March 06, 2025
By Nasser Kandil
• Gaza is astonishing, no larger than a district in a major city, with a population to match, yet it disrupts global calculations and unsettles both the great powers and the small. It reshapes the equations of nations, armed with nothing but the lives of its fighters, the resilience of its people, and their unwavering will to reject humiliation, displacement, and occupation.
• Since the launch of operation al-Aqsa Flood, Gaza has continued to impose new realities. It has withstood a massive war waged by the occupation army to subdue it – a war that left nearly all its homes and infrastructure in ruins, with around 10% of its population killed or wounded. Yet, in the end, Gaza emerged with an agreement securing its demands: a cessation of the war and the full withdrawal of occupation forces.
• The occupation’s leaders have neither been able to swallow Gaza’s defiance nor digest its consequences. They maneuver and stall, seeking to evade the terms of the agreement, hoping to recover their captives without paying the price. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump, who inflames the Arab world, has once again threatened Gaza with hellfire unless all captives held there are immediately released.
• Washington is torn, at times calling for a sustained ceasefire and sending envoys to negotiate with Hamas, at others resorting to threats of destruction. Even more bewildered is Israel, which brandishes the specter of war while fearing its consequences, on the fate of its captives, on its internal stability, and on the credibility of the victory narrative it desperately seeks to construct.
• Yet, on a Ramadan night like any other, Gaza remains unchanged by Trump’s threats of hellfire. Gaza already lives in a hell it believes he helped create, and its defiant stance and aligned with the arabic adage ‘if I’m already drowning, why should I fear getting wet?’
• American officials suggest that Trump’s “hellfire” will be entrusted to Netanyahu for execution. The occupation undoubtedly possesses the firepower to unleash devastation, yet that does not alter the fundamental reality: Gaza has no option but to endure. Any deal that resolves the captives’ issue without securing a final cessation of war and the full withdrawal of occupation forces would only invite greater catastrophe once the prisoners are released.
• This time, Gaza will fight on its frontlines like never before, more fiercely than it did after October 7. The occupation’s assault may falter on Gaza’s edges, just as its forces were broken at the frontlines of South Lebanon. Yemen, too, will not hesitate to once again seal off the Red Sea to American warships, carriers, and commercial vessels. Should Trump gamble on war with Yemen, the result will be a naval conflict stretching from the Gulf to the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea. U.S. bases and oil tankers will not be spared, but most critically, Tel Aviv itself will come under fire.
So will Trump’s threats prove to be just another prelude to reviving the agreement?
