After six weeks of war, Israel and Hamas agreed to a temporary truce that would halt fighting for four days and pave the way for an exchange of captives and prisoners.
Since October 7, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, Gaza has been devastated by aerial and ground bombardments that left more than 14,000 Palestinians dead, most of them women and men. children.
On Wednesday, the Israeli government agreed to a pause in fighting that could begin as early as Friday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that the truce was temporary and that the war would continue after it ended. However, over the past century, there are many examples of truces that helped end wars – as well as many examples that did not help end wars.
Here’s a look at truces from previous conflicts, what we’ve learned from them, and whether the pause between Israel and Hamas can lead to lasting peace.
Breaks that led to peace
Even small measures of confidence and goodwill on the part of both sides allow ceasefires to transform into long-term sustainable peace, said Madhav Joshi, research professor and associate director of the Matrix of Agreements. of peace at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
With “a negotiated agreement between adversaries… where reforms are pursued in many different policy areas,” real peace could be the result, he said.
Ethiopia – TPLF Agreement (2022): Two years of fighting between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in the north of the country and failed ceasefire attempts have led to the deaths of at least 100,000 people in the war by the end of 2022 .
But on November 2, 2022, the two parties signed the Pretoria Agreement, which ended the fighting between Ethiopian government forces and the TPLF.
Joshi told Tel Aviv Tribune that the Pretoria Agreement is a great example of how a pause in fighting can lead to peace.
Yet what happened in Ethiopia goes far beyond what Israel and Hamas agreed to. Their agreement has no formal written text, no monitoring mechanism, and includes no responsibility on either side to address the root causes underlying their conflict.
In Ethiopia, on the other hand, bBoth sides agreed to a definitive end to hostilities, on both sides, as well as the disarmament of the TPLF and the reintegration of the Tigrayan people.
“While a broader peace process faces many obstacles, the agreement in Ethiopia includes a verification mechanism, a framework and a commitment to resolve underlying political differences and issues arising from the conflict. And in this case, that’s all it took to find a path to peace,” he said.
A year after the Ethiopia deal, peace has largely returned – although much of Tigray remains devastated.
Korean Armistice Agreement (1953): Technically, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) are still in a state of war since they never signed a peace agreement after a bloody three-year war.
South Korea was supported by the United States in the war, and North Korea by Communist China and the Soviet Union. An estimated 2 million people died, although some reports suggest the death toll could have been as high as 5 million.
Then, in July 1953, fighting ceased under an armistice agreement negotiated by the United States, the United Nations and North Korea.
Then-South Korean President Syngman Rhee refused to sign the agreement – he insisted that his government be allowed to rule the entire Korean peninsula.
Nevertheless, the other actors involved agreed to “completely cease hostilities and all acts of armed force until a final peaceful settlement is reached.”
They marked a demilitarized zone 250 km (155 miles) long and about 4 km (2.5 miles) wide between the two countries.
Since then, despite frequent tensions between North and South Korea, the two Koreas have avoided a major military conflagration.
Gulf War (1991): After 100,000 Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, the UN Security Council responded with a trade embargo and sanctions against Iraq.
In January 1991, the United States fought an air and ground war that ended in an Iraqi defeat and withdrawal from Kuwait in February 1991, with President George Bush declaring a cease-fire. Under these terms, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was not forced from power, but was asked to return his lands and properties to Kuwait and recognize its sovereignty. Iraq was also ordered to get rid of all its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
This agreement – contrary to what Israel and Hamas had agreed – ended the fighting between Iraq and Kuwait, but marked the beginning of Hussein’s fall just over a decade later, in 2003. .
Attempts at a truce that did not result in peace
Sudan Civil War 2023 – ongoing: In April, a civil war broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the SAF, and his former deputy, RSF General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, had once worked side by side to launch a military coup in 2021 after overthrowing the longtime president of the country, Omar al-Bashir. But both parties wanted to fill the power vacuum and rule the country.
The United States and Saudi Arabia played a mediating role between them for much of the year, but several ceasefire agreements aimed at ending the fighting failed and the violence instead escalated. intensified across Sudan.
In this case, both sides did not “refrain from seeking military advantage during the ceasefire,” as was agreed in the terms of the accords, and the war continues today.
Syrian Civil War, 2011 – ongoing: After Syrian pro-democracy activists led protests against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, the Syrian regime responded by killing hundreds of protesters and imprisoning many others. Syria has descended into war.
Since then, at least 230,224 civilians have died in the conflict and 140 ceasefire attempts have failed. Ceasefire proposals negotiated by international mediation, with the intervention of the UN, the United States and Russia, as well as more informal local ceasefire attempts, aimed only at a temporary cessation of hostilities to allow the entry of humanitarian aid or the rearmament of groups – thus limiting any possibility of a suspension of violence.
Research by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) shows that in 2016 there were a total of 43 ceasefires, but with each failed attempt, violence escalated. is intensified. In the years since, ceasefire agreements have diminished, as has fighting. In 2020, only three ceasefires were declared.
Faysal Itani, a former senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and now director of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, explained in 2018 that the main cause of the failure of ceasefire attempts was the regime’s vision on the war, namely the fact that he does not recognize the legitimacy of an opposition which challenges his political monopoly on Syria.
Ceasefire of the Six Day War (1967): Israel, which already occupied parts of Palestinian territory as prescribed by the UN in 1948, captured more – Gaza and the West Bank – as well as the Sinai from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria, over the course of a war that lasted only six days.
A UN Security Council ceasefire was initially rejected by Egypt and Syria, but as Israeli forces quickly expanded their forces into their lands, they acquiesced and by the sixth day of the conflict, all the parties agreed to a truce.
The ceasefire lasted six years and some consider it a success. But this project ultimately collapsed after the failure of a peace agreement between Israel and neighboring Arab states on Israel’s security and an end to the occupation of Palestinian lands.
Will the truce between Israel and Hamas lead to lasting peace?
Joshi, of the University of Notre Dame, said the “narrow scope” of the current truce between Israel and Hamas, limited to “a pause in fighting and the exchange of prisoners,” means it is ” doomed to fail “.
If policy areas remain vague or untouched in peace agreements, as has been the case in previous rounds of Israeli-Palestinian talks, such as the Oslo Accords and beyond, then there will still be a need for rounds additional negotiations to strengthen this agreement.
“Either that or the violence will resume,” Joshi said.
“As the agreement between Hamas and Israel is unlikely to include further negotiations or elements of monitoring and verification, it is unlikely to end violence beyond the proposed four-year period. days,” he added. “It would not be surprising if the deal fell through completely.”
The truces that worked were either the result of final rounds of several previous ceasefires that failed, or a ceasefire negotiated as part of a broader peace process. Inclusion of a verification and monitoring provision can also lead to successful peace agreements.
“A ceasefire agreement will surely fail if one or both parties are still determined to militarily defeat the other party at the time of the ceasefire agreement,” Joshi said.
“There are many examples of failed ceasefires in Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, etc. “, he added.
With Michael J Quinn, also of the University of Notre Dame, Joshi studied 196 ceasefires and peace agreements between 1975 and 2011, and found that “more than 85% of them fail, meaning a resumption of the conflict.”