Gaza truce plan 'enters 2nd phase'

Parties to the Gaza ceasefire deal have announced that the truce is moving into its second phase, despite continued violations, the displacement of Palestinians, and the unresolved issue of the body of the last Israeli hostage in Gaza, which has yet to be returned.

United States Presidential Special Envoy Steve Witkoff announced on X on Wednesday that "Phase Two" of US President Donald Trump's 20-Point Plan to End the Gaza Conflict was "moving from ceasefire to demilitarization, technocratic governance, and reconstruction".

"The US expects Hamas to comply fully with its obligations, including the immediate return of the final deceased hostage. Failure to do so will bring serious consequences," said Witkoff, adding his thanks to Egypt, Turkiye and Qatar for their indispensable mediation efforts that made all progress to date possible.

Egypt, Qatar and Turkiye, in a statement on Wednesday, welcomed the completion of the formation of the Palestinian technocratic committee tasked with administering the Gaza Strip, headed by Ali Abdel Hamid Shaath, an engineer and a former deputy planning minister of the Palestinian Authority.

The trio described it as an "important development" that would help bolster efforts aimed at consolidating stability and improving humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

They expressed hope that the formation of the committee "would pave the way for the implementation of the second phase of the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip" in line with the plan announced by Trump, "contributing to the consolidation of calm and preventing a renewed escalation".

But aid organizations and United Nations agencies paint a different reality on the ground, with the UNRWA — the UN refugee agency for Palestinians — saying in its latest report on Wednesday that it recorded a notable increase in military activity over the past week.

Despite the challenges, the Palestinian Presidency had welcomed the US announcement, but reiterated the importance of linking the institutions of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli Prime Minister's office said in a post on X that Hamas "is required to meet the terms of the agreement to exert 100 percent effort for the return of the fallen hostages, down to the very last one, Ran Gvili, a hero of Israel".

It said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized that information provided to the mediators by the Coordinator for the Hostages and the Missing and his team "must immediately translate into effective actions on the ground".

"The risk of the Gaza process collapsing is exceptionally high because the global order has deteriorated from rule-based mediation into overt power-based coercion, and the US is a central driver of that shift," Nagapushpa Devendra, a West Asia analyst and research scholar at the University of Erfurt in Germany, told China Daily.

She said Washington's diplomatic shielding, military backing, and selective enforcement of international law "have hollowed out the credibility of the ceasefire framework and turned negotiations into tools for managing Israeli strategic interests".

"This dynamic primarily benefits Israel and its external sponsors, while Palestinians remain trapped in conditional, reversible arrangements," said Devendra.

jan@chinadailyapac.com