TEHRAN – Growing international pressure and unexpectedly strong Palestinian compliance are reshaping calculations around advancing the Gaza truce.
The relative “success” of the first phase of the Gaza truce deal is prompting questions about whether conditions are now ripe to launch the second phase.
For Washington, ending the genocidal war and preventing the occupying Israeli regime from resuming daily large-scale massacres depends largely on the Palestinian side fulfilling its commitments and avoiding retaliatory measures.
The first phase unfolded amid severe difficulties, including repeated Israeli ceasefire violations justified with flimsy pretexts.
The Israeli regime also rejected multiple proposals from mediators, and at one point resumed its widespread indiscriminate aggression, killing and wounding hundreds. On the ground, the IOF pushed toward and beyond the so-called “yellow line,” while the Zionist regime failed to reopen the Rafah crossing in both directions or allow in the agreed quantities of humanitarian aid.
Despite these obstacles, Palestinian resistance forces met their obligations, especially regarding the exchange of prisoners and remains. Only one IOF body remains unrecovered, defying earlier U.S., Israeli, and mediators’ expectations that retrieving all remains would be nearly impossible amid Gaza’s destruction.
This removed a major Israeli regime’s argument and placed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a bind: either defy the mediators, who consider phase one complete and Palestinian compliance sufficient to proceed, or accept their position and move to phase two.
The latter would trigger backlash within Netanyahu’s far-right government, since the next phase requires IOF withdrawal to a new line near Gaza’s barrier, the deployment of international forces, expanded humanitarian access, reconstruction efforts, and interim governance by a Palestinian technocratic cabinet supervised by a proposed “peace board.”
Reports suggest the United States wants phase two underway before Netanyahu’s scheduled visit later this month, hoping to block any Israeli attempts to stall the process.
Washington is also reportedly seeking to reassure the Israeli regime that American coordination with regional guarantors, particularly Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar, can address its fears about a lingering “security threat” from Gaza.
The Zionist regime insists on the full disarmament of Palestinian groups, while mediators argue that laying down arms, or neutralizing them through agreed mechanisms, is far more realistic. U.S. officials are said to believe states like Turkey and Qatar can negotiate such arrangements with Palestinian resistance forces in ways that would solidify the ceasefire.
The U.S. administration is also reportedly pressing the occupying Israeli regime to accept that its genocidal campaign has reached its limits and that diplomacy must now take precedence to restore the regime’s regional and international image.
This approach also led the U.S. to heed Arab and Islamic requests, echoing Palestinian concerns, to block former British prime minister Tony Blair from taking an administrative role in Gaza, citing his close alignment with Zionist positions. Washington is instead seeking candidates acceptable to all sides.
Palestinian compliance in phase one, contrary to the occupying regime’s intelligence assessments, has compelled Washington to increase pressure on the regime not to collapse the deal and instead to open a credible diplomatic track.
This has renewed criticism of the security establishment’s inability to anticipate or understand the calculations of Palestinian resistance forces, whose decision-making remains opaque to the regime’s intelligence even after more than two years of genocidal war.
Ending the genocidal aggression and preventing the Israeli regime from regaining American cover to resume it ultimately hinges on the Palestinians’ continued adherence to their commitments and on avoiding the tit-for-tat dynamic that Netanyahu is seen as trying to provoke.
The Israeli reluctance to fully implement the agreement appears aimed at preserving space to escalate militarily or derail the transition to phase two, entrenching new facts on the ground in the meantime.
But Washington, driven also by President Trump’s personal ambition to secure a major foreign policy achievement, sees completing the deal’s stages as central to a broader regional strategy.
That strategy includes expanding normalization, resolving outstanding issues involving Lebanon, Syria, and potentially leveraging momentum to help end the war in Ukraine.
Economically, it is also seen as a way to curb China’s growing influence in West Asia. These goals make it increasingly difficult for Netanyahu to freeze the Gaza agreement at its first phase and present it as the final outcome.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: tehrantimes.com
