– Advertisement –
By Demba Ali Jawo
The whole world is watching with cautious optimism as the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas takes shape. We have seen all the 20 Israeli hostages still alive and held by Hamas being released and Israel also freeing about 2000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Of course, regardless of his strong biases in favour of Israel, President Donald Trump has played quite an important role in helping to achieve the ceasefire. However, looking at the tough conditionalities contained in his 20-point peace plan, one could see that the ceasefire is quite fragile and any little spark could trigger another more devastating conflict. Therefore, every effort should be done by all the parties to the conflict and their backers to ensure that everyone play their part with utmost care and avoid any provocative action.
– Advertisement –
While there is no doubt that the process was prompted by President Trump’s intervention, but there are other compelling reasons why it happened so quickly. For instance, it is quite obvious that despite all the tough talk and show of bravado by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he had no doubt realised that his actions in Gaza had gone beyond what was acceptable to the conscience of the civilized world and they were making Israel become a pariah state. Therefore, he was looking for any prompting to halt the ongoing genocide in Gaza, hence the reason he quickly accepted President Trump’s ceasefire proposal.
In the case of Hamas, they have been so badly bruised and overwhelmed by Israel’s genocidal retaliation that they had very little choice but to accept whatever conditionalities were imposed on them. No doubt, they have realised the big mistake that they made on October 7, 2023 when they launched an unprovoked attack on Israel which gave Prime Minister Netanyahu the excuse to unleash such brutality on the people of Gaza.
However, regardless of the outcome of the ceasefire, the ultimate road to a permanent peace in the area is a two-state solution, which both the Trump peace plan and Israeli pronouncements have failed to address. It also makes very little sense to hold a summit on the issue in Egypt without giving the centre stage to the President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas as representative of the Palestinians, as well as involving the United Nations in the process. That is certainly already a prescription for failure of the process. They cannot continue to impose their own solutions on the Palestinians without involving them in the process. The international community should not continue to give a free hand to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu to carry on with their own jaundiced view for achieving peace in the area. It should be a collective responsibility that should involve the whole international community rather than just being left to Trump and Netanyahu to determine who should get involved.
