The first phase of the ceasefire agreement was never meant to be an end, only a beginning. For Palestinians, it offered a rare reprieve from the slaughter, a chance to recover bodies, reconnect families, and push back against the machinery of genocide.
But the moment the resistance fulfilled its commitments by delivering captives, returning remains, and upholding every clause, the mask slipped. Tel Aviv’s intent was never to advance to a second phase, but to extract what it could, then stall, shift the goalposts, and reassert control through other means.
The pause-and-dominate strategy
The ceasefire, brokered under the guise of relief, was engineered by Tel Aviv and Washington as a tool to restore their grip – not just on Gaza, but on the broader terms of war and peace in West Asia.
Western powers have long used negotiations as mechanisms to relegitimize their dominance. The language of international law, the architecture of diplomacy, and even the vocabulary of humanitarianism are all routinely weaponized to serve the interests of imperialism.
Behind the public statements and procedural delays was a deeper design intended to convert the pause into a pivot, and to reframe Gaza’s future in a way that sidelined Palestinians entirely. The ceasefire process itself became a tool of dominance, shaped by the very powers whose military and political machinery had driven Gaza to catastrophe.
The central question, then, is not why the second phase is delayed. It is: who is delaying it, to what end, and within what political architecture is this process being managed?
To answer that is to look beyond the headlines and into the power corridors that stretch from the Israeli war cabinet to Washington’s national security apparatus, from the divisions within the Zionist military to the red lines drawn by the Palestinian resistance around international trusteeship schemes.
Resistance upheld the deal – Tel Aviv broke it
Speaking to The Cradle, senior Hamas official Abdel Majid al-Awad lays out a straightforward but damning account: the resistance fully honored its obligations in the first phase, including the release of all living captives in a single batch, and the continued handover of bodies despite logistical complexities.
On the other side, there was no such commitment. Daily violations of the ceasefire, the relentless destruction of infrastructure, and the targeted killing of civilians represent a continuation of the Zionist entities well-established pattern of delay and evasion under the guise of “security considerations.”
This is the context in which the second phase now hangs. And here, it’s the resistance’s position that upends the dominant narrative.
According to senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) official Mahfouz Munawwar, the resistance has not signed off on any post-conflict political arrangements. The only agreement signed was the first phase. Everything else, including discussions on governance and security in Gaza, was deferred to a future intra-Palestinian consensus. Disarmament is not on the table. It will only be discussed once the occupation ends.
That truth collapses the myth – widely circulated in Zionist media – that the resistance has implicitly accepted phase two. It has not. It has held the line that any political future for Gaza must be decided collectively by Palestinians, not imposed by foreign powers.
Trusteeship by another name
Against this backdrop, the recent UN Security Council (UNSC) decision to establish a “Board of Peace” to administer Gaza is one of the most dangerous developments so far. For Hamas, “The resolution imposes an international guardianship mechanism on the Gaza Strip, which our people and their factions reject. It also imposes a mechanism to achieve the occupation’s objectives, which it failed to accomplish through its brutal genocide.”
The so-called “conditional approval” cited by Washington and Tel Aviv is little more than media spin. The actual implementation of the second phase remains impossible because the occupation wants it stripped of costs, politics, Palestinian rights, and any actual withdrawal.
The Zionist regime now ties progress on the second phase to three issues: the return of bodies, tunnel networks, and what it calls “residual threats.”
As Awad and Munawwar explain, these are not genuine security concerns but political tools to delay withdrawal and impose new realities on the ground.
From the start of the war, the occupation has used the tunnel issue to justify continued ground operations – even though its own military acknowledges that eradicating the tunnel network is an unachievable goal. The term “residual threats” is deliberately vague, designed to sustain a permanent war footing.
In other words, these are attempts to impose the terms of a victor after a battlefield defeat. Tel Aviv is trying to extract political concessions through talks that it failed to achieve through force.
Recarving Gaza
One of the most dangerous of these attempts is the imposition of the so-called “yellow line” – a geographical partition that would effectively divide Gaza into north and south, turning a temporary military arrangement into a permanent political rupture.
The so-called security buffer forms part of the occiupation’s ongoing campaign to carve up Palestinian geography – separating Gaza from the occupied West Bank, isolating occupied East Jerusalem, and now bisecting Gaza itself.
