With the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas over, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear Israel will not accept any deal that leaves Hamas in power in Gaza or capable of carrying out future anti-Jewish pogroms, like it did on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel also faces the challenge that the regime in Iran — Hamas’ biggest backer — is accelerating its course to manufacture and launch nuclear weapons, which threatens the very existence of Israel.
Netanyahu announced March 2 that Israel has offered to extend the ceasefire until April 20, after the monthlong Muslim holiday of Ramadan and the Jewish Passover. This, he said, depends on Hamas releasing half of the remaining hostages.
But Hamas has refused unless Israel agrees to withdraw all its troops from Gaza, including from the Philadelphi corridor along the Egyptian border, and accepts a permanent ceasefire. Only then, it said, will it free the remaining 59 hostages. At most 24 remain alive, held captive in abysmal conditions.
The Egyptian government won backing from an Arab League summit March 4 for its alternative to President Donald Trump’s proposal that residents of Gaza be evacuated and the territory turned over to U.S. companies to develop, a move aimed at extending the U.S. rulers’ reach in the region.
Cairo says it wants to rebuild the territory with a “technocratic” committee in charge. Hamas welcomed the plan. But Israel is not willing to accept any arrangement where Hamas remains able to function.
Hamas lauded a Druze man, whose family says was mentally ill, after he stabbed four people in Haifa, Israel, March 3, killing 70-year-old Hassan Karim Dhamsheh. Like two of the other victims, Dhamsheh is an Arab citizen of Israel.
Within the Arab League’s 91-page Gaza plan “there isn’t even a condemnation of this murderous terrorist entity,” Israel’s foreign ministry noted.
Hamas is a deadly obstacle to all working people. Not only is Hamas’ goal to destroy Israel and rid it of Jews, it supports murdering Arabs who live or work with Jews and anyone who opposes Hamas’ reactionary bourgeois rule, no matter what their religious beliefs or nationality.
Dismantling Hamas would not solve the problems facing working people in Gaza or guarantee the existence of Israel. But it would open up space and buy time in the Middle East for working people of all nationalities to find ways to come together to defend their class interests.
Restart of Gaza war?
Hamas and Israel are both preparing for the possible restart of the war.
Despite taking big blows from Israeli forces over the last 17 months, the reactionary group has been taking advantage of the ceasefire to regroup. They’ve begun repairing some of their underground tunnels and using unexploded bombs to manufacture new devices.
Five divisions of the Israel Defense Forces — some 50,000 soldiers — are positioned around Gaza, ready to return to combat. “If Hamas does not release the hostages soon,” Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz said, “we will resume fighting, and Hamas will face the IDF with an intensity and in ways they have never seen before.”
The weakening of Hamas, the destruction of much of ally Hezbollah’s forces in Lebanon, and the fall of the Tehran-backed Assad dictatorship in Syria have set back the Iranian rulers’ expansionist aims, including their goal of destroying Israel. But the Iranian regime continues to try to find ways to rebuild Hamas and Hezbollah, and to produce nuclear weapons.
The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency has warned that Tehran has enough near weapons-grade uranium for six nuclear weapons. Tehran is believed to have built a uranium enrichment facility hundreds of feet underground in the Zagros Mountains.
According to the Jewish News Service, Tehran could build a missile capable of launching a crude nuclear weapon in a year and a half or less. That would give Tehran the capability to target Israel cities for another Holocaust.
“We don’t have much time,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar told Politico in an interview published Feb. 26. Not stopping Iran’s nuclear program would be a “catastrophe for the security of Israel.”