Around 2am on Tuesday 18 March, the people of Gaza were awakened by a sound that had become all too familiar: the music of war. Israel’s military machine was back up and running, its tanks, drones, and war planes coursing into the Strip. Before long, more than 400 people, including many children and families, lay dead. Many more were injured. It was Gaza’s bloodiest day since November 2023, when 548 people perished. Now, we are witnessing a full relapse of the devastating beginning of this war: Hamas firing volleys of rockets towards Tel Aviv, while Israeli ground troops surge in what looks like a fresh ground invasion.
The entire ceasefire accord Hamas and Israel signed on 15 January – it took effect four days later – has now been derailed, perhaps even destroyed. Nothing in politics and war is inevitable, but anyone who’s surprised by what’s happened hasn’t been paying attention. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to the ceasefire with great reluctance, an inauguration offering to the newly re-elected Donald Trump. Ending the war jeopardised Netanyahu’s cherished goal of destroying Hamas, but the prime minister also feared that the hardline ministers in his coalition government would bolt if he cut a deal with an adversary that killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, and captured another 251. He was right to worry. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and two other cabinet members from his Otzma Yehudit party quit. And the far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionist Party, would have followed suit had Netanyahu not assured him that the agreement with Hamas wouldn’t preclude a resumption of the war. Even so, Smotrich vowed to resign if it did.
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