By Marika Sosnowski
Ceasefires are a uniquely complicated tool in armed conflict. This is because they exist at the intersection of war, law and politics.
Political scientist Cindy Wittke has suggested that attempts to define what a ceasefire is and what it entails will ultimately reveal a “lack of fit” with international law. This is because they are notoriously difficult to negotiate and enforce.
This “lack of fit” has perhaps been most obvious in the UN Security Council’s deliberations over a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Countless resolutions have been proposed with different wording, such as:
- “an immediate, durable and fully respected humanitarian ceasefire” (October 16)
- “humanitarian pauses” (October 18)
- “pauses in fighting” (October 25)
- “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors” (November 15)
- “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” (December 8)
- a “sustainable cessation of hostilities” (December 22).
Finally, on Monday, after nearly six months of linguistic wrangling, the Security Council has managed to pass a resolution that demands an “immediate ceasefire”. It emphasises “the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance” entering the Gaza Strip.
So, what will this resolution do in practical terms – and will it have any effect?
Enforcement mechanisms are limited
According to international law, a resolution of the Security Council is binding on all UN member states. This includes Israel and Palestine, which has UN observer status.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas have welcomed the ceasefire resolution.
However, Israel was furious over the US decision to abstain from the vote, in effect allowing it to pass. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office argued the wording benefits Hamas, saying it gives the group “hope that international pressure will allow them to accept a ceasefire without the release of our hostages”.
It also remains to be seen whether the Israeli government will comply with the resolution and if so, in what ways.
In reality, the resolution may make little practical difference to the lives of millions of Palestinians trapped in Gaza because the council has little way of enforcing it. Israel has already ignored the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian aid”.
While military action to force Israel to adhere to the resolution seems highly unlikely, states could take other economic and diplomatic action to try to compel Israel to comply. These could include imposing sanctions, halting weapons sales or withdrawing diplomatic missions and support.
In addition, the resolution only emphasises the flow of humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip be increased. This wording gives Israel some wiggle room to continue to deny access to aid convoys stuck at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings based on security grounds.
Even before the war began – but particularly since the Hamas attack on October 7 – Israel has been imposing obstacles on humanitarian aid entering Gaza during the inspection and distribution process. It continues to frequently, and seemingly arbitrarily, reject the entry of supplies such as anaesthetics, oxygen cylinders, ventilators, sleeping bags, dates and maternity kits.
However, the fact the US abstained undoubtedly marks a dramatic shift in its diplomatic support for its chief ally in the Middle East. The resolution sends a clear message to the Israeli government that a red line has been reached in terms of what the US is prepared to accept and support.
Where negotiations currently stand
The Security Council resolution will also likely put greater pressure on both sides to come to an agreement through the negotiations being led by Qatar and Egypt.
Hamas’ latest proposal includes four points:
- a comprehensive ceasefire
- withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip
- the return of forcibly displaced Palestinians
- the exchange of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hostages.
According to media reports, Israel has accepted an American compromise for the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for Israeli hostages. But media reports indicate it is currently refusing to commit to a permanent ceasefire.
If this agreement does eventually come to fruition, it will no doubt include many details about how the terms will be implemented. This was the case for the temporary truce that was negotiated between the parties in November, which included a choreographed exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners and the delivery of humanitarian aid.
The number of prisoners Hamas is currently seeking in exchange for hostages has been a source of contention.
In 2011, Israel agreed to exchange more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.
Arguably, foreseeing a similar scenario, Israel has arrested thousands of Palestinians in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank on minor offences in recent months. Hamas continues to hold around 100 hostages, the majority men and many reservists in the Israeli military.
Why ceasefires matter
International law is based on the premise that it imposes obligations on states, non-state parties and individuals that cannot be bargained away. However, as permanent members of the Security Council with veto power, the US, Russia, China, France and the UK have disproportionate power over how such laws come about or come into effect.
Nevertheless, the international community is ordered around certain social, political and legal norms. These norms come not only in the form of international law, but also diplomatic and economic relations. This is what the UN terms “friendly relations among nations”. These norms ensure, to an extent, that states comply with their obligations under international law without the need for military force.
The Security Council resolution passed Monday, with vague terms and relatively little incentive for compliance, is currently the least worst option to push the sides toward a halt to the violence and allow aid into Gaza.
Other efforts towards a potentially more meaningful and practical ceasefire should – and will – continue. If they weren’t before, all eyes should now be firmly on Gaza.
Marika Sosnowski is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne.
Hippy says
No it means nothing as Hamas already rejected it. When will people realize that until the Palestinians of Gaza realize that they are being used by Hamas and its supporters as fodder against their hatred for Israel? The naive youth here in the USA should be standing up for the Palestinians by denouncing and protesting Hamas and its supporters.
Endless Dark Money says
They need our american bombs to kill the kids in gaza. yes kids as over 50% of the population are children. Israel has murdered over 10,000 children since just October. Worst part is they use our weapons and money.
Endless Dark Money says
so if orange jesus is able to steal the election think he will still try to remove america from the UN like last time?
Sorry to break it to you Hippy but murdering kids in Gaza isnt going to solve anything. Gaza is a prison because of Israel so who cares if they rise up against their oppressors. People still starve to death because of the Israeli blockade. I say more power to them.
