What Will Happen To Gaza Now? – OpEd
After a grueling search of 44 days, one of the Palestinian resistance groups delivered the remains of Israeli hostage number 26 who was hid in Gaza.
There are two more bodies – one Israeli and another foreigner, thought to be Thai who was working in a settlement outside the enclave – to be found and delivered to the Israeli authorities.
It is believed that once the remains of these are delivered, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will move to stage II of the ceasefire deal to end the war on Gaza signed on 10 October and one that is guaranteed by US president Donald Trump.
The search has been long and tiresome with plenty of pitfalls for the suffering Palestinians of Gaza who continue to reel under the dictum of starvation, killing and misery imposed upon them by Israel since the 7 October, 2023.
While Hamas and Islamic Jihad held the bodies of these hostages killed in Gaza through Israeli missile and gunfire over the past two years, handing them over to Israel has been a difficult exercise and took a long time because of the mass destruction Israel incurred on the enclave.
Through its mass bombing, the Israeli army changed the geography of the area with debris and rubble replacing homes, high rise flats, public buildings, infrastructure, roads and highways. In this war, Gaza has become unrecognized, a horrifying story of its former self.
After 10 October many – at least hundreds of thousands – Gazan returnees long displaced and made homeless and spent their times moving from one place to another in search of elusive safety, said they didn’t know where their homes were because they had been turned into mass mounts of debris and rubble.
In this war, Israel mercilessly dropped 100,000 tons of explosives on the 364-kilometer enclave with the help of the United States and other western countries who were delighted to be disposing of their mass weapons to Israel.
For the Gazan returnees, and in defiant mood, said they would build a modicum of existence on the rubble of their homes to the frustration of the Israeli government and army who wanted to empty the enclave and forcibly transfer its people to other countries.
Although, and technically a ceasefire was signed, in the past month-and-a-half, Israel kept the bombing pressure on. Netanyahu, and his extremist government, never believed what the Palestinian groups were saying that it was almost impossible to find the hostages because of the extent of the bombing made worse by the fact it refused to allow special equipment to enter the Gaza Strip.
However, around a month after the truce, and through constant pressure through Washington, Doha and Cairo who acted as mediating partners, Israel finally allowed the machinery into the besieged enclave through an Egyptian team working with the Red Cross to help in the search for finding the Israeli bodies.
Despite this, Israel kept claiming if Hamas wanted to, it could easily produce the hostages’ remains and continues to play a waiting game. But what is the logic of that nobody knows for it was Hamas that finally agreed to the ceasefire in the interest of what remained of its people who were being starved, left with no homes and willingly killed through Israeli sniper bullets that continues today.
After the ceasefire, Israel followed its own strategy under the pretext of falsely attempting to destroy Hamas and Islamic Jihad through violating the truce time-and-again by bombing different parts of Gaza and killing its civilian population. In this ceasefire, there was to be no let up. This time, Israel was having a field day in its military actions with a nod and wink from the outside powers.
The figure will undoubtedly continue to rise but till the cut-off date of 23 November, 2025, Israel violated the ceasefire 497 times. It bombed, destroyed and targeted innocent civilians under the claim of looking for Hamas operatives. Thus 342 civilians were killed during this time while more than 700 injured, sending the signal that Israel is not really interested in maintaining the ceasefire under the watchful eyes of the Americans.
Many believe Israel is adamant using the ceasefire to do what it will in Gaza and through the ceasefire under the bridge while paying lip service to the US president who says he wants to maintain the ceasefire, redevelop Gaza while getting rid of Hamas. But even that has to be taken with a pinch of salt.
All this goes back to finding the remains of the last two hostages which Hamas says is going to be extremely difficult to find but says it will continue its search with the other Palestinian factions. On the face of it, this appears to be a game-changer.
Right now however, Netanyahu refuses to open the Rafah crossing point, beef up the entry of food trucks into Gaza, begin to think about redeveloping the enclave or withdraw his troops from 53 percent of Gaza. This is plus the sticking point of ending Hamas rule in the enclave although the Islamist Organization said it would withdraw from the territory in favor of a technical committee that would rule Gaza.
But all this is considered pep talk for neither Hamas nor Israel seem to be in favor of changing a new leaf leaving the Trump administration to move around the 20-point plan ironed out by the US president himself back in late September. However, the Gaza question is still at the beginning. If the second stage goes through, and everyone is waiting for it to start, it is unclear how developments will turn out for the enclave. Will Hamas leave, will Israel withdraw from the enclave in favor of the multinational force and/or more importantly will Gaza be rebuilt again and by whom. Arab money is said to be already on the table!
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