Eye on the Ball

Now that the ceasefire is signed, the struggle is just beginning | Non-Fiction | Fresh Soup

Image by Xinhua News Agency

For the past sixteen months, I’ve thought very little about the future and even less about the past. My mind was full of present. I know this feeling from previous wars, a sort of survival instinct that guides you not to waste energy on planning or reflection, and focus only on the pragmatics of existence

Now that a ceasefire deal has been signed between Israel and Hamas, thoughts of the future – the much talked-of “day after” that awaits us after the last of the Israeli hostages is returned and the war in Gaza ends – are becoming more real. And it’s even clearer to me now why Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership worked so hard for the past year to avoid reaching an agreement that would bring relief to both sides, and why it took pressure and threats from two U.S. presidents and the entire Arab world to get this agreement signed.

The war that began on October 7 is a horrific trauma for both nations, and there’s no doubt that the minute it ends, they will both need to hold a reckoning for the hate-mongering leaders who caused this terrible bloodshed. It’s impossible to imagine a post-ceasefire reality in which Hamas continues to rule the Gaza Strip as if it hadn’t been instrumental in bringing catastrophic death and devastation on its people, or in which the government of Netanyahu and his messianic partners is reelected after sowing so much hatred and chaos.

While the entire region clearly wants to end this ongoing nightmare and start promoting a better future, the people who are supposed to sign and implement an agreement have a completely different agenda. The ink hasn’t yet dried on the ceasefire deal, and there are already rumors that Netanyahu has promised the settler wing of his government that the deal will never get to its second phase, and that Israel will resume fighting in Gaza. Last week, the Israeli news site N12 reported that Hamas is recruiting more new operatives in Gaza than the number killed and imprisoned by the Israeli army. In other words, they’re continuing this state of perpetual motion, a death machine that can sustain the fog of war indefinitely, ensuring that we all keep living in a bloody present that will never end.

Until the ceasefire is fully implemented, all we can do is keep our eye on the ball and not give the architects of this tragedy any chance to thwart the deal that will end the war, bring the hostages home, and provide our injured region with the glimmer of hope and humanity that it so desperately needs.

Translated by Jessica Cohen