Ceasefire or charade: As Hamas frees Israeli captives, Netanyahu unlikely to uphold the deal

By David Miller

The overused Clausewitz axiom tells us that ‘war is the continuation of politics by other means’.

What is often less well understood – especially when dealing with the Zionists – is that diplomacy is merely the continuation of war by other means. And so it is with the latest ‘ceasefire’ agreement achieved by the Palestinian resistance in the field of diplomatic warfare against the Zionist enemy.  

First phase terms 

The first (and perhaps only) phase of the agreement requires a cessation of hostilities during which the Hamas resistance movement will release all living captives, as well as the corpses of those eliminated (48 living and dead in total), in return for two thousand Palestinian living martyrs who will be rescued from the Zionist torture dungeons.

At the time of writing this, Hamas has handed over seven captives to the International Red Cross Committee (ICRC) in Gaza and is expected to release 13 more, while awaiting the release of 2,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons under the terms of the deal.

But more detailed negotiations will have to follow, since at least two thousand more Palestinians kidnapped by the Zionist occupation may remain in captivity after this ceasefire.

The agreement also requires that the Zionists withdraw from 47 per cent of Gaza’s territory, although Palestinian resistance officials are doubtful that this condition will be met.  

No one is under any illusion that the Zionists will cease fire. Just the other day, I saw smoke rising from the ashes of Gaza City and Khan Younis as the Zionists terrorised Palestinian families from the sky, likely using Boeing’s Apache AH-64 attack helicopters as they so often do.

That’s the same Boeing that was recently gifted $96bn by Qatar Airways; $14.5bn by Abu Dhabi’s Etihad, and $37bn by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund on behalf of Riyadh Air. 

Donald Trump has just touted an in-person signing of the agreement, while the four Jewish extremists who are materially in charge of the agreement’s details for the Zionists – Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief adviser Ron Dermer – gave the treaty, and the genocide which has preceded it, fulsome blessings during a cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv.

The presence of Witkoff and Kushner at a Zionist cabinet meeting in Occupied al-Quds leaves no room for metaphor. Little wonder that Americans today are coming to the belated understanding that their Empire has been run by and for Jewish supremacist interests for several decades. 

Gaza prepares for massive captive exchange in first phase of ceasefire

Palestinian sources confirmed that exchange lists had been approved and that the first transfers would begin at 08:00 local time.

A win for Palestinian resistance

Despite all this fanfare, the war will continue, and possibly even expand, since Netanyahu will not be able to face domestic political rivals and internal pressure in the Zionist entity after such a comprehensive diplomatic defeat, based on the terms agreed by the victorious Palestinian resistance in Cairo under Qatari mediation, and Egyptian and Turkish coercion.

Turkish and Egyptian representatives have repeatedly pushed the Palestinian resistance to capitulate, disarm and end their struggle against Zionist colonization since the UN General Assembly summit last month, during which the Trump regime strongarmed Muslim-majority states into committing to Zionisation in their own states.  

The agreement is, as some Palestinians in Gaza have said, the result of “Palestinian struggle and steadfastness” surviving two years of genocide against all the odds, under the bombs and complicity of the whole world. The freedom of the living martyrs is their achievement above all, though it is likely the Zionists will immediately target released Palestinian prisoners for assassination.  

The agreement is also a major success for the Qatari strategy as lead mediator, which has delicately balanced the genocidal demands of the Zionist entity and its organ-grinder in the White House on the one hand, and on the other, the urgent need to both tamp down the indescribable suffering faced by the Palestinian people and to release thousands of Palestinians held in Zionist torture dungeons.

The Palestinian resistance has always placed the release of Palestinian hostages in return for the captured Zionist invaders at the top of the agenda, and predicated all other conditions on this and the end, which appears to translate into Hebrew as a mere slowdown of the genocide.

The wheels are at least turning to achieve one of these conditions. 

Resistance on the same page

It has also always been crucial to the Palestinian resistance to ensure that those hostages released from Zionist captivity are from a broad range of Palestinian social movements, without the exclusion of any faction or individual.

Hamas is negotiating on behalf of Palestine itself because it represents Palestine – electorally, militarily, diplomatically and in terms of its social composition. But it is not alone on the Palestinian side of the table.

