The Decibel - The difficult path ahead for peace in Gaza

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

The mood in Israel and Gaza turned from celebratory to uncertain in the hours after a ceasefire deal was announced. The day after the deal was made public, Israel continued air strikes in Gaza and then delayed a vote on the deal. But by the end of Thursday, it looked like the process may be back on track.Thomas Juneau is a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa. He explains what we know about the deal so far, and how the most difficult part of this ceasefire has yet to happen.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

The war in Gaza is in a strange, fragile state. A deal for a ceasefire was announced Wednesday by mediators representing the U.S., Qatar, and Egypt. They've been involved in negotiations between Israel and Hamas. But after the initial celebrations in Israel and Gaza, uncertainty has settled over the region. On Thursday, Israeli forces struck targets in Gaza, sending emergency crews to fiery scenes.

Meanwhile, in Israel, protesters were out on the streets, calling for an end to the war and an immediate return of hostages. And elsewhere in Israel, far-right protesters called for Israel to retain control of Gaza. We will settle Gaza. We will settle Lebanon. We will settle the entire promised land. Thank you very much.

If this ceasefire deal holds, it will begin on Sunday. There are believed to be 100 hostages still remaining in Gaza. Their families are anxiously awaiting news. These truly are probably the most stressful days we've experienced in over a year since the last deal. The daily anxiousness about might this be their last day on Earth, to the fact that some of these people by next week might have their loved ones sleeping in the bedroom next to them.

Ruth Strum had two of her sons kidnapped on October 7th, 2023. She's been told that one of them will be returned to her in the next six weeks. I imagine both their returns, she said. I will be there for them, and whatever they want, they'll get. I'm waiting for that embrace. In Gaza, where officials say at least 46,000 people have died, and other estimates suggest that number could be much higher. Displaced residents hold out hope that this could be the start of a better future.

This man says, we need solutions. We need to start thinking about our future. Enough destruction and wars. We are exhausted. For Sami, a Palestinian child, he's hopeful that this ceasefire will mean he can return home. He says, I only wish to return to Gaza City for one reason. I wish to see my father again. see my father again. Today, Thomas Junot, a professor of public and international affairs at the University

of Ottawa, is on the show. He'll tell us the details of the ceasefire plan and explain why the hardest part of the negotiations has yet to come. I'm Maenaka Ramon-Wilms and this is The Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Thomas, thank you so much for joining us again. Thanks for having me. Of course we should note that we are talking around 1 p.m. on Thursday afternoon. This is obviously still very much a developing story and things are

progressing pretty quickly. But Thomas, I just want to get your initial reaction to Wednesday's news of the ceasefire. What went through your head? My initial reaction was one that was not surprised in the sense that in the past week or so it had become fairly clear that the odds of getting to a ceasefire deal were increasing by the day. You know, it's been 15 months of war now. I've been fairly pessimistic throughout those 15 months, not only on the prospects of a ceasefire until last week, but on the broader prospects of the situation. But by now, I think the stars had mostly aligned that it was pretty clear that it was just a matter of time.

Hmm. So now it's been about 24 hours since mediators announced that a deal has been reached. And in that time, residents in Gaza have said that Israeli forces conducted airstrikes after the ceasefire was announced. And the Israeli military itself said that it struck 50 targets across Gaza over the past day. So what do you make of these strikes at this time? Not a surprise at all. And I think there's two things that we can say about that. First of all, the ceasefire is to come into effect on Sunday,

which is the 19th of January. So that we're not there yet. It is a basic rule of war that when you know that there's a ceasefire coming in 24 or 48 or 72 hours, there's a good chance that there will be last minute, last second attacks, strikes to really try to maximize your advantage, to try to accomplish things until the very last minute, last second attacks, strikes to really try to maximize your advantage, to try to accomplish things until the very last minute. Hamas's capabilities are very

much weakened. It has only a very limited ability to do that. But on Israel's side, since it has the momentum so much on the military side, it's not a surprise. And I would not be surprised if there are additional such attacks until Sunday. On top of that, I would add, let's see how this plays out in the next days and weeks, but look at Lebanon, right? Where there's been a ceasefire for a number of weeks now between Israel and Hezbollah. There have been a number of attacks by Israel. There has been movement by Hezbollah trying to reposition itself to some extent.