ASF says
The fact that over 50% of Gaza’s population is, as the Palestinians themselves say, under the age of 18 is proof enough that there has been no “ethnic cleansing” and decades long genocides” of Palestinians going on as “Anti-Zionists” so often like to claim.
Palestinian children would be a lot less endangered and a whole heck of a lot better off if our tax dollars weren’t going to fund UNWRA textbooks that teach dehumanzing hatred of Jews and glorification of Jihaidst terrorism.
The fact that the Gazan Health Ministry is controlled by Hamas and Hamas has long been in the habit of dumping their militant death counts in with any civilian casualty counts–as well as ascribing any all deaths from misfired Palestinians rockets to “Israeli airstrikes”–make the casualty statistics that come from the Palestinian side of the fence open to question. Likewise, those numbers do not account for the Palestinian lives lost as result of Hamas and Iranian-backed militants exploiting the Pakesitnian populace as Human Shields and “Pallywood” props–while they set up their militant operations and store their muntions in schools, hospitals and even in tunnels dug underneath the UNWRA headquarters itself.
ASF says
If Gaza is a prison it’s because Hamas has made it one–and then set it on fire on October 7th–knowingly and delibertaely. Palestintian lives matter as little to them as Israeli life does. But, the Pakesitnians in the Gaza Strip consent to be giverned like that so that’s on them. Israel has every right–in fact, it has duty to its own people–to defend itself against the inevitable blowback.
The Palestinians would turn Israel into a Jew killing field if they could. Over 70% Of the Palestinian “innocent civilian” populations in both The West Bank and Gaza who were recently polled by Arab sources said they approved of Hamas’s actions on October–which brought war upon on everybody in the region. They also opined that they would elect Hamas into power if they were given a choice.
So, the “power” is their’s to either keep setting that entire global neighborhood on fire or stop prioritizing their Jew hatred above everything else–including life itself.
As for blockades–Egypt has blockaded the Palestinians for decades for the same reasons that Israel has had to–because, all too often, the Palestinians have posed a security threat to everyone in entire region. That might account for why so few Arab countries have stepped up to the plate to help out their Palestinian brethren in more concrete ways in their time of desperate need. They know that terrorist forces would take full advantage of that in a millisecond–as they have done in the past and are continuing to try to do in the present.
hippy says
So allowing the Murders of Hamas to hide in the skirts of the Palestinians so they can continually break the “truces” and kill Israelis over and over again is your solution? The people who are “starving to death” and being “slaughtered” need to stand up, work with Israel and take care of Hamas. It’s funny that you do not address the root of the problem. Everyone just ignores it. Do you really think the people of Israel want to kill Palestinians? Why does everyone ignore that Hamas and it’s supporters are the root of the problem. Gaza is a prison becasue they allow Hamas to hide there. The allow themselves to be used as cannon fodder.
jake says
Which part of Hamas attacked Israel, did you miss?
Pierre Tristam says
jake, which part of genocide escapes you? Or do the mass murders of Arabs and the razing of their homes count not?
Pierre Tristam says
hippy, not all Israelis, not even most, but the likes of Netanyahu and his Likud predecessors going back to Golda Meir and Jabotinsky–founding racist of an ideology of obliteration–not only never recognized the right of Palestinians to exist, but proceeded to put their eradication plans in action, plans that have cloud-mushroomed under the likes of Begin and Shamir (two terrorists in their pre-ministerial days) and mushroomed exponentially, with the body count to boot, under Netanyahu. Hamas is not the standard. It’s endlessly acknowledged that Hamas is its own murderous organization. But it pales in comparison with Israel’s so-called IDF. Hamas is the endless shield behind which Palestinian-rights deniers hide and conveniently avoid addressing the issue. The root of the problem is not Hamas or the Palestinians. It’s Israel’s denial of the right of Palestinians to exist, a denial it enacts every day. The quote marks you place around words like slaughtered and starving to death, like your odious claim that they “allow themselves to be used as cannon fodder,” mirror that very denial, speaking as they do to your dehumanization of Palestinians. Then again, they’re Arabs, they’re terrorists, so it’s second nature for AIPAC’s reflexively racist propagandists to dehumanize them. Your talking points are vintage ’67. (I wrote this before noticing ASF’s comment, though I don’t need to have read it to have this apply equally to those equally threadbare talking points, with the one caveat that she correctly if not sufficiently points out the cynicism and monstrosity of Arab nations, not just Egypt, playing with Palestinians like pawns. The difference of course is that those Arab nations, not being representative democracies, are not legitimate, in the sense that they’re not representative of anything but the tyrannies of a few goons with titles and armies at their disposal. So they’re not the standard. Israel alleges to be a democracy, setting up its own standard, by which it fails.)
TREEMAN says
Pierre, will you STEP-UP and DEMAND that the USS Liberty Memorial at Heroes Park be Corrected by adding the fact that the Israel Defense Force ATTACKED (in 3 different attacks) the USS Liberty in international waters!!! No one in Israel was CONVICTED of this War Crime!!!!
ASF says
These “take it in context”/chicken or the egg excuses are not going to serve as adequate justifications for the deliberate massacre of innocent Jewish civilians and the taking of hundreds of civilian hostages in the midst of an already existing ceasefire–let alone, the cynicalk and calculated use of Palestinian civilians as Human Shields by Hamas and ither Iranian-backed militias afterwards.
FlaglerLive says
FlaglerLive addressed that at length here, here, here and here.