By Andrea Tucci,
A ceasefire agreement in Gaza is finally here, announced in Doha to the joyous relief of the two million Palestinian civilians who have so far survived from the war.
The agreement, quite complex, was crafted as a gradual three-phased process.
Phase one of the agreement will span over 42 days. During that time, Israel will gradually withdraw from the Gaza Strip and allow the entry of 600 trucks of humanitarian aid a day, which is crucial to suffering and starvation in Gaza.
During this phase, Hamas will gradually release an agreed-on number of Israeli captives while Israel releases hundreds of Palestinian detainees and captives, including many women and children. The fate of the remaining Israeli captives will depend on the success of negotiations in phases two and three of the agreement.
Benjamin Netanyahu, is been by far the most obstinate obstacle that mediators have faced, until a combination of “gifts” and bullying tactics by incoming US President Donald Trump were in play, who also made use of overwhelming support among the public in Israel.
Certainly the situation in Gaza will persist and continue to claim lives unless and until a sustained influx of assistance is guaranteed, including the establishment of field hospitals and the reconstruction and re-equipping of destroyed hospitals.
At least one million people are waiting to return to their neighbourhoods in Gaza City and northern Gaza, but with 92% of homes are decimated or damaged.
There are also practical issues that remain unclear in this regard, including information on monitoring the return of the forcibly displaced to the north, as well as the simple yet essential task of clearing roads, dismantling unexploded ordinances, and providing the returnees with shelter and basic services.
Other issues will be a lot more complex, yet critical, to social cohesion moving forward. Namely, retrieving the remains of at least 11.000 victims buried under the rubble and identifying them accurately, in addition to ascertaining the fate of thousands of Palestinians who are still missing. It could take months or even years to collect verified these data.
The framework agreement of the ceasefire, and several US officials, point to the reconstruction of Gaza in phase three as requiring, to be very optimistic, between three to five years, and the costs are estimated to be as high as $80 billion, in what would be the largest rebuilding effort since World War II.
This enormous task has been pushed to phase three of the agreement to avoid a complete breakdown of the talks. But the question remains: who will take on this epic task?
Other questions must also be answered:
What will be the relationship between Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory? What is the role of the Palestinian Authority? And what will be the future of Hamas?
For sure the Palestinians must hold the key to move forward.
It is necessary they need to craft a unified political system capable of charting a path towards for the establishment of their own independent nation. Remaining divided will only serve of only reducing the Palestinian issue to a purely humanitarian cause
The ceasefire is not the end of the road, but the beginning of a long a difficult path full of traps.