So not fully respecting the terms of the agreement. So as much as in the short term, I think the agreement will hold. We can have a separate conversation on the longer term. I think we need to expect that both sides will really try to maximize their advantage, even if sometimes it means going beyond what the ceasefire deal calls for. But as long as both sides still want that ceasefire to hold, they'll be able to manage that. Well, this is interesting too, in light of the fact that on Thursday, some members of

the Israeli government have said that there's still not a deal, that certain points were final but Hamas was trying to change things. Hamas refutes that allegation. So just suffice to say, Thomas, there's a lot of confusion here, it sounds like. So what do you make of that? Well, there is a lot of confusion because A, the ceasefire hasn't been fully formalized yet. It hasn't certainly come into force. That'll be on Monday.

And within the ceasefire itself, especially the farther down the road chronologically we go, the vaguer it is. And that in a way is a flaw, but it's a built in flaw in the sense that the two sides were not ready at this point to agree on a lot of the more specific points, especially on those that concern aspects farther down the road

like governance in Gaza after the war. But they agreed basically not to agree at this point because they wanted a ceasefire deal. They realized they couldn't agree on every detail. So they kept those ambiguous for now. The other point to mention is that on the Israeli side, we absolutely know that there are some individuals within the coalition government of Prime Minister Netanyahu who opposed this deal and who have been very vocal about that from the beginning. But the assumption that we can make at

this point is that Netanyahu did the math and he's assuming that this will pass. AMT – Can we talk about the timing of this deal? Because this agreement comes just days before Donald Trump takes office in the US. It also was announced hours before outgoing President Joe Biden gave his farewell address. What role is the US and I guess US politics really playing in the timing here? So it's obviously absolutely not a coincidence. I mean, President Trump has been saying for weeks now that he very much wanted a deal before he comes into power, his inauguration on Monday, the 20th. It's not entirely clear why he wants that, but I think the general assumption, which

is probably correct, is that he wants that mess to be off the table for him, right? He wants to be able to move on. He realizes that politically it's a difficult conflict. It's extremely costly politically for an American president to be bogged down into. He realizes that politically it's a difficult conflict. It's extremely costly politically for an American president to be bogged down into this. So he wanted that done. So we saw public pressure. We saw very overt threats by Trump and his allies on Hamas.

But we also saw public pressure, and according to media reports, private pressure by Trump and his future envoy to the Middle East, a man called Stephen Whitkoff, directly on Netanyahu. Witkoff met Netanyahu over the weekend, and according to media reports, forcefully told him, make this happen before the inauguration. So that certainly had a significant weight.

It's interesting. How much of a difference do you think that made? Because of course, the Biden administration has been working towards a ceasefire deal. But how much of a difference do you think actually having Trump and people in his upcoming administration there change things? Yeah, that's a great question and it's difficult to quantify, but I would say that it has had a significant influence, not the full influence. Another factor that really did play a lot into

this was Hamas, you know, steadily changing his mind. Hamas has been clobbered by Israel. Hamas has been significantly weakened. It is exhausted. It has been decapitated. It has lost a lot of its leadership, a lot of its fighters, a lot of its infrastructure, a lot of its weapons, its command and control, its communications infrastructure. So this ceasefire gives it a chance to breathe. There apparently was a debate in Hamas too among more moderate, more hardline elements, but that also played a role. So to assign the entire explanation only to Trump misses out on the rest of the context, but definitely Trump and the message he sent had a significant role to play. Hmm, okay. So Thomas, let's actually talk about some of the details of the deal itself then,

even though there's still some uncertainty around, you know, will these be the final terms. But let's talk about it as it stands now. So at the center of phase one of this deal, and this deal is broken down into three phases, but phase one really centers this exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners. And this of course is not a one-to-one exchange. For each Israeli hostage, dozens of Palestinians will be released. And that ratio, of course, is even higher when we're talking about an Israeli soldier. So Thomas, is there a dangerous precedent being set here? By agreeing to this, like, hasn't Israel set an incentive for more hostages to be taken?

