After Gaza Hostage/Prisoner Exchange, Ceasefire Lacks Enforcement Mechanisms and Accountability

Interview with Robert Jereski, lawyer, activist and coordinator of Code Pink Women for Peace World Court Campaign, conducted by Scott Harris

gaza ceasefire

The first crucial phase of the U.S.-brokered 20-point Gaza ceasefire agreement was implemented on Oct. 13, when Hamas released 20 living Israeli hostages who have been held in Gaza since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that killed 1,200. Israel released some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, many of whom had never been charged with a crime.

As the ceasefire took effect, critical food supplies and humanitarian aid have begun to be transported into the Gaza Strip, where 2.3 million people face widespread starvation and malnutrition. While humanitarian aid groups say they want to vastly increase the flow of aid into Gaza, Israeli authorities said they’ll restrict the number of trucks allowed to enter the territory, due to the limited number of deceased hostages’ remains released by Hamas thus far. The United Nations and human rights groups have condemned Israel’s brutal two-year assault on Gaza that has left more than 67,000 mostly Palestinian civilians dead as a genocide.

After the completion of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, the fundamental questions of who will govern Gaza, when will Israeli forces fully withdraw, and how reconstruction can begin, have been deferred to an uncertain “second phase” that lacks enforcement mechanisms, clear timelines or international guarantees. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Robert Jereski, a lawyer and activist who serves as coordinator of Code Pink’s World Court Campaign. Here he assesses the worrying lack of specificity in the 20-point Gaza ceasefire plan, which could lead to a resumption of the war.

ROBERT JERESKI: We see Palestinians and people around the world are relieved that there are no more bombs dropping. There were some shortly after Israel agreed to the ceasefire. They continued to deploy ordinances against Palestinians. There’s a desperate need for more than just food. It’s medicine. It’s like they need shelter and Israel is the occupying power. It has an obligation to protect civilians under its control, but the concerns are exactly what you mentioned, Scott. I mean, the details are very slim. The enforcement mechanism is secretive. It’s not really known. There was an announcement that Trump—or the U.S.—and Qatar, Egypt and Turkey had signed an agreement and there’s some suspicion that they are the enforcers: Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt with encouraging Hamas to go along with this amorphous plan and sort of guaranteeing it to them. And the U.S. doing the same with Israel.
It’s really a misnomer to call this a peace plan. I mean, you can’t have peace without justice, and there is no justice in this plan. It’s incredibly one-sided and it’s really a neo-colonial plan for domination of not just Gaza, but also of the region. Because really what happens when Israel is not held to account for what we all saw it do in Gaza for two years. You know, for the first months when South Africa filed their application at the (International Court of Justice) World Court in December of 2023 and then received provisional measures from the World Court to order Israel to take certain measures because they were plausibly violating the rights that were guaranteed under the Genocide Convention, belonging to the Palestinians is a plausible genocide. We saw Israel ignore those orders. They ignored those orders. The ones issued in March and the ones issued in May.

And these have the force of international law, but Israel ignored them. We’ve seen so many serial violations of fundamental precepts. Killing negotiators. Sovereignty of nations. Collective punishment against the Palestinians. We’ve seen the snipering of children targeting of hospitals, even the digging up of graves in Gaza that this plan, which has no accountability measures in it, is really an attempt to distract all of us from what we’ve all seen and what we’ve all been demanding—which is an end to Israeli impunity.

And it does nothing but reward Israel—rewarding it by allowing it to continue to occupy territory in Gaza and impose conditions before it will follow the World Court’s direction, which is to dismantle the settlement project, the occupation of Palestinian territories, which includes Gaza. There are no settlements there, but it is an occupying power over Gaza. That settlement project and those practices are illegal. The World Court, July 19, 2024, declared them illegal and they had to be dismantled as soon as practicable and the UN General Assembly in September of 2024 gave Israel a year. That year was up Sept. 18.

SCOTT HARRIS: During the course of this horrible two-year war, just in recent months, we’ve had several important European nations recognize a Palestinian state. Are you optimistic that that project of recognition of a Palestinian state that grew out of this horrible war can move forward in any positive direction?

ROBERT JERESKI: All too often there’ve been conditions that are imposed on the Palestinian state that European countries wish to establish, which involves reforms and disarmament and deradicalization, which is also in the Trump plan. It just shows the unfairness of the vision of the West and the hypocrisy of the rules-based order in the West because the entity that has been imposing, that has been committing a genocide for the last two years has no conditions imposed on it for continued relations with the West. While the victims of Israel have all sorts of conditions before they are to be allowed to enjoy their fundamental rights by the West. These last two years have really unmasked the fantasm of liberal Zionism and also the fantasm of a Western liberal rules-based order.

Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Robert Jereski (15:41) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.

For the best listening experience and to never miss an episode, subscribe to Between The Lines on your favorite podcast app or platform.

Or subscribe to our Between The Lines and Counterpoint Weekly Summary. 

Subscribe to our Weekly Summary