There were emotional scenes in the Middle East as hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were reunited with their families across Israel.
At the same time, busloads of Palestinian prisoners arrived to large crowds in Gaza in an exchange brokered by US President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, Trump and other world leaders signed a ceasefire deal during a summit in Egypt.
University of Otago international relations professor Robert Patman told The Front Page that it’s a welcome step forward.
“Let’s be quite clear, this situation didn’t occur overnight. It’s been two years in the making, following the dreadful Hamas terror attack on Israel,” Patman said.
That was followed by ”Netanyahu’s campaign of mighty vengeance”, he said.
“Something like more than 67,000 Palestinians have died in an intensive bombardment of Gaza. Eighty per cent of the Palestinians killed have been civilians, including around 20,000 children.
“So there’s been enormous and unimaginable suffering. To declare it over may be premature. What we can see is that all sides have signed up to the first phase of the agreement, which involves all living Israeli hostages being released. In return, Israel has released about 2000 Palestinian prisoners, including 400 children.
“A key part of the first phase is the unrestricted distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza. According to the UN, 500,000 Palestinians are currently facing starvation. The ceasefire could not come quickly enough.”
Patman said the easy part, the release of hostages, had been done. The more difficult part now was the future of Gaza.
“Under the agreement, Israel has to carry out a phased withdrawal in return for Hamas disarming. But here comes a particular problem. Hamas may be reluctant to disarm because it’s given up its only form of leverage, which is the hostages.”
Patman said Netanyahu had given no indication he would accept a Palestinian state.
“That’s a problem and it’s a huge omission in the 20-point plan. There is no explicit commitment to the Palestinian right of political self-determination,” he said.
“I think countries like Qatar, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have no illusions about the difficulty ahead, but I think they believe it’s a calculated risk worth taking because with Trump on board, if Netanyahu starts digging in and refusing to withdraw his forces from Gaza, then I think they calculate that Trump will feel sufficiently invested to start leaning on Netanyahu.”
The next step is for there to be the appointment of non-political, technocratic Palestinians to run Gaza, Patman said.
“That governance body will be overseen by what Trump called a ‘Board of Peace’, headed by himself and including people like Tony Blair, who has enormous baggage in the Middle East area.
“The crucial thing, I think, from the point of view of Arab states, will be some recognition that the Palestinians have a part to play in determining their own destiny.
“Because at the moment, what is conspicuously absent from the Board of Peace are Palestinian representatives.”
So, how do we know this plan won’t fall over and have history repeat itself?
“We don’t,” Patman said. “But life in politics is often a choice between the disagreeable and the intolerable. And the situation we have just witnessed in the last two years, for most of us, has been intolerable.”
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The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
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