Well, the precedent has been set a long time ago. This is not the first time. There have been prisoner for hostage exchanges between Israel and Hamas in the past. And the ratios were from a handful to dozens, in some cases to several hundred to one. So the precedent has already been set and you are right to raise the issue because there has been historically in the past and there will be now criticism inside Israel

that every time you do that, you incentivize further hostage taking, which is by the way, and that's a separate discussion, but a debate that we have on hostage taking issues in general, right? Whether it's with terrorist groups or with Iran or others, every time you do exchanges like that, you incentivize it for the future. But at this point, domestic pressure inside Israel was strong enough that, you know, after 15 months of painful domestic debates in Israel, it seems that, you know, after 15 months of painful

domestic debates in Israel, it seems to be in the process of moving forward. Of course, we should just say there's believed to be about a hundred hostages inside Gaza still. This was people taken on October 7th, 2023. But Israel does believe that at least a third of them are dead. So it sounds like there will be bodies returned as well. Yes, but not in the first phase. Based, based on the information we've seen in the media this week in the first phase, which has to go over six weeks, 33 hostages will be released, all of them alive, uh, women, children, uh, elderly and injured, but no soldiers. Uh, that goes to the second phase, which will include soldiers, but

also bodies of dead hostages. We don't know the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for these 33, but as you said, it will be certainly in the hundreds. Another big element of phase one of this deal involves allowing more aid into Gaza. This has been a big issue for months now. What will be the challenges around this aspect of the deal? The challenges will be massive, with the obvious starting point that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is an absolute catastrophe. I mean, we could spend the whole half hour just talking about numbers in terms of hunger, in terms of houses destroyed, schools, hospitals destroyed and so on, water sanitation. And people who have been killed, right? Like 46,000 seems to be the estimate that we see right now.

At least 46,000. A study came out in The Lancat, the British Medical Journal saying that it might be up to 55 to 65,000. We don't really know is the bottom line, but it's brutally bad, I think is where we can agree. The challenge with humanitarian assistance are multiple. First of all, the security situation in Gaza

is extremely difficult. Hamas has been weakened. So in all, the security situation in Gaza is extremely difficult. Hamas has been weakened, so in turn a variety of criminal groups and looters have taken over basic security functions in some parts of Gaza. There will be a lot of looting and then that aid will be sold on the black market. Israel, even though it has agreed apparently to allow more aid in, Secretary of State from the US Blinken talked about 500 trucks per day, Israel will want to retain some form of control because it wants to prevent aid convoys to be used by Hamas to smuggle weapons inside Gaza, which from Israel's perspective is a fair concern because Hamas has done that systematically in the past. So the basic point is that this

will be an extremely difficult, challenging and politicized process as badly needed as the aid is. So then Thomas, if we look at phase one of this agreement, what would you say is the most challenging part here? Well, you know, phase one, I am cautiously optimistic that it's going to happen. I would not put the number at 100% likelihood. But at this point, Netanyahu on the Israeli side, Hamas on the Palestinian side, with the backing of Trump, they've put their neck out,

they have committed to this and they want to make it happen, if only on the Israeli side to get the hostages released. So it will be a challenge in terms of the humanitarian aid, in terms of the identity of the Palestinian prisoners to be released, But ultimately, I think there's a reasonably good chance that phase one is going to be completed. We'll be back after this message. All right, so we've talked about phase one of the ceasefire deal, which is supposed to be over six weeks.

Let's now turn our attention to phase two and three of this deal. Thomas, what is planned for these later phases? And that's where things become a lot more complicated. And that's where my cautious optimism very quickly shifts into pessimism and skepticism. Phase two calls for a deal with a lot of the details yet to be agreed to for the release of the remaining hostages, about 65 to 70 of them, including 30 to 40, perhaps more already dead, so bodies, in exchange for another number to be determined of Palestinian prisoners. That's the bulk of phase two. That'll be difficult for a number of reasons. It'll rely on continued trust between the two sides. It will take time.