Awad is unequivocal: the resistance will not accept any redrawing of borders, military or political. There is no Gaza without Palestine, and no Palestine without Gaza. Any attempt to translate battlefield lines into permanent borders is simply a new version of the “New Gaza” project – a plan to sever the strip from its national context and transform it into a demilitarized, aid-dependent zone.
Equally alarming is the shifting mandate of the proposed “International Security Force” (ISF). What was initially framed as a monitoring mission to oversee a ceasefire has now morphed, under US proposals, into a full-fledged administrative entity.
From monitoring withdrawal, to administering Gaza, to exercising authority, to imposing a new political order, the security force aims to strip the resistance of any role and impose a political order that serves foreign interests.
Both Hamas and the PIJ have categorically rejected this proposal – not as a tactical stance, but as a principled position: any foreign force not approved by a Palestinian consensus is an occupying force, regardless of the flag it flies.
Even key Arab states have voiced objections, recognizing that this plan is little more than a reboot of Washington’s old trusteeship model. It reduces the Palestinian cause to a humanitarian problem and obscures the core issue of national liberation.
So why is Israel obstructing the second phase?
Sources from both Hamas and the PIJ inform The Cradle that the occupation is obstructing the second phase for four core reasons.
First, because advancing to the next phase would amount to acknowledging the failure of its war. Within the Zionist regime, the consensus is clear: the military campaign has not delivered. Formalizing a second phase would confirm that failure, so the political and military leadership prefers to keep the process in limbo – buying time in hopes of regaining lost leverage.
Second, because Washington plays both sides. While publicly pressuring Tel Aviv to comply, it simultaneously allows the Zionist military to redefine the terms. This duplicity creates a gray zone that Tel Aviv exploits to its advantage.
Third, because the Zionist far-right government perceives any withdrawal as capitulation. Progress on the ceasefire threatens to fracture the ruling coalition, exposing the government to domestic collapse.
And fourth, because Tel Aviv is attempting to extract in negotiation what it failed to impose by force. It demands resistance disarmament without compromise, tunnel destruction without combat, foreign oversight without responsibility, and the permanent detachment of Gaza from the occupied West Bank – while dressing it all up as a ceasefire.
The US, having orchestrated the ceasefire, now faces a dilemma. It wants the war to end to avoid regional collapse and repair its global standing. But it cannot force Israel into full withdrawal without triggering political backlash at home and further destabilizing the region.
The result is a controlled freeze. The goal is not to end the war, but to contain it – keeping it within limits that protect US interests without jeopardizing its regional strategy.
This marks a shift from “total war” to slow-motion warfare governed by international political decisions, not airstrikes or invasions.
A Palestinian vision for phase two
In this vacuum, the resistance has laid out its own vision for the second phase.
First, Gaza is not a separate entity. It is inseparable from the national Palestinian fabric. No future exists for Gaza outside the context of Palestinian unity.
Second, any international force must be limited to border monitoring. It cannot govern, manage, or police Palestinian society.
Third, Gaza’s reconstruction and civil governance should be led by a Palestinian technocratic committee, formed through national consensus and supported by Arab and Islamic states.
However, this vision is not compatible with the American plan. It is its antidote.
So, was the second phase delayed – or obstructed?
The answer leans toward the latter. Deliberately, strategically, and in full coordination between Tel Aviv and Washington. As both Awad and Munawwar tell The Cradle, the second phase, far from mere negotiations, will shape the future of Gaza, the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Authority (PA), the resistance, and the regional order.
That is why the Zionists and its allies are stalling. They want to ensure that when the second phase begins, it does not return the resistance to a position of initiative, nor collapse the Zionist government.
They seek to block any path toward Palestinian unity around an independent national administration. They want to prevent the reopening of a viable statehood track, to maintain the separation between Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and to preserve their grip over the crossings, the reconstruction agenda, and the broader political narrative.
The second phase will only begin when Tel Aviv is certain it will not trigger a new wave of Palestinian liberation.
And so, we return to the core contradiction: the resistance has fulfilled its obligations; the occupation has fulfilled none. In this gap between full compliance and full evasion, one of the most consequential chapters in the Palestinian struggle is unfolding.
In West Asia, agreements are rarely tools for ending conflict but instruments for dismantling resistance.
Yet the question remains: Can the occupation postpone the inevitable forever, or will the political momentum forged through resistance on the battlefield impose itself on the negotiating table too?
The answer lies with the Palestinian people – on their unity, their refusal of foreign guardianship, and the resistance’s capacity to translate its military endurance into a political strategy that can reconfigure the entire regional equation.
source: The Cradle