While Egypt was trying, in cooperaton with Arab and European partners, to consolidate a fragile ceasefire in the Israeli war on Gaza, Israel renewed its attacks against the devastated Strip. Israeli hostilities came as Cairo was lobbying support for the Egyptian plan for reconstruction, and less than two weeks before a promised US response to the plan.
In the early hours of Tuesday, recently assigned Israeli Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir was talking not just about a prolonged war on Gaza but about taking control of the Strip. Israel’s devastating air strikes signalled the failure of the truce between Hamas and Israel, reached after months of negotiations, that had gone into effect on 19 January. The strikes came two days after the US hit Houthi targets in Yemen and threatened Iran, saying it would be held accountable for any possible Houthi attacks against Western vessels heading to or leaving Israel through the Red Sea.
Sources in Cairo say that the length of Israel’s renewed war on Gaza depends on whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal is to consolidate his coalition and avoid early elections following Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s threats to leave the government if the war is halted and block the Israeli budget, or if Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump have decided to resume the war in order to displace Gazans ahead of turning Gaza into a real estate investment scheme.
Both Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli security minister who quit in protest at the ceasefire agreement, say the war should continue until Hamas is eradicated, Israeli hostages, alive and dead, are retrieved and the Palestinians forced from Gaza.
In social media statements following the renewed attacks, Smotrich said that the “promise” to resume fighting had been fulfilled with the objective of “destroying Hamas and returning all the hostages”. According to Smotrich, the resumption of hostilities had been planned for weeks and “will look completely different to what has been done so far”.
Before the resumption of hostilities, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty was engaging with regional and international partners to arrange for a Gaza reconstruction conference and Cairo had been hosting intensive talks, first with an Israeli and then Hamas delegation, to extend the first phase of the truce.
But instead of discussing how to implement the second phase of the three-phase agreement, sources say the Israeli delegation came with an exaggerated list of demands, including the release of half of the remaining hostages in return for reopening the borders to humanitarian aid after it closed them two weeks ago in violation of the ceasefire agreement.
During the first phase of the ceasefire, Hamas released 24 Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight that Hamas said had died during Israel’s war on Gaza. In return, Hamas secured the release of hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli jails, including some with life sentences. Many of the released Palestinians had to leave the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In the second phase Israel was supposed to agree to a permanent ceasefire, allowing for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages and the bodies of those killed in return for more Palestinian prisoners. Phase three would then focus on reconstruction and governance.
Sources say Egyptian and Qatari mediators always had doubts about Netanyahu’s intentions to move beyond the first phase, especially after Trump reversed all weapons sanctions that Biden administration had imposed on Israel. They add that during talks in Cairo, Egypt had tried to convince Hamas to show pragmatism and agree to a partial separate hostage deal.
A source close to Hamas explained that it had refused to hand over the hostages because in the absence of this one bargaining card there would be no “red lines at all” to prevent Netanyahu from “crushing Gaza even further into the ground”. He added that Hamas had told the Egyptian and Qatari mediators and American negotiators who contacted them in Doha that Israel was stalling and Netanyahu’s only goal was to keep the Israeli coalition intact and avoid elections which, if he lost, would leave him vulnerable to a prison sentence for the corruption charges he is facing.
Last week, Doha held a meeting with key players in an attempt to reach a compromise acceptable to both Israel and Hamas, with one suggestion based on US Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff’s “framework for negotiating a permanent ceasefire”. The framework allows for a 50-day extension of the first phase during which Witkoff demanded the release of half of the remaining Israeli hostages in return for the re-entry of humanitarian aid and the release of a limited number of Palestinian prisoners. Witkoff’s framework contained no guarantees that, if taken up, Israel would not relaunch hostilities.
Hamas sources saw the framework as a trap to which the resistance movement could not sign up. Regional diplomatic sources say it had become clear that even if Hamas had agreed, Netanyahu was planning a new round of hostilities.
In the early hours of Tuesday, renewed Israeli strikes on Gaza killed hundreds of Palestinians, many of them women and children, but also including senior Hamas figures. The Israeli press reported that at least one Israeli hostage had been killed, leading the families of the Israeli hostages to accuse Netanyahu and his government of compromising the lives of their relatives to serve his political agenda.
International humanitarian organisations have raised the spectre of more than a million Palestinians facing imminent starvation. Volker Turk, UN Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Tuesday that he was “horrified” by the Israeli strikes which “add tragedy on tragedy”.
In New York, the UN Security Council held an extraordinary meeting, upon the request of Algeria, a currently non-permanent member of the council. Addressing the meeting, the Permanent Representative of Algeria Omar Bendjama said the bloodshed in Gaza served the interests of Israel’s political leaders. For his part, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher told the council that the efforts “to save the lives of survivors in Gaza are at a breaking point”.
Egyptian sources say that Cairo is working with Doha and international partners to try to “salvage the ceasefire”, though none of the three sources who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly on Tuesday were optimistic, with one saying Israel’s assault is unlikely to stop before early next month. This, he said, raises tensions, not least in relation to the sacred prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque during the last 10 days of Ramadan.
Egyptian and foreign diplomatic sources in Cairo expect the renewed Israeli war on Gaza to be coupled with further US strikes against the Houthis in Yemen to spare Israel from any possible Houthi retaliation. The Israeli press has already confirmed the synchronisation of US attacks with Israel’s plans to restrike Gaza.
According to Sayed Ghoneim, fellow of the Military Academy for Advanced and Strategic Studies and a visiting professor at NATO and the Royal Military Academy in Brussels, the US strikes against the Houthis are “the largest and most significant military action Trump has undertaken in his second term” and show his determination to launch decisive air strikes should the Houthis retaliate.
He added that he expects US air and naval strikes against the Houthis to continue for several days. In addition to lending a hand to the Israeli war on Gaza, Trump’s decision to hit the Houthis, Iran’s last effective “proxy”, is further weakening Iran’s regional power and could corner Tehran into signing a new nuclear deal that will impose constraints on Iran’s military, and not just nuclear, capabilities.
Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at Kings College in London, said it was unlikely that the US strikes on Yemen would have any impact beyond neutralising Houthi intervention in support of Hamas. However, on Tuesday evening, a Houthi missile hit southern Israel. This was the first Houthi missile attack on Israel since the ceasefire went into effect.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 March, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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