Phase two in Gaza and why Israel will not return to the situation as it was on 6 October

How to withdraw from Gaza whilst ensuring that another 7 October never happens again. This is the crux of Israel’s dilemma, whilst Donald Trump announced that Hamas had reached an agreement on the second phase of the truce, which provides for the disarmament of the terrorist movement that has governed the Strip since 2007 (“a historic agreement on the disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza and a monumental step towards lasting peace and security”, as the White House described it). The agreement provides for the handover of weapons and tunnels to the International Stabilisation Force and Israel’s withdrawal. “What the agreement says matters, but what happens next matters more,” said Nickolay Mladenov, Chair of the Peace Board. This scepticism was confirmed to the Wall Street Journal by Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas team: “We have not discussed disarmament and we have not accepted any Israeli involvement.” Israel will not withdraw without Hamas disarming; Hamas will not disarm without Israel’s withdrawal.

In the American and Israeli interpretation, ‘the disarmament of Hamas’ means the elimination of all its military capabilities. For the terrorists, it means the gradual handover of certain heavy weapons, placing them under the control of a technocratic Palestinian authority, a prolonged truce or the integration of fighters into a new police force. Meanwhile, Israel – which is playing along for now but remains wary – is pushing the barrier that the army is constructing in the Gaza Strip further west. A strip of land intended to mark the separation has extended hundreds of metres beyond the official ‘yellow line’ and consists mainly of an earth embankment and a trench. For several months, the course of the barrier coincided with the yellow line, with the greatest deviation into Hamas-controlled territory reaching two hundred metres. Now the barrier extends hundreds of metres beyond the yellow line at two points in the Gaza Strip. The first is in Rafah and the second in Khan Yunis, near the Salah al-Din road – the main link between the north and south of the Strip – where, in the last few hours, Israel has destroyed ten tunnels in which numerous hostages had been held. Currently, Israel controls sixty per cent of the territory of Gaza. The Israeli rationale is simple.

Every month that Hamas retains its weapons must result in it losing territory, resources and freedom of action. The ‘yellow line’ is therefore no longer a military demarcation line, but a variable in the negotiations. Time is not on Hamas’s side, and a prolonged refusal to disarm could lead to a lasting partition of Gaza and a new border. When United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 established a peacekeeping mandate in southern Lebanon following the 2006 war, it was hailed by Western capitals as a permanent deterrent to Hezbollah’s aggression. Instead, that international presence turned into a passive, bureaucratic shield under which pro-Iranian terrorists built up a massive and sophisticated arsenal of rockets along Israel’s northern border. Before the Hamas attack, Israel’s security doctrine in Gaza was based on deterrence, intelligence, sophisticated border barriers and a rapid military response. 7 October shattered confidence in all four pillars, and for twelve hours Israel struggled to drive the terrorists back from its territory. The result has been a fundamental shift in security doctrine in Jerusalem.

Rather than relying on fences and alarm systems, Israel is seeking to create a physical buffer zone between hostile forces and Israeli civilians. The reasoning is now straightforward: enemies cannot launch another 7 October-style attack and storm people’s homes if they are prevented from concentrating their forces directly on the border. This approach first emerged in Gaza, where Israel established what is now known as the ‘yellow line’, a wide buffer zone separating Hamas from Israeli communities. It subsequently guided Israel’s decision to create a buffer zone in southern Syria beyond the Golan Heights. And it is now shaping Israeli policy in southern Lebanon, where Jerusalem insists that Hezbollah must never again be allowed to rebuild military infrastructure adjacent to the border. The extent and pace of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza will depend solely on security considerations born in the long shadow of 7 October. As one Israeli officer told the Wall Street Journal’s correspondent in Lebanon, Jonathan Spyer, “between an Israeli citizen and a terrorist, there must be an IDF soldier”.