By Robert Inlakesh

Israel has a long history of not respecting ceasefire agreements. This time, President Trump ordered that bombing in Gaza cease, but Israel only escalated the bombing campaign.

As Hamas agreed to begin engaging in dialogue, using the US-Israel so-called “peace plan” as a basis for negotiations regarding a ceasefire agreement, the US President called upon the Israeli military to halt its attacks on the Gaza Strip as a first step towards achieving a negotiated settlement to end the hostilities in the besieged territory. Within hours of Trump’s plea for the bombing to stop, Israel had already carried out 30 airstrikes on Gaza City alone.

What Israel’s blatant disregard for the demands of the Trump administration indicates is not only a lack of any intent to abide by a ceasefire agreement whereby they receive all their captives within 72 hours, but also that the US government will not apply any pressure on them, either.

This was, in fact, exactly what happened in March, when Israel decided to violate the ceasefire agreement that it had agreed to in January. What this demonstrated was that the Trump administration is far from the powerful regime it presents itself to be, allowing for its allies in Tel Aviv to walk all over it and discard a ceasefire agreement that Donald Trump had prided himself on, upon taking office.

Although it may appear obvious that the Israeli regime is acting in bad faith and will simply violate any ceasefire proposal, after extracting the elements it seeks to gain, it is important to understand the theatre involved in this new round of ceasefire negotiations.

Trump was appearing weak and subservient to Israel, with a significant portion of Republicans beginning to view the US-Israel relationship as a slave to master agreement, whereby their President is bowing down to the demands of a foreign government.

Further shaping this perception were the revelations published by conservative journalist Tucker Carlson, who claimed that he had sources that testified to Israeli officers, during the 12-day Iran war earlier this year, barging in on American generals and screaming orders at them. Even more shocking was that US officials reportedly refused to do anything about this. Carlson also claimed that Netanyahu was going around New York claiming that he controls the President.

Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that part of this ceasefire push is to demonstrate a show of force by the Trump administration, attempting to convince the public that the President is in control of Israel or, at least, capable of forcing them to accept their conditions. Notice that the Israeli media and Axios’ Barak Ravid have been citing their anonymous sources to state that Donald Trump is frustrated with the Israeli Prime Minister and is pushing back against him. A similar theatre occurred, pushed by the same culprits, right before Israel bombed Iran in June.

A History of Violating Ceasefire Agreements

While providing a comprehensive list of Israeli ceasefire violations would be a task requiring much more than an article, it is important to understand that Tel Aviv has never respected any ceasefire agreement, only using them as a mechanism by which they can offset certain actions and strategically attain their goals of further land grabs.

This legacy of ceasefire violations dates back to the inception of the Israeli State itself. As the newly established Israel had pushed well beyond the boundaries laid out by UN resolutions 181 of 1947, it later agreed to an Armistice Agreement in February of 1949. Immediately afterward, the newly founded Israeli military began to move its forces into what were supposed to be demilitarized zones, murdering civilians and turning more people into refugees.

Even under US pressure and the threat of sanctions, the Israelis refused to respect UN resolution 194 – the Palestinian Right of Return – and would continuously murder Palestinians attempting to return to their lands, treating them as “infiltrators”. The most significant violation of the Armistice Agreement to that point then came in 1956, when Israel decided to invade Egypt, along with Britain and France.

Again, in 1967, the Israelis launched the June War, claiming that it was launching a pre-emptive attack, despite the evidence pointing in the opposite direction, even according to US intelligence and analysis at the time. In this attack, the Zionists completed the mission that they had planned for, prior to even establishing a State, occupying all of occupied Palestine, most importantly East Jerusalem. In addition to this, they ethnically cleansed 350,000 people from their homes and occupied the Egyptian Sinai and Syrian Golan Heights.

For years, the Israelis would then launch missiles and cross-border attacks against Syria and Jordan, with a total disregard for the ceasefire agreement that closed the 1967 war. In 1969, the Israelis even launched a campaign in the West Bank that expelled around 100,000 people. Then, in 1973, when the Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a war to regain their illegally occupied territories, the Israelis violated the ceasefire to end that war.

At the time, then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had approved Israel to take longer than the agreed upon framework to implement its side of the ceasefire agreement. As a result, the Israelis launched an attack upon Egyptian Army forces in an attempt to besiege them, almost leading to Nuclear War between the Soviet Union and the United States.

