After fifty days of fighting and more than 2100 dead in Gaza, both Israel and Hamas are claiming victory following this week's announcement of an indefinite truce. Israel's prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu claimed he had secured "a great military and political victory" in Gaza and that Hamas had been dealt "a heavy blow". For its part, Hamas boasted that it had achieved what major Arab armies had failed to do "and destroyed the enemy's power of deterrence and the legend of the army that can never be defeated". The actual terms of the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire offer scant grounds for triumphalism on either side, with negotiations on many substantive issues deferred until the peace has held for a month.
The Palestinians have secured an easing of the blockade of Gaza, which has been in place since 2007; an increase in humanitarian aid and reconstruction material admitted into the Strip; an extension of fishing waters from three nautical miles to six; and a reduction of Israel's buffer zone along the Gaza border. Separately, Egypt has agreed to open its Rafah border crossing with Gaza. A deal on other key Palestinian demands - for the opening of a seaport and airport, the release of prisoners from Israeli jails and the transfer of funds to pay 40,000 public service workers - will have to wait until talks resume in Cairo next month.
For Israel, the ceasefire brings an end to rocket fire from Gaza in return for a halt to its own bombing campaign but Mr Netanyahu’s demand for a demilitarisation of Gaza has little chance of being accepted next month. The offensive against Gaza at first had overwhelming backing in Israel but as Israeli casualties mounted - 64 soldiers and six civilians in total - support for the military operation and for Mr Netanyahu himself started to plummet. The bombardment of Gaza succeeded in killing many Palestinians, most of them civilians and including more than 500 children, but it failed to protect Israeli citizens from rocket fire. The campaign has been costly in economic terms too, while the damage to Israel’s international reputation, already under severe pressure on account of its actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, is incalculable.
This conflict, the bloodiest and most protracted ever between Israel and Hamas, has left behind a changed political landscape in which Israel has dropped its opposition to the Palestinian unity government supported both by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinian Authority is returning to Gaza after seven years to take control of border crossings and to co-ordinate the reconstruction effort but Hamas and Islamic Jihad have established themselves as elements in the Palestinian polity. The most important change, however, may be a realisation in Israel that it cannot defeat Palestinian resistance or secure its own future by military force alone.
