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Israel has a unique ability to secure favorable outcomes in agreements, especially in how they are implemented, achieving what it has not accomplished in its military campaigns.

On November 27, started the truce between Hezbollah and Israel, images of jubilant Lebanese civilians returning to the villages they had been expelled from after more than two months of relentless Israeli bombings were abundant. The leaders of the "Party of God," who had confronted the occupation forces and managed to halt their advance into Lebanese territory, were speaking of (another) divine victory, akin to that of 2006. Many people, both inside and outside the country, aligned with the so-called axis of anti-Zionist resistance, praised the fighting capacity of the Lebanese combatants despite their setbacks, including the assassination of their general leader, Hasan Nasrallah, in September 2024.

However, the developments during the weeks of the truce so far have once again demonstrated that Israeli governments have a unique ability to secure favorable terms in agreements, especially in how they implement them — achieving what they have not in their (devastating) military campaigns. Because, as always, the devil is in the details. The text approved for the truce in Lebanon — after 4,068 deaths, 16,670 injuries, and nearly a million and a half-displaced people — was so "vague" in certain aspects and, in others, left such a wide margin for Israeli leaders' particular interpretations that it could well be considered a "trap truce."

And this is how it has unfolded: the occupying soldiers have expanded, during peacetime, into areas they had not reached during the war. They have continued destroying houses, warehouses, and factories where, they claim, enemy arsenals or "strategic sites" were located. They have set up checkpoints and access controls on certain roads and, worst of all, have killed dozens of Lebanese citizens returning to their homes or, according to Israeli military propaganda, engaging in suspicious activities, such as transporting bundles (which they claimed were weapons) in private vehicles or simply approaching "in a potentially dangerous manner" to the areas where the occupying detachments were stationed.

None of these actions — expanding their presence, shooting at civilians, or destroying buildings — fell within the occupying force's powers. The wording of the agreement – "the parties reserve the right to intervene if the other violates the terms" — as mentioned, left ample room for interpretation. Why Hezbollah, and especially the Lebanese state, as a party involved in negotiating and enforcing the truce, accepted these terms and have not pressured the supervisory bodies or the so-called international community to curb Israeli abuses deserves a chapter of its own. If Hezbollah was already weakened by late 2024 due to the fall of the Syrian regime and developments in Lebanon, including the appointment of a president and prime minister entirely at odds with its vision of resistance, the circumstances surrounding the truce have further undermined its position.

Gazans should pay close attention to what is happening in Lebanon. Tel Aviv has been using understandings, truces, and peace agreements for decades to reinforce its military victories or compensate for its battlefield defeats. You will never see them lose at the negotiating table. And when an agreement no longer suits them, they simply stop honoring it. Just ask the Syrians about the unilateral nullification of the 1974 agreement that marked the demarcation line between occupied Palestine and the Golan Heights. According to the Tel Aviv regime, the fall of the Assad government in December 2024 invalidated those stipulations. Taking advantage of the political chaos, they have advanced dozens of kilometers into Syrian territory. More space for their military bases and, if permitted, new settlements.

Although, as in southern Lebanon two months ago, the people of Gaza took to what remains of the streets and squares in the Strip on Sunday, January 19, to celebrate the ceasefire, they would do well to remain cautious. Not only because the three announced stages — especially the third — are, as usual, vague, but also because, once again, the international guarantors are clearly aligned with the interests of Israel’s deceitful and indecent political and military ruling class. In Lebanon, the supervisors — a high-ranking U.S. military official and international forces — turned a blind eye to the continuous (but justifiable, in their opinion) Israeli violations. In Gaza, it will be Qatar, the United States, and Egypt who will be responsible for intervening in case of breaches.

Wolves guarding the lambs, especially Washington, whose leaders have unequivocally aligned themselves with their close ally, Israel. However, the third stage will be the most ambiguous and dangerous of all, as it includes plans to reshape Gaza's government, excluding Hamas, of course. To achieve this, the plan would rely on other Palestinian entities — though no one knows who they are — and third-party countries. One of these is the United Arab Emirates, a behind-the-scenes collaborator in the neo-Zionist strategy in Palestine, and not at all inclined to sympathize with the Palestinian cause: Abu Dhabi and Dubai, for instance, prohibit the display of keffiyehs (Palestinian scarves) and flags, let alone the publication of messages supporting the Gazan resistance.

