No end in sight for Gaza war despite truce extension

Frantic international efforts to extend the Gaza truce may have little long-term impact, officials and observers have said.

Dismissing the idea that long-stalled peace talks could resume any time soon, they said that ongoing diplomatic efforts are chiefly focused on hostage and detainee exchanges between Hamas and Israel.

Last-ditch efforts to extend a four-day truce in Gaza have been a success, according to Majed Al Ansari, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, who said on social media platform X that the truce would be extended by two days, in a post late on Monday.

But Israel, diplomats say, has a steely determination to defeat Hamas, despite the staggering toll the war has taken on Gaza and growing calls for a ceasefire.

Of the five wars Hamas and Israel have fought since 2008, the latest is the deadliest by far, killing at least seven times the roughly 2,000 Palestinians who died in the 50-day 2014 war.

Its regional repercussions are also far reaching and threaten to ignite other fronts, chiefly in Lebanon, where at least 1,200 people were killed in the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war. Analysts say a new war there would likely be far more destructive.

The four-day truce that took effect on Friday has come as a welcome reprieve. Efforts are under way to extend the truce, maybe by as long as five days, after the two sides released hostages and detainees, with 41 Israelis freed in exchange for 117 women and children jailed in Israel.

Those figures could rise significantly if the deal is extended.

Israel says it will resume operations in Gaza when Hamas stops releasing hostages to realise its declared goal of wiping out the group’s military capabilities and ending its 16-year rule of the tiny enclave.

That, according to the officials and diplomats who spoke to media, will eventually diminish into a low-intensity and drawn-out war between the two enemies that will not give Israel the security it craves, revive long-stalled peace negotiations or loosen Hamas’s grip on Gaza.

“The Israelis might change the modalities of their military operation in Gaza if the war continues on an open-ended basis,” said Mohammed Anis Salem, a former Egyptian diplomat who now sits on the Egyptian Council of Foreign Affairs, a Cairo-based think tank.

“They can shift to long-term, selective strikes similar to what they have been doing against Iranian-backed armed groups in Syria.