Its delegates have been joined in this round of negotiations by representatives from other Resistance factions, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), whose Saraya al-Quds fighters have been vital to the Palestinian war effort for two years, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), whose Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades have also played a role in confronting Zionist fire.  

Iran warns of Israeli ‘deception, breach of commitments’ after Gaza ceasefire deal

Iran warns the international community to remain vigilant against the “deception and breach of commitments” by Israel after the announcement of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.

Abu Ali Mustafa’s successor as Secretary General of the PFLP, Ahmad Sa’daat, also known as Abu Ghassan, is one of the high-profile Palestinians whose release the resistance is demanding.

He is credited by the Zionists with avenging the martyrdom of Abu Ali Mustafa by overseeing the elimination of the bloodthirsty Zionist and advocate of Palestinian ethnic cleansing, then Zionist ‘tourism minister’ Rehavam Ze’evi, who founded the Moledet Party, in a storied operation in 2001 in Occupied al-Quds.  

Another of the renowned Palestinian hostages held in the Zionist torture dungeons is Ibrahim Hamed, a Hamas military commander from the occupied West Bank who has overseen many significant Qassam Brigade operations to liberate the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Zionists credit him with eliminating 96 regime agents and wounding 400 more during the Second Intifada. In typical style, Zionist military agencies have been kvetching that Hamed cannot be released as part of this deal because he is ‘the next Yahya Sinwar’.

So naturally, ‘senior sources’ believed to be in Shin Bet wasted no time briefing favoured Zionist propagandist Nadav Eyal that Hamed is actually ‘two or even three Yahya Sinwars’.

No doubt that in short order, he will be blamed for eighty-eight 9/11s, and we will be told he is worth $6bn, accompanied by grainy footage of a Turkish leather handbag said to be made by Hermès. 

One high-profile prisoner the Zionists have already refused to release – and who senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouq says his party insists on freeing through this deal – is the Fateh icon Marwan al-Barghouti, who has spent three decades incarcerated at the hands of the Zionists, and who has been widely touted as a potentially unifying presidential candidate across Palestine.  

Sticking points 

The Zionists’ refusal to release Barghouti, Hamed and Sa’daat serves as an early indicator of how difficult it will be to achieve the first phase of the agreement, which is the only phase that suits the resistance to commit to. The following phases of the proposed ‘Trump peace plan’ are too outrageous and insulting to even consider, and amount to a full and eternal Zionisation of Palestine (and, as a result, the rest of the world) under a Pax Judaica.

The Zionist supremacists have overstated their leverage over the Palestinian resistance if they think they can demand capitulation and disarmament the way they have in Lebanon. But they are already working deep inside Gaza to Zionise Palestinians without the consent of the resistance.

Take the example of Dr. David Hasan, a North Carolina neurosurgeon who seeks to target 20,000 hungry Palestinian orphans for brainwashing with aid in one hand and an ‘Israel-friendly curriculum’ in the other with his morbid ‘Gaza Children’s Village’ scheme.  

Gaza ceasefire deal: Prospects, pitfalls

This episode takes a deeper look at the prospects and pitfalls of the Gaza ceasefire deal.

The resistance is currently occupied with rooting out the Yasser Abu Shabab’s Daesh-linked gangs used by the Zionist regime as a subcontractor for rape, torture and executions inside Gaza during the genocide, but in time it will also doubtlessly address such Zionisation programmes and their coordinators with equal vigour.

This will cause friction while the Chabad extremist Kushner, who is personally obsessed with Zionising West Asia and bringing about a hegemonic Jewish Empire, remains by Donald Trump’s side. 

There is also the most obvious route Netanyahu is likely to take to frustrate any progress: taking back the Zionist colonists held as prisoners of war by the resistance and then continuing the war in Gaza City instead of withdrawing.

Netanyahu is closer than ever, and closer than any other figure in history, to bringing about a Pax Judaica – a complete transfer of global hegemony from the US to the Zionist entity.

In the unlikely eventuality that the Muslim-majority states refuse to Zionise as part of this Kushner-brokered ‘peace plan’, he and Netanyahu (who he has known as a father figure since his childhood) will simply forge ahead to bring about Zionisation at the end of a gun. 

David Miller is the producer and co-host of the Press TV show Palestine Declassified. He was sacked from Bristol University in October 2021 over his Palestine advocacy. 

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)

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