In mid-March, veteran Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin abruptly sounded an alarm . "If the Americans do not restrain Israel, Israel will reoccupy the Gaza Strip all the way to the sea."
On the surface, the timing of the warning seemed strange. It came mere days after indirect negotiations were resumed in Cairo between Israel and Hamas on advancing Phase 2 of the ceasefire .
At the same time, Director-General of Trump’s Board of Peace , Nickolay Mladenov, had just delivered a proposal to Hamas that fully adopted the Israeli position on the complete disarmament and dismantling of all armed factions in Gaza before any Israeli withdrawal or reconstruction.
But observing the situation on the ground, Baskin was stating the obvious. Under the fog of the Iran war , Israel has dramatically escalated its attacks on Gaza, doubling down as soon as the Cairo negotiations started on 14 March.
Israel reduced the amount of aid entering the enclave by 80% ; expanded the fully occupied and depopulated area under its control; unleashed its proxy gangs to carry out attacks; and intensified daily airstrikes on Gaza, particularly targeting journalists, local police , paramedics, and Gaza’s few remaining solar-powered charging stations.
Israeli forces have also continued to expand their territorial grip on the Palestinian territory. The ‘Yellow Line’ , which defined the limits of military deployment under Phase 1 of the ceasefire, has been pushed further westwards, leaving over 60% of Gaza under the control of the army.
When Palestinians in Deir Al-Balah headed to vote in the municipal election last week, Israel sent out messages to all phones in the city telling them, “Congratulations on the occasion of the imminent elections… don’t forget there is only one ruler for this area.”
The message was signed with the alias of an Israeli intelligence officer and a phone number to contact to become an informant.
Days earlier, Israeli planes had airdropped pamphlets on the Shati refugee camp with small packs of coffee attached. The flyers read : “To avoid trouble, protect your future and that of your children, contact us.” It had an implicit threat in red about “preserving your life and your family’s”.
Israel’s aggressive recruitment of collaborators usually precedes a full-scale assault, as those collaborators collect and build up “banks of targets” for the Israeli army.
While a cabinet meeting scheduled for Sunday to discuss a resumption of the war was cancelled, senior Israeli military officials have been increasingly pushing to resume fighting, saying "the best time to defeat Hamas is now". Negotiations or ambush Although Israel’s escalations on the ground seem to be aimed at sabotaging the Cairo talks , a Palestinian leader who was present at the discussions told The New Arab that the proposal they received aims to cover up or justify any Israeli assault.
Mladenov delivered this plan under the threat that if Palestinian factions don’t accept full, immediate disarmament and the dismantling of all their infrastructure and militant wings, Israel would resume the war. The framework presented seemed deliberately geared towards being rejected, in order to lend cover to any new Israeli attack.
For instance, the proposal rewrites all of the obligations that Israel never fulfilled and systematically violated as part of the Trump plan’s Phase 1, making its commitments conditional on disarmament.
Six months ago, Israel was supposed to immediately allow the entry of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) and a new technocratic Palestinian committee into Gaza, and halt all military operations, including bombing, shelling, and assassinations, in return for the exchange of captives.
Israel has killed over 800 Palestinians since then and has still not allowed the ISF or the new committee to enter. The Mladenov plan now asks for Palestinian factions to first accept the principle of total disarmament in order for Israel to recommit to the very obligations that it never fulfilled.
In Phase 1, Israel was also obligated to allow a minimum of 200,000 tents and 60,000 temporary homes to enter, as well as medical necessities, fuel, and early recovery equipment to repair electricity, telecommunication, water, sewage infrastructure, and hospitals and bakeries.
The Mladenov plan deferred those obligations; temporary shelters would only enter alongside the disarmament process , and the early recovery materials would only go to areas where disarmament had been completed.
Under the Trump plan, a distinction was made between “offensive” and “defensive” weapons. The former means weaponry that could be used to attack Israel itself from inside Gaza, like rockets, whereas the latter means firearms that can’t pose a threat to Israel from inside the territory.
