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The fake Gaza ceasefire is beginning to fall apart

  • Robert Inlakesh Robert Inlakesh
  • Source: Al Mayadeen English
  • 18 May 2026 16:00
  • 2 Shares
6 Min Read

Seven months on, the Gaza ceasefire looks less like peace and more like a fragile pause—marked by continued violence, accusations of violations, and growing fears of regional escalation.

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  • The fake Gaza ceasefire is beginning to fall apart
    What was called a “ceasefire” in Gaza and Lebanon is increasingly seen as a temporary halt (Illustrated by Zeinab al-Hajj; Al Mayadeen English)

It has been more than 7 months since the so-called “Gaza ceasefire” was agreed upon, yet the Israelis have not stopped firing. Although it could have been implemented, the Zionist regime simply won’t allow it, which is leading to an inevitable resumption of fire.

Back in October of 2025, I had written that the Gaza ceasefire agreement would never reach Phase 2, arguing that the situation would remain in limbo between the first and second phases for months on end. That analysis has since proven correct, yet there has been much that has occurred since that time.

As occurred in Lebanon, following the November 2024 ceasefire agreement, the Israeli occupation forces decided to immediately begin violating the truce by land, air, and sea. In the case of southern Lebanon, the Israelis occupied more territory in the south of the country as the months went on, killing hundreds of citizens while they were at it, even spraying chemical weapons in order to make the border villages uninhabitable.

In the Gaza Strip, a similar scenario has taken place. Hamas, like Hezbollah, has chosen not to return fire, committing to the ceasefire. Roughly 850 Palestinians have also been slaughtered by “Israel” in the besieged coastal territory since the ceasefire began.

Another similarity between both cases is the arrogance with which the Zionist regime’s forces have operated. Militarily speaking, this level of arrogance is truly shocking for a modern army that was dealt its greatest ever military defeat, only a few years ago, largely as a result of its own mythomania.

The Zionist regime’s strategy in Gaza is almost identical to what it was in Lebanon over the 15-month ceasefire period, even down to committing “targeted assassinations” of senior military officials. It ultimately reflects a deeply irrational, emotionally driven mindset that refuses to learn, due to the implications it would have on its own fragile ego.

This is why Hezbollah has played the Israelis so well, luring them into southern Lebanon and battering them day in and day out. For the Zionist regime, it neither has a plan to sufficiently deal with the Hezbollah threat nor does it possess the ability to stop fighting, because they refuse to admit to being outsmarted and defeated.

In the Gaza Strip, which was once greatly underestimated, a similar childish-like arrogance has taken hold, one that appears to now be draped in paranoia. For two whole years, the Israelis committed full-scale genocide in Gaza, but despite committing one of the worst atrocities in modern history, they failed to achieve anything resembling victory.

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Instead, the Israeli leadership decided that it would pause the conflict and jump onto other fronts, prioritizing its attempt to achieve regime change in Tehran. This deal was perfect for them, or so they believed; they got to retrieve their prisoners, give their army a break, while plotting to “cut off the head of the snake” that leads the regional resistance against it.

Hezbollah is now draining its army once again, doing so with relative ease due to its reliance on FPV drones, as the Israelis continue to set their sights on new strikes against Iranian targets. 

Now, the Israelis are threatening to go back to their full-scale genocide in the Gaza Strip, citing the refusal of the Palestinian Resistance to disarm as their reason. However, such a move may end up greatly backfiring, which is likely the reason for the hesitancy we have seen on display.

Not only do they not have a strategy to “win” in Gaza, but they will also suddenly be forced to fight ground battles across two separate fronts. In the event that Yemen, Iraq, and Iran become involved once again, this will end up costing them significantly.

The Zionists recently produced a report, claiming to have knowledge of Hamas rebuilding its arsenal and even putting out figures. To be clear, these estimates are bogus, but the suspicion is almost certainly true, simply because the Palestinian groups are not about to wait around for the Israelis to come and slaughter them again, without preparing a response.

What the Israelis don’t appear to be grasping here is that fighting a never-ending multi-front war, especially a prolonged ground war, violates the core pillar on which their entire military doctrine sits: never fight wars of attrition, only short conflicts. Another thing they don’t seem capable of comprehending is that the atrocities in Lebanon and the genocide in Gaza have created a scenario that the Israelis have never dealt with before; the opposition is fully prepared to fight them until the very end.

Killing civilians from the sky, sniffing a displaced woman's underwear on film after seizing a house that you travel to inside a heavily armoured vehicle, or demolishing homes, is not fighting a war. This is the behaviour of barbarians who have been handed high-tech weaponry, not professionals and warriors. The Israelis don’t actually have an army; they have a military society of spoiled cowards, who take advantage of hiding behind their technology, from whom they enlist “soldiers” that are handed ranks like participation trophies.

All of this being said, the brutality of this narcissistic monstrosity cannot be underestimated, nor can the fecklessness of the US Trump administration. It should therefore be expected that the Israelis could well commit a new series of untold horrors in the Gaza Strip, relying more heavily on their five ISIS-linked death squads to commit some of their war crimes for them. This won’t render the results they were looking for; instead, it will likely enormously backfire.

Why has it gotten to this point? Because there never was a ceasefire agreement, only a temporary pause that was born out of Tel Aviv’s strategic failure. This has also occurred because of the 20-plus countries that joined the “Civil Military Coordination Center” that was supposed to help implement and monitor violations of the ceasefire, but instead all decided to bow before a clearly Israeli-led mechanism.

It has been the cowardice of the complicit CMCC governments and senior United Nations officials that has facilitated the deterioration of the ceasefire agreement; they are directly to blame for enabling the Israelis to continue carrying out daily war crimes.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Mayadeen’s editorial stance.
  • South Lebanon
  • Gaza Strip
  • Israel
  • Hezbollah
  • Gaza genocide
  • Israeli occupation
  • Gaza ceasefire
  • Lebanon
  • Gaza
Robert Inlakesh

Robert Inlakesh

Political Analyst, Journalist, and Documentary Filmmaker.

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