Hours after the ceasefire began, Hamas, just in case, deployed hundreds of armed men into the streets to demonstrate who remains the predominant force in Gaza. Given this situation, it remains unclear how a new government will be imposed in the territory during this third phase without first sidelining the Palestinian militias.

Israeli negotiators are skilled at creating temporary factors and phased timelines that ultimately yield favorable outcomes for them. They have been doing this since the Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 between Egypt and Israel. At that time, the evacuation of the Sinai Peninsula, taken from the Egyptians during the 1967 war, was carried out according to a phased timeline and based on four geographic areas where the Israelis defined security responsibilities along the demarcation lines. That treaty established a prototypical approach to negotiations with Arab rivals: the demilitarization of adjacent territories and control over border crossings.

A maneuver aimed at establishing demilitarized and, as much as possible, depopulated areas. Thanks to Camp David, the Egyptian army is prohibited from setting up air bases or large-scale ground troop concentrations that could facilitate a hypothetical occupation of Israeli territory. This is not the case on the other side, where military installations are justified for security reasons (one of the propagandist perversions of Zionism is making much of the world believe that others wish to invade their territories; reality proves otherwise).

As we have seen during these fifteen months of the campaign against Gaza, Egyptians cannot unilaterally decide who enters or exits through the Rafah crossing (in southern Gaza). For this reason, they must coordinate security arrangements with the other side, just as they do along the rest of the border perimeter.

Worse still, the Israeli army ended up exclusively assuming jurisdiction over the so-called Salah al-Din Road or Philadelphia Corridor, which originally belonged to the Egyptians on the southern side, to more "efficiently" prevent arms shipments to Hamas and other armed militias. Later, after the Wadi Araba agreements in the 1990s, something similar was done with the Jordanians. Or, during the same decade, the (disastrous) Oslo Accords, which created the Palestinian National Authority and the A, B, and C territories where the Tel Aviv regime, as always, interprets areas of influence and settlement supervision in its own sui generis way, including control over access between them.

The idea of intermediate demilitarized zones with barely any population is now being pushed again in southern Lebanon, where several Israeli representatives have already threatened that "they are not going to leave completely." They intend to replicate this in Gaza.

The implementation of this ceasefire certifies the failure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Apart from devastating a 360-square-kilometer territory, killing, injuring, or expelling one-tenth of its population, and displacing the rest across the confines of the Strip, they have not achieved much. Of course, for the overarching plans of “brute-force” Zionism that the Palestinians are suffering from — in Gaza and also in the West Bank—breaking down Palestinian society and gaining new territories for their expansion projects represents an achievement. But they wanted more. They aimed to recolonize Gaza, impose a puppet government — just as submissive but more effective and aggressive than the Palestinian National Authority — publicize the release of prisoners held by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and others, film the destruction of all tunnels excavated by Palestinian militias, and prove that their army is still the alpha male of the Middle East...

But they have not succeeded. Little matters — this is what truces, and their interpretations are for, especially when international guarantors are sympathetic to the priorities of the Tel Aviv regime. To hint at what may lie ahead, consider that the Israeli army killed ten Palestinians in the hours following the agreement's implementation because Hamas had not submitted the list of names of the first three Israeli female prisoners to be released. The agreement did not state that this submission was a ‘sine qua non’ condition or that one side could resume bombing in such a case.

What was agreed upon, however, establishes that the displaced — hundreds of thousands — may return to their ruined homes over the coming weeks. Yet, the agreement does not stipulate an immediate withdrawal of occupying troops, who may remain on the roads and corridors where they are stationed and block access for supposed security reasons. A similar situation is occurring in Lebanon, where occupying troops have up to sixty days to withdraw from their positions. Until they leave, their mere presence prevents residents from returning to their homes.

The Greeks (Danaans) could not conquer Troy through war and instead relied on negotiation and gifts. Hence the famous line by Horace, spoken by the visionary priest Laocoön: "’Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes’" ("I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts"). The Zionist command is not as subtle but equally effective. No gifts, but when military solutions fail, they resort to negotiation, which always leaves something behind. Fear them, for they will find a way to twist the agreement, likely in the so-called second phase, and seek a formula to violate it in whole or in part.

They are aided by a new U.S. president, a specialist in "creatively" rewriting agreements. For now, he has already forced them to negotiate, despite opposition from the ultra-Orthodox factions. He knows more than the recalcitrant sector of neo-Zionism: the goal is to achieve the same objective by other means. Here, everyone — or almost everyone — is conspiring against the Palestinians. They have long grown accustomed to resisting alone against the predators.

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