It will involve brutal images, very emotional images on both sides of prisoners being released, hostages being released, bodies of hostages being returned. There will be mounting opposition on the Israeli side, including from the far right, the extreme right elements in the Netanyahu government. There will be mounting calls on the Israeli side to continue operations against Hamas. So as we progress from phase one to phase two and throughout phase two, the inherent tensions within this entire multi-phase process will become increasingly prominent. And of course, the details of phase two, they're actually supposed to be hammered out during phase

one, right? So these actually have not been worked out yet. Exactly. What about phase three? If we get to that point, what would that entail? So phase three is even less clear, even fewer details have been agreed to by the two sides. And in many ways and not diminish in any way the importance of the release of hostages and prisoners for both sides. In the longer term, phase three is the most important because that's the one that calls for new arrangements for post-war governance and security in Gaza.

That is incredibly important because of the needs from a humanitarian perspective, from a security perspective. We simply don't know who governs Gaza as of today, not just by the time we get to phase three. Hamas has been seriously weakened. Its governance capacity is not dead, but it is severely hampered. So who governs Gaza right now? Israel has been very clear. It won't be Hamas.

Israel has also been very clear that it won't be the Palestinian authority, which governs the West bank, the other Palestinian territory. So what are the other alternatives? They have not been agreed to. There are a number of ideas being thrown around technocratic committees of independent Palestinians with support from other Arab states, perhaps also support from the UN or the EU, but these are extremely vague and all of them face tremendous logistical, political, security obstacles. Okay. Let's back up for a little bit here and talk about

some of the situations they might face in phase two. Part of the issue here is that in phase two, Israel wants all hostages released, but Hamas won't agree to that, says they won't agree to that until Israeli troops leave Gaza. And Prime Minister Netanyahu has said Israeli military is not leaving until Hamas is dismantled. So Thomas, I guess what pressures could be applied here to both sides to get them to a compromise? Because these positions seem quite different. These positions are very different. And the issue of getting the final hostages released will just get increasingly

difficult the closer we get to zero hostages in Gaza. And here it's important, even if it's a bit crude, to understand the logic of the hostages for Hamas. The hostages are human shields, right? They provide a last resort guarantee for Hamas. So the absence of hostages from Hamas's perspective, if all of them are released, can be perceived as a license for Israel to resume military operations against Hamas, right?

So there's going to be a very difficult dilemma from Hamas's perspective at that level. There's the issue of Israel's military and security presence in Gaza. In a nutshell, Hamas wants none of it and many in Israel wants to keep it. Not clear to me at all how do you reconcile that. So moving forward, these are going to be mounting challenges once we get past the earlier stages

of releasing the first hostages that I think will be a bit smoother. There have been discussions that the US may try to incentivize Israel into agreements here by also working on a deal with Saudi Arabia. This is regarding normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, right? So why would that be something that Israel would want? So a key factor in the success not only of getting to the deal this week, the first phase, but increasingly for phases two and three, will be what will Trump do? We saw how pressure, significant pressure on

both sides, not just on Hamas, had a significant impact on the achievement of the ceasefire deal this week. If Trump truly decides that he wants to see progress at this level, then that pressure will be indispensable to see actual progress in phases two and three. One of the elements of that American approach that is being widely discussed that goes back years, that goes back to the first Trump administration, efforts that the Biden administration continued until the October 2023 terrorist attacks by Hamas, which kind of sidelined that, is the issue of further normalization of relations between Israel and Arab states. We saw in 2020 with the UAE, Morocco and Bahrain normalization of relations between Israel and these three Arab states.

The carrot that is being proposed here by the US, if you want to call it like that, is in exchange for the US giving security guarantees to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia would recognize Israel and formalize diplomatic relations, normalize diplomatic relations, and in exchange Israel would have to give and this is where it becomes extremely vague and unclear But some kind of commitment for progress on a track to peace with Palestinians Including perhaps a commitment to Palestinian statehood, but that's not something Israel is willing to commit to at this point So is there a diplomatic dance that could lead to some triangular agreement here? possible, but extremely difficult and when we talk about this being used as an incentive for Israel, I mean, Israel wants normalizations because essentially this would guarantee more security for them. Is that kind of the reason behind it?