The plan had also used the term “decommissioning” instead of “disarmament,” which draws on the terminology of Northern Ireland’s peace plan, where warring parties stored their weapons in warehouses and only destroyed them as an outcome of peace, not a prerequisite. The weapons’ mere existence functioned as the insurance card that an agreement would be fully implemented.
The Mladenov proposal instead uses the language of “complete cleansing” of “heavy weapons” and “destroying” all militant infrastructure (e.g. tunnels, production sites, materials), and that all of this must be done within 90 days, during which no Israeli withdrawal would take place.
Rifles are also included in that heavy arms category. Which, in other words, means Palestinian factions should first render themselves fully defenceless and relinquish the only card of leverage they have on the negotiating table before Israel begins any withdrawal, if it ever does.
Between days 91-250, under the Mladenov plan, all remaining “personal weapons” (e.g., pistols, tasers) should also be turned in, and only in areas where there has been full independent verification of disarmament would the Israeli army withdraw “gradually” over that period. Even then, Israel would retain about 18% of Gaza’s area indefinitely as a “security buffer.”
Palestinian factions were shocked by this proposal and demanded that Israel first meet its Phase 1 obligations before discussing disarmament.
In April, mediators came up with a “bridging proposal” that scrapped this timeline temporarily but maintained the premise of total disarmament as a prerequisite to any withdrawal or reconstruction.
Needless to say, the plan is deliberately unworkable. Palestinians have a long experience of fulfilling their side of a bargain only for Israel to renege on all its obligations, and American guarantees have become worthless after the Iran war , when they and Israel attacked as soon as Iran offered zero nuclear stockpiling.
But even if Hamas’s leadership were to agree to this proposal, many of their members on the ground, as well as other smaller and more hardline factions, would refuse to comply out of sheer distrust of an offer that leaves them defenceless and vulnerable to an occupying Israeli army surrounding them. Itching for war Israel has been preparing a plan for months for the full violent takeover of all of Gaza, using unprecedented force with no constraints, since there are no more Israeli captives in the enclave.
Before the Iran war, Israel had been repeatedly pitching Trump the idea that if he gave them a free hand to finish the job in Gaza and disarm the enclave, it would unlock “his vision of Middle East peace” and earn him a Nobel Peace Prize.
For Israel, disarmament in Gaza is a farce, a fig leaf meant to hide these plans. Israel’s own Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted recently that Gaza doesn’t pose a threat to Israel. In February, Netanyahu announced the opening of a new airport in the Negev close to the Gaza Strip, which was previously considered too dangerous. Now, Israel's PM says that the problem “was solved,” meaning Hamas no longer represents a threat to Israel.
In the same month, Netanyahu said : “There are practically no heavy weapons in Gaza. There’s no artillery, there are no tanks, there is nothing”. Instead, he demanded the disarmament of 60,000 rifles , which cannot threaten Israel from inside Gaza, but can only be used to sustain an insurgency against the Israeli army if it decides to remain in the Palestinian territory.
Even if Gaza becomes fully disarmed, Israel can continue to occupy, bomb, raid, and besiege it under the flimsiest pretexts that it located a “rogue cell” or an individual creating a makeshift weapon. Who would then verify that “intel”, considering the more outlandish claims throughout the war, which it got away with unchecked?
Among Palestinians, there are also growing concerns about Israeli elections in less than six months, with the odds stacked against Netanyahu and the prime minister desperately needing an image of victory, especially after the failed campaign in Iran .
As has long been the case in Israeli politics, most notably over the past three years, Netanyahu may once again turn his attention to Gaza, using the resumption of war as a way to aid his political survival. Muhammad Shehada is a Palestinian writer and analyst from Gaza and the EU Affairs Manager at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor Follow him on Twitter: @muhammadshehad2 Edited by Charlie Hoyle