Ceasefire: Is the Writing on the Wall?

February 12, 2025

by: Ilse Strauss, News Bureau Chief

Wednesday, 12 February 2025 | It’s been near impossible to keep up with current events over the past two weeks. My goodness! Blink and you miss something.

In the Middle East, all eyes are on the hostage–ceasefire deal between Israel and the terror organization Hamas, an agreement that is seemingly teetering precariously close to the abyss.

The three-stage ceasefire deal was reached last month and halted over a year of fighting following the Hamas October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel, when the group murdered 1,200 people—mostly civilians—and took 251 hostages back to Gaza.

The first phase of the deal would see 33 of the 101 hostages remaining in Gaza released—eight of whom Hamas has admitted are dead. In exchange, Israel would release thousands of Palestinian security prisoners—including hundreds serving life sentences for terror attacks, murder and attempted murder—and halt fighting in the Strip.

Negotiations for the deal’s second phase were supposed to begin last week. Terms would include the remaining 59 hostages coming home, scores more Palestinian security prisoners released and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza—and, of course, a permanent ceasefire.

Yet five rounds of hostages released later and with 17 of the original 33 hostages—including Shiri Bibas and her two red-headed sons Ariel (5) and Kfir (2) and a mentally ill young man—still to come home, on Monday Hamas announced it would delay the release of these hostages “until further notice,” blaming Israel for violating the ceasefire agreement.

The violations? According to Hamas military spokesman Abu Obaida, “Delays in allowing displaced persons to return to northern Gaza, gunfire and shelling in various areas and failure to deliver agreed-upon aid, while we have upheld all our commitments.”

Israeli military officials rejected the claims outright. “They were reviewed and found baseless.”

US President Donald Trump weighed in with a no-holds-barred ultimatum: have all the Israeli hostages home by noon Saturday…or else.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed his US counterpart. Following a four-hour meeting of the Security Cabinet, the premier said in a video statement last night, “If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon, the ceasefire will end, and the IDF will return to intense fighting until Hamas is finally defeated.”

Does this mean the writing is on the wall for the ceasefire?

Hamas has proven itself a master of psychological warfare, and this might be yet another ploy in the terror group’s arsenal. In fact, according to political analyst Ron Ben-Yishai, Hamas’s aim is not to collapse the agreement. Instead, the announcement is a pressure tactic aimed at pushing Israel into a corner to make concessions during negotiations for the second phase of the hostage deal that would allow the terror group to survive, regroup, rearm and then return for the promised October 7 Part 2.

Ben-Yishai offers two key tells that reveal Hamas’s bluff. First, the rather dramatic and public declaration comes at a revealing time, namely, at the start of the week. The terror group has thus factored in the time international leaders would need to panic and pressure Israel into kowtowing to Hamas’s demands for phase two and ensure the agreement continues. The trick of fabricating what seems like a potential crisis to gain an upper hand in negotiations is a bargaining strategy as old as time, Ben-Yishai explains.

The second indicator is the source of the demand. According to Ben-Yishai, the decision to call a halt to the hostage release comes from Hamas’s leadership in Gaza, not the international decision-makers who handle the negotiations.

This brings us to what Hillel Fuld calls a “very dangerous game of chicken.”

Hillel isn’t a brave keyboard warrior with no skin in the game. In 2018, 17-year-old Khalil Jabarin attacked his brother, Ari, at a shopping mall, stabbing him in the back repeatedly. Even as Ari’s heartbeat slowed from the rapid blood loss, doctors explained after the attack, he fired at and wounded Jabarin, who was heading toward his second victim, a female shop worker. Jabarin was tried for murder—and promptly morphed into a poster child for anti-Israel groups who accuse the Jewish state of imprisoning children.

Jabarin was one of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners with innocent blood on their hands released in exchange for Israeli hostages. The Fuld family along with the countless others are now witnessing the convicted murderers of their loved ones go free—often as millionaires, thanks to the Palestinian Authority’s Pay-to-Slay initiative that offers financial rewards to those who spill Jewish blood. Perhaps worse, they are forced to watch the world media failing to differentiate between Israeli hostages and convicted killers.

Oh yes. Hillel has skin in this game.

“To be clear, no one wants more war,” he wrote on social media. “We want our hostages back and we don’t want more IDF soldiers to pay the ultimate price but we won’t be extorted by Hamas. Those days are over…There’s a new sheriff in town…He has repeated over and over that if Hamas doesn’t release ALL the hostages by Saturday, all bets are off and Israel will take off the gloves, or should I say handcuffs that were placed on Israel by Biden.”

“Of course, the families of the hostages are begging Netanyahu to not blow up the deal. I feel for them. I really do. It’s just terrible what they’re going through. They don’t deserve this suffering. But Netanyahu has to run a country and protect his citizens as hard as that is to relay to those parents. He can’t put 10 million Israelis in danger.”

In the end, perhaps this is not a question of whether Hamas will or won’t sabotage this ceasefire—and then accuse Israel. They’ve done so numerous times in the past. In fact, that’s what they did on October 7, 2023, violating the ceasefire agreement that was in place until October 6, 2023.

Perhaps there’s another question to be asked entirely. British author and political analyst Douglas Murrey famously ascribed the endless rounds of war in the region to a singular truth: Israel is never allowed to win and Hamas, in this instance, is always allowed to draw. And that, he said, simply sets the stage for the next conflict.

Perhaps the question should be whether Israel will, for once, be allowed to win this war.

Posted on February 12, 2025

Source: (Bridges for Peace, February 12, 2025)

Photo Credit: Haim Zach / GPO