Aletho News

The Gaza ceasefire’s Phase 2 only exists in the media and at UN meetings

By Robert Inlakesh  | Al Mayadeen | January 14, 2026

As the debate continues to rage regarding what Phase Two of the Gaza Ceasefire will look like, it has become clear that there is no such thing occurring on the ground. From start to finish, the entire process has been a US-Israeli gambit to achieve their regime change goals, while removing Gaza’s suffering from the headlines.

Through December 2025, reports emerged claiming that this January would see the implementation of a second phase to the so-called Gaza Ceasefire agreement. As expected, there has been even more stalling on this front, as only vague comments made regarding the implementation of US President Donald Trump’s plan.

United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 2803, passed on November 17, 2025, laid out the agenda for the Gaza Strip as clear as day. There were no guarantees for the rights of the Palestinian people, all references to precedents set for decades on the issue of “Israel’s” occupation were absent, instead, there was a vague outline of a regime change plot.

Contrary to the Trump administration’s claims that it no longer seeks to be involved in “nation building”, UNSC Resolution 2803 gives approval for what is labelled the “Board of Peace” (BoP) in Gaza. It also approves the deployment of an “International Stabilisation Force” (ISF).

In essence, the BoP is an undemocratic rule set to be imposed upon the Palestinian people, with Trump taking over the role as de facto dictator of the Gaza Strip, while the ISF is set to be a multi-national invasion force tasked with regime change. Phase Two of the ceasefire will hedge upon the success of both these pillars of the so-called “peace plan”.

The failure of Phase Two

When it comes to the BoP, there is no clear strategy that has been set forth for making this work on the ground. A number of different vague proposals have been floated through the media in recent months, all pointing towards the imposition of the BoP for areas still under Israeli occupation.

The Zionist regime’s forces not only refused to respect the so-called “Yellow Line” barrier in the Gaza Strip, which was supposed to demark 53% of the territory from the remaining 47% in the hands of the Hamas-led administration and security authority. The Israelis are now operating inside nearly 60% of the territory.

Under the control of the Israeli occupation forces are five ISIS-linked militant groups that have been established, with the purpose of fighting the Palestinian resistance. The only people living in the seized territory are these militants and their families, whose numbers reportedly reach only into the thousands.

Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump’s so-called “Project Sunrise” was being seriously pitched to regional governments. The proposal advances a rather ridiculous model featuring luxury resorts on the sea, high-rise buildings, high-speed rail, and an advanced AI-driven grid. All of this will allegedly cost at least 112 billion dollars over 10 years, according to the 32-page document put forth by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.

This model aligns with an AI generated video published by the US President in early 2025, called “Trump Gaza”, featuring a sleazy billionaire’s playground where Trump and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu are sitting at a resort together.

In the world, what has actually been laid out by more serious officials within the Trump and Netanyahu administration’s, is the idea of reconstruction in the areas of Gaza where the Zionist regime is currently based. This is of course failing the complete disarmament of the Palestinian resistance, which evidently is not going to happen.

This is where the so-called ISF comes into the picture. This multi-national force is intended to be composed of troop contributions from around the world. According to what has been revealed publicly, it appears as if the plan is for the ISF to number into the tens of thousands at most, meaning they will be outnumbered by the Palestinian resistance.

At this stage, although the ISF was supposed to have already been deployed to Gaza, Israeli authorities have been making huge issues regarding which armies will be permitted to join this force. Zionist officials have publicly opposed the inclusion of Turkish or Qatari forces, yet they now appear unable to secure even Azerbaijan’s agreement to agree to contribute troops.

The Egyptians, on the other hand, who are a guarantor of the ISF project, have publicly suggested that it be set up as a “peacekeeping force” that could be comparable to the UNIFIL forces deployed in Southern Lebanon. The US and Israelis are, however, adamant that the ISF not be a peacekeeping force, and according to UNSC 2803, it is not a UN-aligned force. If Cairo says no, getting the ISF off the ground will be difficult.

In the spirit of trying to reach some level of compromise in this regard, the US has floated the idea that the ISF would only work to ensure the security of the borders, train a new Palestinian security force and perhaps coordinate on other issues like securing the transfer of humanitarian supplies.

Yet, even such a limited ISF mission is already showing signs of disaster if it does go ahead. The security firm, UG Solutions – which was responsible for employing private military contractors to lead the defunct Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) scheme – was revealed as early on during the ceasefire to have been interviewing new recruits to deploy to the Gaza Strip.

According to the investigative reporting of Drop Site News, the role of these military contractors could be to coordinate with the ISF and again participate in aid distribution. The GHF project resulted in what Palestinians called a “death trap”, luring starving civilians to aid sites, where American private military contractors and the Israeli military would open fire upon them. The result was over 2,000 civilians murdered, primarily by the Zionist regime, over a period of 6 months. The GHF was directly funded by the US Trump administration.

Under the worst-case scenario, which the Israelis are pushing for, the ISF will be tasked with disarming the Palestinian Resistance. It does not take a military expert to understand that bringing together hundreds of soldiers from one foreign army, with thousands from another, all of whom speak different languages, have never encountered a situation like Gaza and operate under different doctrines, is a recipe for disaster.

The ISF is intended to be the regime change force that finishes the job that the Israeli military failed at. Bear in mind that the Israelis had deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers, on rotation, inside the Gaza Strip and still failed.

Prior to the announcement of the ceasefire on October 8, 2025, the Israeli military was in the process of launching its failed “Gideon’s Chariots 2” Operation. According to internal Israeli estimates at the time, the goal of this campaign, which was to occupy Gaza City, would have required up to 200,000 soldiers and possibly taken up to a decade if it was to mirror a West Bank style occupation.

The Israelis were never willing to fight the Palestinian Resistance head on, instead they carried out a genocide, and the majority of their military tasks on a day-to-day basis were destroying civilian infrastructure. In other words, the Israeli army has not changed its primary function, during the war, since the beginning of the so-called ceasefire.

It has continued to demolish buildings and feed its own private industry that has developed behind this demolition work, throughout the ceasefire period. The only difference has been that it no longer experiences the high levels of danger it did previously, due to the resistance adhering to the ceasefire.

This entire genocide has gone down in a similar manner to the way the ceasefire is being implemented. The US-Israeli alliance has no idea how to achieve their desired victory, so they come up with scheme after scheme, military operation after military operation, then when they fail, they simply escalate the violence against civilians and try again.

The way that the US and Israeli military have managed the conflict in Gaza is perhaps the most embarrassing failure in the history of modern warfare. The combined power of the region’s most advanced military, alongside the world’s dominant military power, were not capable of defeating Palestinian Resistance groups who were armed primarily with light weapons they produced themselves under siege.

In every conceivable way, the Israelis and Americans have the upper hand, yet they have to resort to calling in an international invasion force to do their job for them, after committing genocide for over two years and destroying almost every standing structure in all of Gaza. Quite frankly, it is pathetic, not only that they have failed militarily and instead fought against civilians, but that they are so irrational that they cannot even accept defeat.

On the first day the ceasefire was declared, I predicted this exact predicament, that countless schemes would be set forth and that the agreement would be frozen between Phase One and Phase Two for some time. This is precisely what has happened. There was never any real ceasefire, because only one side has adhered to it, Hamas and the Palestinian Resistance. The exact same scenario has played out in Lebanon. The inevitable outcome on both fronts is more war.

January 14, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Egypt, Gaza, Hamas, ISIS, Israel, Palestine, Zionism