Editor's note: Hannan Hussain is a foreign affairs commentator and author. He is a Fulbright recipient at the University of Maryland, the U.S., and a former assistant researcher at Islamabad Policy Research Institute. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

After 11 days of unabated violence, an aggregate death toll of around 250, and growing peace activism at the UN, an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire finally took effect between Israel and Hamas on May 21. "I welcome the ceasefire between Gaza & Israel, after days of deadly hostilities. All sides must observe this ceasefire," said UN Chief Antonio Guterres.

But the negotiated ceasefire hangs by a faint thread: Israel's cabinet hasn't permanently called off its violent military offensive in Gaza, and Hamas tailors its retaliation to Israel's treatment of Palestinians in Gaza – dozens of which sustained fresh injuries at the hands of Israeli police provocations. Thus, without urgent impetus for direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaderships, the current truce is unlikely to stand the test of time.

Reconstruction and Cairo's two-stage approach

Consider Gaza's reconstruction and the limited prospects of insuring it from future violence. Estimates on critical infrastructure and healthcare support now hover in the tens of millions of dollars, and the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has mobilized $18.6 million in the last 48 hours. But Gaza's infrastructure, healthcare, and rebuilding support is less challenged by the availability of finances than it is by Israel's military grip on key access points. 

Some of the world's leading humanitarian agencies that specialize in conflict-zone assistance are navigating personnel clearance for Palestine with great difficulty, and some 72,000 displaced Palestinians – a notable voice in any ceasefire-leading peace process – face limits on mobility, especially when a barrage of Israeli rubber bullets sounds alarm in surrounding West Bank cities, capturing the gist of a fragile truce.

It is here that the pursuit for direct talks between Palestine and Israel is the only way to bring fundamental differences into focus while prove that rebuilding Gaza is more than just damage control. 

Cairo's two-stage approach to brokering the truce offers several clues on how to prepare the ground. First, when sharp escalations in violence achieved regional recognition, both Hamas and the Israeli leadership were compelled to cede ground to some violence reduction guarantees. This change in behavior suggests that international pressure is demonstrably effective if regional mediation factors future implications beforehand. 

Second, Cairo is prepared to follow up on the truce with two security delegations to Tel Aviv and Palestinian territories respectively, so that Egyptian mediators can hammer out measures to maintain stability. The strategic takeaway here is that Egypt isn't presuming the ceasefire would self-sustain. Just like Washington shouldn't presume its two-state symbolism will have traction among Palestinians if triggers such as Israeli settlements and forced evictions are allowed to self-sustain.

More than just a day's scrutiny

The United States, a key player in any Israel-Palestinian peace prospect, is relying on a different set of assumptions when its top diplomat heads to the region in the coming days. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is likely to engage in trilateral diplomacy with regional, Israeli and Palestinian authorities to facilitate what Washington views as timely "international support for Gaza and Gaza reconstruction efforts." But that humanitarian imperative is constrained by the Biden administration's own emerging consensus that a rebuilt Gaza could serve as important leverage in transforming the strip's volatile political status-quo. 

That brand of political maneuvering has been well-tried over the years, particularly in 2014, when a lack of distinction between Hamas and Palestinians drove a global reconstruction effort to the ground. More importantly, Israel backed that lack of distinction, and as experts note, intractable external resistance proved central to the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism's collapse.

Thus understood, if the goal is to test the waters on a two-state solution credibly, Blinken must utilize the ceasefire period to eliminate the asymmetry surrounding "self-defense" in the region. 

Security commitments have already been promptly communicated to Israel, an iron-ally, and internal White House discussions are underway to review Israeli settlements in the West Bank. But as Cairo's approach to the current truce demonstrates, Washington must acquire the latest measure of what Palestinians construe as their self-defense composite beyond a ceasefire.

"We still need a two-state solution. It's the only answer," stated Biden during a recent news conference. A starting point is then to simply heed history's verdict on the nature of the Palestinian resistance: it was shaped as a reaction to sustained external military, humanitarian, and demographic aggression, with limited memory of peak violence exposure beyond a siege.

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