeli settlements in the region.

There are reports that Qatar and Egypt have agreed to be at the forefront of reconstruction eventually and of monitoring Gaza during the timeframe of the ceasefire deal (on the precondition that no party violates the deal once it begins). But reconstruction was on the cards only if the completion of the third phase led to proactive negotiations on a two-state nation and independence to Palestinians, something that they so richly deserve and have so long been unjustly denied by Israel and the international community.

But reconstruction seems an eternity away right now and after all the deviousness and deceit and genocidal aggression that Biden has perpetrated and what may still be in the offing in the Trump era, hope is the only trampoline to grab on to at this juncture.

Any basic reconstruction of Gaza could take years and billions of dollars that neither Israel nor the US are likely to fund. Meanwhile, radio silence from self-styled Superman Netanyahu. Apparently, there is strong belief in sections of his Cabinet that an Oct 7 may occur again since the "core objective" of totally decimating Hamas (read every living being, including animals) in Gaza has not been achieved.

Prabha Jagannathan is a senior journalist. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.

#FreePalestine #VivaPalestinaLibre