For the Israel-Hamas ceasefire to be meaningful, an enduring peace must be the objective


When is a ceasefire not a ceasefire? When it is between Hamas and Israel, with Donald Trump as a late arrival to the treaty birthing suite in the role of midwife.
Any break in the killing of unarmed non-combatants is always welcome. But, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has said repeatedly, Israel will not stop the war until the last member of Hamas, a declared terrorist organisation, is dead.
His aggression has deepened Palestinian resentment, however, fuelling a multi-generational conflict, a war without end.
The parties to the Ceasefire Agreement are looking for completely different outcomes. They are not looking for an enduring peace, which Netanyahu shows no sign of wanting and the Palestinians see as unachievable.
Israel wants the surviving hostages back, not least of all to assuage the growing criticism directed against the Netanyahu government for its inability to secure their release.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, want life’s essentials, including things as basic as shelter from the elements.
Once Israel gets the hostages back, it will return to business as usual.
As the fragility of the ceasefire in southern Lebanon demonstrated so clearly in November 2024, Israel needs little provocation to break any deal. This ceasefire appears no more durable than its predecessors.
Since its creation in 1948, Israel has had but one strategic goal – its total security against its neighbours.
Its conception of armed conflict is total war, relying ultimately on nuclear deterrence that itself depends on the threat of nuclear weapon use.
It is ruthless in the pursuit of its security agenda and intransigent in its use of armed force. It spends 4.5 per cent of its GDP on defence (just under $48 billion in 2024), supplemented by just under USD23 billion ($37 billion) in direct US defence assistance in the same year.
So Israel’s total defence spending is almost the same as that of France, which places ninth in global rankings (just below Australia, which comes eighth).
For the Palestinians, particularly those living in Gaza, anything that might resemble a strategic goal is a distant hope. Their immediate concern is human survival – food, water, housing and medical services (to say nothing of education, employment, infrastructure and a functioning government) – in a wasteland that will take generations to restore even to the already overcrowded and poor living conditions that predated the current war.
As for Gaza’s economy, the UN Committee on Trade and Development has calculated that it would take 350 years to return Gaza to its 2022 growth levels.
Given the intensity of its war in Palestine, it is unclear whether Israel wants the Palestinian people to survive at all. But even if it does, the Netanyahu government is implacably opposed to a Palestinian state.
Whatever the condition of the people who inhabit Palestine, and regardless of where they might live and whether they have a sustainable economy, Israel wants to control Palestine and maintain a military presence as an occupying force. In these circumstances, the “two state solution” is an unrealisable hope, where it is not a cynical confidence trick.
So the ceasefire is a prelude to nothing. It is a temporary cessation in the bombing of locations where Hamas fighters may be hiding, and the destruction of neighbourhoods where members of Hamas may be residing with their families or benefitting from communal support. And that support is unlikely to decline.
The youth of Palestine have nothing – no work, no prospects, no hope. This is the classic breeding-ground for the long-term alienation, anger and despair that nourishes radicalism and terrorist movements.
For Israel to enjoy the long-term peace it hankers after so desperately, and for the Palestinians to have any chance of enjoying basic human and community security, the ceasefire must transform itself into a lasting peace than can be monitored and supervised.
This is where the US and its major friends and allies, including Australia, could play a transformative role. Together, they must prevail upon Israel to desist from its disproportionate assault on the Palestinian people, initiating the negotiations that bring both sides to a sustainable long-term peace.
Through its peacekeeping functions, the UN also has a critical role.
Of course, Israel would have to come to terms with the consequences of its occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights, and address the status of East Jerusalem and its dispossessed Arab inhabitants.
For any ceasefire to be meaningful, an enduring peace must be the objective. Whether Israel accepts that is moot. But if it refuses to support the sustained good faith diplomacy that is integral to a negotiated peace, Israel is condemning itself to war without end.
That is the antithesis of the security it so craves.
Allan Behm was chief of staff to Minister for Climate Change and Industry Greg Combet from 2009 to 2013 and senior advisor to the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Penny Wong from 2017 to 19.
He now works as advisor on The Australia Institute’s International and Security Affairs Program.