[News] There was never going to be a phase two, the ceasefire was the strategy

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  There was never going to be a phase two, the ceasefire was the strategy

Ceasefires, like negotiations, have become another battlefield where Tel 
Aviv stalls and Washington scripts the outcome. Gaza’s future is already 
being written, and not by Palestinians.

Mohammad al-Ayoubi <https://thecradle.co/authors/mohammad-al-ayoubi>

NOV 20, 2025 
-https://thecradle.co/articles/there-was-never-going-to-be-a-phase-two-the-ceasefire-was-the-strategy


Photo Credit: The Cradle

The first phase 
<https://thecradle.co/articles/hamas-israel-agree-to-first-phase-of-gaza-ceasefire-under-trump-plan>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 
<https://thecradle.co/articles-id/33870>, 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 
<https://thecradle.co/articles/no-rule-without-resistance-gazas-post-war-future-and-the-collapse-of-foreign-illusions>– 
not just on Gaza, but on the broader terms of war and peace in West Asia.

Western powers have long used negotiations as mechanisms 
<https://thecradle.co/articles-id/34076>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 Israeli 
military to the red lines drawn by the Palestinian resistance around 
international trusteeship 
<https://thecradle.co/articles/blairs-second-coming-gaza-under-colonial-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 
<https://thecradle.co/articles/over-400-casualties-in-gaza-since-start-of-us-backed-ceasefire>of 
the ceasefire, the relentless destruction of infrastructure, and the 
targeted killing of civilians represent a continuation of Israel’s 
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 Israeli media – 
that the resistance has implicitly accepted 
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-10-10/ty-article/.premium/how-hamas-gave-netanyahu-the-excuse-to-prolong-the-gaza-war/00000199-cd96-d068-a9b9-eddfd1ce0000>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 <https://thecradle.co/articles-id/34347>” 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 Israel wants it stripped of costs, 
politics, Palestinian rights, and any actual withdrawal.

Israel 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, Israel has used the tunnel issue to justify 
continued ground operations – even though its own military acknowledges 
that eradicating the tunnel network is an unachievable 
<https://www.inss.org.il/publication/gaza-tunnels/:~:text=Azar%20Gat-,what%20have%20we%20not%20yet%20grasped%20about%20the%20strategic%20implications,of%20the%20organization's%252>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 <https://thecradle.co/articles-id/34311>” – 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 Israel’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 
<https://thecradle.co/articles/us-drafts-plan-for-international-gaza-security-force-seeks-un-backing-report>“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 
<https://www.aa.com.tr/ar/%D8%A5%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A%D9%84/%D8%AA%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D9%81%D8%B6-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%8A-%D9%84%D8%AE%D8%B7%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AA%D9%8A%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%BA%D8%B2%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%AA%D9%87%D8%AC%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%B7%D9%8A%D9%86%D9%8A%D9%8A%D9%86-%D9%85%D8%AD%D8%B5%D9%84%D8%A9/3473162>, 
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 Israel is 
obstructing the second phase for four core reasons.

First, because advancing to the next phase would amount to acknowledging 
the failure <https://thecradle.co/articles-id/19839>of its war. Within 
Israel, 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 Israeli military to 
redefine the terms. This duplicity creates a gray zone that Tel Aviv 
exploits to its advantage.

Third, because the Israeli far-right 
<https://thecradle.co/articles/why-israel-seeks-a-temporary-gaza-truce-to-keep-its-genocide-going>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 
<https://thecradle.co/articles/gaza-needs-70bn-to-rebuild-following-israels-genocidal-war-undp%5d>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 Israel 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 Israeli 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 
<https://thecradle.co/articles/lessons-from-syria-lebanon-resistance-is-the-only-guarantor-of-sovereignty>.

Yet the question remains: Can Israel 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.

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