Key to the Israel-Gaza ceasefire agreement is whether Netanyahu’s government will again back out after getting hostages back and whether they will renege on the release of Marwan Barghouti, the respected leader of the Palestinian community. On both counts, it comes down to whether U.S. President Donald Trump continues to exert pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In March, when Netanyahu unilaterally violated the January ceasefire deal and implemented his weaponization of hunger with his full blockade on Gaza, Trump failed to do so.
A senior Hamas official also told Drop Site News that Palestinian negotiators faced intense pressure from Arab and Islamic mediators over the past 48 hours to quickly agree to key parts of Trump’s plan. After giving up the last of the hostages, they would have no leverage and could only rely upon Trump’s guarantees. Türkiye, Egypt, and Qatar were certainly involved in this. It is not clear on what basis they could offer strong enough guarantees to the Palestinian contingent that Washington would make sure that Israel would not break the agreement and attack again. However, one hurdle that Trump cleared was his role in putting Netanyahu on the phone last week to issue an apology, such as it was, to Qatar for attempting to assassinate the Hamas negotiators in Doha. Netanyahu’s outrageous violence against the people gathered to consider his so-called peace terms, among other things, undermined Qatar’s ability at the time to bring Hamas to an agreement.
Another key matter is the release of Marwan Barghouti, who has been hated and feared by his Israeli captors, not as a potential leader of attacks upon Israel, but for the respect he has engendered amongst Palestinians and the potential for him to bring cohesion and unity. He is at the top of the list submitted by the Palestinian negotiators for release; and while his release would be a major step toward a functioning statehood, it is also greatly opposed by those who would never tolerate such. Israel’s ethnic-cleansing cabinet ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have said that Netanyahu has promised them Barghouti will not be released.