From Israel's perspective, normalization with more Arab states would be good for its security. It would remove, you know, potential enemies or rivals around its borders, it would also be a way to build a de facto coalition regionally with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, obviously with US support, against Iran, which ultimately Israel perceives as its main enemy. We've been talking about working towards a compromise of sorts here, Thomas, but I guess I wonder about the other side of things. Are there incentives for either side here to prolong negotiations or even avoid an agreement altogether? Well, you know, I think that the first phase, as we said, will probably materialize. Beyond

that, your question becomes really important because Hamas might calculate that it doesn't want to see progress towards phase three, because if you read the point of phase three as establishing new forms of governance and security in Gaza that exclude Hamas, if you're Hamas, of course you're going to oppose that. Why would Hamas agree to that? Why would it peacefully consent to that from Hamas's perspective? So Hamas might perceive that it doesn't want to see a resumption of hard Israeli military operations,

which have been so devastating against Hamas, but it also doesn't want to see this new form of governance excluding Hamas. So could it then decide that its best, least bad outcome is to drag out phase two indefinitely? That's absolutely conceivable. What about from the Israeli side? Because we do hear a lot about Netanyahu and his political future. How is that playing into it? From the Israeli side, it's also conceivable because there's a lot of opposition on the Israeli side to any possibility of stabilization of Gaza and of a political track that could eventually lead to some kind of peace or political process that could raise the issue of Palestinian statehood.

And I'm caveatting that with multiple multiple stages just because we are so far away from it. So on the Israeli side, you also have a lot of support within the coalition, within society for continued operations against Hamas to fully eliminate it. Because again, Hamas has been weakened, but it hasn't been completely killed. So there will be a lot of incentives, a lot of pressure on the Israeli side to eventually, especially once hostages are released, to avoid any kind of political process that could address the issue of Palestinian statehood and instead focus on resuming military operations. And Netanyahu's government is supported right now by a coalition. I guess I wonder about how stable his political future is,

if the ceasefire were to hold. Well, Netanyahu's political future is clouded by a number of issues. There are corruption allegations, there are judicial processes going on, investigating these corruption allegations. And there is a fear from Netanyahu's perspective that if he loses power,

he loses the parliamentary immunity that comes with his parliamentary seat and that would expose him to those legal processes. But even before that issue of Netanyahu losing power is the simple fact that he has to manage a coalition that keeps his majority in parliament and therefore his government alive. That includes far-right extremist elements who have been very clear that they do not support a ceasefire and want a resumption of military operations against Hamas. All right, so Thomas, you seem to say that you are cautiously optimistic this Phase One holds. If it does, and we're still waiting to see if that's the case, what would the wider effects of this be, of this six-week break in this war for the bigger region? Well, for the bigger region, you know, there's really a lot going on in the Middle East right

now. We saw, you know, the Assad regime in Syria collapsed stunningly fast just a few weeks ago. Iran has been significantly weakened. Hamas has been clobbered. The Houthis in Yemen have been rising. Saudi Arabia has been extremely active in evolving its foreign policy, developing relations with Iran,

investing significantly in economic and social reforms. The Middle East is really changing a lot. And sometimes in the West, we tend to lose track of how fast these changes are going and what they mean. So a bit of a breather in the next few weeks and hopefully more than the next few weeks, if it can allow humanitarian assistance to go into Gaza, allow

some breathing space for hopefully, as much as I'm not too optimistic, a political process to be set up for Gaza, it can allow the region as a whole to shift attention away, even if only a bit, without being idealistic or naive about it, towards some of the other many priorities, whether it's political change, revolutions, economic reform and so on, that are really gripping large parts of the region. Just very lastly here, for years we have talked about a two-state solution for this region. Is this idea still a realistic possibility? That's the million dollar question. To me, the two-state solution remains the best solution in the sense that it is the

only way to guarantee security in the region and stability and dignity for the two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, Christians and other minorities. It remains the only way to do that. The problem is that it's extremely difficult to achieve and nobody should be naive about how easy it is going to be to get there. The alternatives are permanent occupation of Palestinian territories and permanent war in never-ending cycles going up and down. That's not an appealing prospect for Palestinians but also for Israelis. Thomas, really appreciate you taking the time to be here. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Maynika Ramen-Wilms. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.