The most im­por­tant and hu­mane as­pect of the planned cease­fire be­tween Is­rael and Hamas is the end for an as­sured six weeks in the first in­stance, of the bru­tal and in­hu­mane slaugh­ter of Pales­tin­ian chil­dren, women and non-com­bat­ant men. The health au­thor­i­ties in Gaza have es­ti­mat­ed that over 46,000 Pales­tini­ans have been killed, many in the most bru­tal cir­cum­stances imag­in­able. For­mer USA CIA di­rec­tor John Bre­nan has put the num­ber of deaths be­tween 70,000 and 80,000.

While there is cer­tain to be re­lief from not see­ing this geno­ci­dal killing live in our liv­ing rooms, the lead­ers of the most mil­i­tar­i­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful coun­tries must car­ry the bur­den of hav­ing done lit­tle to stop the slaugh­ter as it raged over 15 months. In­deed, a few of these lead­ers sup­plied the Is­rael De­fence Force with 20,000-pound Amer­i­can-made bombs, and pro­vid­ed pro­tec­tion for them at in­ter­na­tion­al fo­ra.

An in­di­ca­tion of the in­hu­man­i­ty of the killings can be seen in the re­al­i­ty that notwith­stand­ing a gen­er­al agree­ment to end the bomb­ings, the slaugh­ter will con­tin­ue un­til Sun­day, when the agree­ment is due to be signed.

“The pri­or­i­ty now must be to ease the tremen­dous suf­fer­ing caused by this con­flict,” stat­ed UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res.

One el­e­ment of the cease­fire agree­ment is the open­ing of the way for hun­dreds of truck­loads of food, wa­ter, med­i­cine and oth­er ne­ces­si­ties of mod­ern life to be de­liv­ered dai­ly to the starv­ing Pales­tini­ans in Gaza.

It must, how­ev­er, be recog­nised that reach­ing the cease­fire agree­ment is loaded with po­ten­tial for po­lit­i­cal wran­gling and ma­noeu­vring. Even be­fore the doc­u­ment is signed, the out­go­ing and in­com­ing pres­i­dents of the Unit­ed States, Joe Biden and Don­ald Trump, are al­ready locked in an ar­gu­ment over who can lay right­ful claim for bring­ing the killings to an end.

First in­tro­duced eight months ago by the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion, the cease­fire agree­ment of the present is said to be the same. The crit­ics are ask­ing what pre­vent­ed an end to the killings of in­no­cent Pales­tin­ian peo­ple and the re­turn of Is­raeli civil­ian hostages by Hamas. One an­swer giv­en is to al­low Pres­i­dent Trump to boast of an ac­com­plish­ment on his first day in of­fice. In­cum­bent Pres­i­dent Biden has set­tled for say­ing it was a joint ef­fort.

That kind of set­tle­ment, how­ev­er, must sure­ly cre­ate space for con­tin­u­ing po­lit­i­cal con­tes­ta­tions. The chief ne­go­tia­tor and act­ing Gaza chief, Khalil al-Hayya, is re­port­ed by the BBC as say­ing the agree­ment rep­re­sents “a mile­stone in the con­flict with the en­e­my, on the path to achiev­ing our peo­ple’s goals of lib­er­a­tion and re­turn.” He how­ev­er not­ed that, “we will not for­get, and we will not for­give” the suf­fer­ing in­flict­ed on Pales­tini­ans in Gaza.

The first phase of the agree­ment ends the bomb­ing and killings; the sec­ond phase will see the Is­raeli troops with­draw from Gaza. In the third phase, ne­go­ti­a­tions for the re­con­struc­tion of the de­stroyed Gaza will be en­gaged. Two ma­jor ques­tions arise: how are the ap­prox­i­mate­ly two mil­lion Pales­tini­ans of Gaza to live in a city lev­elled to the ground? Which coun­tries will take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the re­con­struc­tion of Gaza? It’s a task which will take years, with the cost be­ing com­plete­ly out­side the ca­pac­i­ty of the Pales­tin­ian Na­tion­al Au­thor­i­ty con­trolled by Fa­tah.