The hope for an ex­tend­ed cease­fire in the war by the Is­rael De­fense Force (IDF) against Hamas, more cor­rect­ly the as­sault on Gaza and the West Bank, and the mur­ders of an es­ti­mat­ed 30,000 Pales­tini­ans, are caught in a trap of con­tra­dic­tions.

At the same time that the ne­go­tia­tors from the USA, Qatar and Egypt are meet­ing in Paris, and with US Pres­i­dent Joseph Biden ex­press­ing the ex­pec­ta­tion that an agree­ment on the ex­tend­ed ces­sa­tion of the killings of Pales­tini­ans will be ar­rived at by the week­end, Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu is warn­ing that a ground of­fen­sive by the IDF is about to be launched. Fur­ther, he has re­peat­ed his po­si­tion tak­en at the start of the Hamas Oc­to­ber bomb­ing and counter of­fen­sive from Is­rael, that the war will not end un­til Hamas is wiped out, nev­er again to launch raids on Is­rael. To al­low for the re­turn of the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 110 hostages still held by Hamas, PM Ne­tanyahu is said to be seek­ing a two-month cease­fire and the bod­ies of Is­raelis who are re­port­ed to have died dur­ing the bomb­ing of the IDF.

Hamas is re­port­ed to have re­ject­ed the tem­po­rary cease­fire of­fer, re­quir­ing in­stead a per­ma­nent end to the hos­til­i­ties, and the re­lease of thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans, many of whom have been held in Is­raeli pris­ons for years. Hamas al­so wants its lead­ers in Gaza to be able to re­main in the area, and con­trol of Gaza.

The ques­tion re­mains whether US Pres­i­dent Biden has sua­sion over PM Ne­tanyahu, who is dri­ven by his de­sire to hold on to pow­er, by seek­ing re­venge on Hamas/Pales­tini­ans, and to re­trieve the hostages to please Is­raeli fam­i­lies de­mand­ing a re­turn of friends and fam­i­ly from Hamas.

PM Ne­tanyahu has clear­ly re­buffed the over­tures of US Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken dur­ing his sev­er­al trips to the area, while hold­ing fast to his mis­sion to wipe-out Hamas fight­ers, car­ing lit­tle about the mur­ders and crip­pling of tens of thou­sands of civil­ians, an es­ti­mat­ed 70 per cent of whom are said to be women and chil­dren.

How does a coun­try en­ter in­to an agree­ment to stop the bomb­ing, killing and dis­place­ment of Pales­tini­ans, at the same time that its gov­ern­ment says it in­tends to move its troops on the ground to wage re­lent­less war, which in­evitably will re­sult in fur­ther and in­creased killings of in­no­cent civil­ians?

There sure­ly is a ma­jor con­tra­dic­tion be­tween the readi­ness to seek peace, what­ev­er the length of it, and what Prime Min­is­ter Ne­tanyahu is hell bent on do­ing. Fur­ther to the ob­jec­tives of the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment, is the re­al­i­ty of star­va­tion said by three Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) of­fi­cials to be im­mi­nent as a min­i­mum num­ber of food de­liv­er­ies are al­lowed.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, as grim as the pic­ture we see to­day is, there is every pos­si­bil­i­ty for fur­ther de­te­ri­o­ra­tion,” ob­served Ramesh Ra­jas­ing­ham, di­rec­tor of Co-or­di­na­tion at the Of­fice for the Co-or­di­na­tion of Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Af­fairs, Unit­ed Na­tions. He said at least 576,000 peo­ple in Gaza – one-quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion – are “one step away from famine”.

At the lev­el of diplo­ma­cy, the Unit­ed States' con­tin­ued ef­forts to block every move at the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to end the war al­so do not help.

What­ev­er the im­me­di­ate hor­rors of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ples, the long-term con­se­quences of the ef­fec­tive de­struc­tion of Gaza are far greater.