MELBOURNE, Israel has announced a ten-day ceasefire with Lebanon after weeks of bombardment in southern Lebanon killed more than 2,000 people and displaced more than 1 million residents.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to keep Israeli troops in southern Lebanon to create a ten-kilometre “safe zone” immediately raised questions about whether a ceasefire would actually prevent Israeli attacks on Hezbollah.
After a ceasefire at the end of 2024 ended 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the Israeli army continued to launch air strikes and carry out targeted killings of Hezbollah militants.
People like to associate events like wars with neat dates and years. This makes it easier for them to understand and accept the fantasy that historical events are simple, with an understandable beginning, middle, and final end.
But in reality, the chaos and complexity of war are rarely limited to these artificial boundaries.
Instead, many war dynamics continue even after a ceasefire or peace agreement is implemented. This is the paradox of such agreements: they may end one phase of the conflict, but they inevitably usher in another.
Advantages and disadvantages of ceasefire
Take Israel’s war in Gaza, for example.
The war ended in October 2025 when Israel and Hamas signed a 20-point Gaza peace plan brokered by the Trump administration.
These terms are relatively broad, vague, and hopeful. But there are a lot of upsides to this deal. The ceasefire reduced Israeli bombing of Gaza. The remaining Israeli hostages captured on October 7, 2023 were exchanged with Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons. There is a little more aid coming into the zone now than during the war.
However, the agreement also created other negative dynamics that perpetuated many of the problems caused by the war.
For example, after the agreement was signed, public and media attention shifted away from continued violence by Israel and toward other events. This means that after the peace deal was signed, Israel carried out almost daily attacks but faced far less scrutiny. There has also been an escalation of Israeli-backed violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip also remains well below the levels stipulated in the peace agreement. Amid the hubbub of other wars and global events, serious discussions about the future governance or development of Gaza (which the peace plan mandates on multiple fronts) remain uncertain.
We can see similar dynamics in Iran, just a week after the United States and the Iranian regime signed another vaguely worded ceasefire agreement.
It appears the regime took advantage of the two weeks of “peace” to suppress internal dissent. The Trump administration has imposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports in what appears to be an effort to strengthen its negotiating position in future peace talks.
A short-term truce between Lebanon and Israel could bring some relief to Lebanese civilians. However, it could also provide Israel with a quiet week away from the media spotlight as it steps up its military occupation of southern Lebanon.
To establish a safe zone for Israel, Defense Minister Israel Katz said the military would demolish buildings in Lebanese towns near the border and prevent displaced Lebanese from returning home. Netanyahu has made clear that Israeli troops will stay.
All this can be achieved more easily by agreeing to a ceasefire.
short attention span
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Globally, dozens of countries are currently experiencing armed conflicts. Many people regularly read the news as a way to learn about and witness the dynamics of these wars, casualty figures, and how they might end.
This glorified horror feeds into our current “headline culture,” which often encourages clickbait, sensational content, and virality. It also means that public attention to a particular conflict is not necessarily driven by the scale of suffering, but by media coverage.
Thanks to digital media, we now have a direct and lasting view of human suffering and death, but this doesn’t always translate into sustained attention and action.
Whether the parties to the conflict can reach a ceasefire or peace agreement is undoubtedly valuable and important news. However, once an agreement is signed, media and public attention tend to shift to other, more “active” conflicts. There is no shortage of wars to choose from at the moment.
Because we believe a conflict has been “ended” by an agreement, what happens after a ceasefire or peace agreement often remains obscure or underreported.
Peace Agreement Paradox
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Ceasefires and peace agreements are of course not always a harbinger of peace or a perfect end to a war story.
Arguably, the parties to these agreements are increasingly aware of the paradoxes of “peace” agreements and are making political and military calculations accordingly.
If we really want to address the direct impact of war and peace on millions of people in an increasingly complex and volatile world, we need to broaden our understanding of what ceasefires and peace agreements mean—and maintain a level of scrutiny long after they are signed. SKS
SKS
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