On April 21, 1981, the Israelis broke a 9-month-old ceasefire agreement that had been brokered by the United Nations, launching missile attacks into Lebanon and attempting to bait the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) into responding, to justify an invasion. When the PLO decided, instead, to abide by the ceasefire, the Israelis launched an invasion in 1982, anyway, during which they murdered around 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, most of them civilians.

When the PLO agreed to a ceasefire agreement in 1982, whereby they decided to relocate their leadership to Tunisia, abandon their tunnel systems and bases, and hand over their weapons, the Israelis then proceeded to occupy southern Lebanon, murder civilians and use their fascist militia allies to mass murder thousands of civilians, the most prominent incident being the Sabra and Shatilla Massacre.

Even during the Second Intifada, the Palestinian Authority (PA) had attempted to reach a ceasefire in 2001. During a meeting between PA and Israeli delegations, designed to strengthen a ceasefire agreement that was around 6 weeks old at that point, Israel assassinated a leader of the Hamas movement in the occupied city of Nablus, sparking a new round of hostilities.

In January of 2002, another ceasefire agreement was again violated by Israel with an assassination strike against a leader of the Fatah Party. Then, in July, Hamas agreed to a ceasefire with Israel, yet only hours before it could go into effect, the Israelis bombed a tower building in Gaza, murdering Hamas leader, Salah Shehadeh, along with fourteen civilians, nine of whom were children.

Fast forward to the first major Gaza war in 2008, the Israelis decided to violate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas with a bombing campaign, using the rocket fire response as a pretext to launch “Operation Cast Lead” that killed 1,400 Palestinians.

In October of 2011, the Israelis violated the Gaza Ceasefire they had previously agreed to by assassinating key figures in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement. Soon thereafter, an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire agreement was imposed, after which the Israelis almost immediately carried out another round of assassinations against PIJ members.

This led up to the 2012 war, branded “Operation Pillar of Defense”. How this started was an Israeli violation of another ceasefire agreement, when it decided to assassinate a leader of the Palestinian Popular Committees in March. Eventually, this led to another ceasefire that was quickly violated by Israel. When another ceasefire was then agreed to in November, the Israelis waited a few days before violating it by assassinating the leader of Hamas’ military wing, Ahmed Jabari.

This brings us to 2014, “Operation Protective Edge”, where Israel decided to find an excuse to violate its ceasefire agreement with Hamas and launch a 51-day war against Gaza, during which they murdered 2,310 Palestinians, most of them civilians. Keep in mind that Israel routinely launched airstrikes throughout Gaza, assassinations and smaller-scale bombing campaigns throughout all these major periods of war. The 2014 war came right as Hamas was in the process of negotiating a unity agreement with the Palestinian Authority.

Simply pick a year and you will find an Israeli ceasefire violation. Even in the case of Lebanon, where Israel was largely deterred from any major bombing campaign of the country since it was defeated by Hezbollah in 2006, the Israelis violated Lebanese sovereignty by land, air and sea on a near daily basis, still occupying Lebanese territory in the Sheba’a Farms and Ghajjar village areas.

It also immediately used the Syrian civil war as an opportunity to launch airstrikes across the country, where it also funded, armed and provided medical support to al-Qaeda and ISIS-linked militants, including the group that would later take over Syria last year, led by Ahmed Al-Shara’a. When the Syrian government fell in December of 2024, Israel immediately launched one of its air force’s largest ever bombing campaigns across the country, also invading and seizing even more land in southern Syria.

Simply look at Israel’s violation of the Gaza ceasefire earlier this year, after which they murdered over 12,000 civilians. Or look to Lebanon, where they have committed in excess of 5,000 ceasefire violations, while continuing to occupy more Lebanese land and launching daily airstrikes inside the country.

An Israeli ceasefire agreement is not worth anything; it is simply an opportunity for them to offset a future offensive or to deceive their opponent. This is especially the case when the US and its other Western allies only reward Israel for its actions. Donald Trump, in particular, has shown himself to be amongst the weakest US Presidents, perhaps the weakest in history, when it comes to standing his ground with the Israelis. The only way the Israelis will be forced to adhere to any ceasefire, even remotely, is if they are militarily defeated.

The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Palestine Chronicle.