The ceasefire designed to collapse:

If I told you the Gaza ceasefire is designed to collapse, would you believe me?

Third time in two years. Each time the same script, the same breakdown, the same parties benefiting. This isn't incompetence. It isn't poor diplomacy. It isn't bad luck. It's deliberate architecture.

The pattern everyone sees but nobody names

November 2023. A seven-day ceasefire mediated by Qatar and Egypt. Seventy Israeli hostages exchanged for two hundred and ten Palestinian prisoners. On the first of December, everything collapses. Israel resumes military operations.

January 2025. A forty-two-day ceasefire, structured in three phases. The first phase involves thirty-three Israeli hostages in exchange for over fifteen hundred Palestinian prisoners. Late February arrives and the second phase never begins. On the eighteenth of March, Israel launches an operation they call "Might and Sword". Over four hundred Palestinians killed in a matter of hours, including three Hamas political leaders: Issam al-Daalis, Yasser Harb, Mohamed al-Jamasi. The ceasefire collapses.

October 2025. New ceasefire. The exact same structure as before: three phases of forty-two days each. Same fragile design. Same details to be determined for the second phase.

Three cycles. Same mechanism. Same final outcome.

At what point do we stop calling them failed peace attempts and start seeing what they really are?

Hostage economics: when weakness becomes strength

Hamas has discovered something that completely changes the strategic calculus of this war. Israeli hostages have become an asset with virtually infinite pricing power.

Think about what each individual hostage is worth in Hamas's hands. Worth between thirty and sixty Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli gaols, according to documented historical exchanges. Worth months of ceasefire during which to reorganise. Worth internal political pressure on Netanyahu's government that's priceless. And above all, worth global proof, visible to everyone, that Hamas still exists as a political and military force.

This is game theory in its purest form, with a terribly uncomfortable truth at its centre: Israel cannot resolve this situation militarily without killing the hostages it's trying to save.

All of Israel's technological superiority suddenly becomes irrelevant. The drones, the F-35s, the world's most advanced satellite intelligence are worthless when your target is hiding hostages under the rubble of Gaza City. Every military operation becomes Russian roulette where you risk precisely what you're trying to protect.

Hamas must keep those hostages alive to maintain negotiating leverage. Israel cannot use total force without destroying exactly what it's trying to save.

The result is an asymmetric stalemate where the militarily weaker actor controls the rhythm of the conflict. This isn't an accident. It's the precise moment when asymmetric warfare meets behavioural economics and generates a perverse but stable equilibrium.

Netanyahu's political calculus

Benjamin Netanyahu has a structural problem that explains much of his behaviour. Real peace means snap elections, and snap elections probably mean he loses power.

His governing coalition depends on the narrative of existential threat. Perpetual conflict keeps this narrative credible in voters' eyes. Definitive resolution removes the ideological glue holding together otherwise incompatible political forces.

Netanyahu structurally has more to lose from peace than from manageable war. I'm not indulging in easy cynicism. I'm describing a precise structural incentive. His political position becomes stronger when there's chaos, weaker when there's stability. It's what Nassim Taleb would call a position that's antifragile to conflict but fragile to peace.

When you see a leader with this type of incentive structure, you can predict behaviour with reasonable accuracy. Every ceasefire will be long enough to calm domestic and international public opinion, but fragile enough to collapse before it becomes irreversible.

Trump's Middle Eastern theatre

October 2025. The Trump administration has a serious domestic problem: disproportionate federal debt, internal political chaos, difficult polling. They need a foreign policy victory. Fast, visible, low cost.

The Gaza ceasefire is perfect for this purpose. Trump can present himself as a peace broker, do the official photos, declare victory before the cameras. All without solving anything structurally.

A definitive resolution would actually be a problem for him. He'd lose negotiating leverage over the Middle East, lose the necessary mediator role, lose an important card to play in relations with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

But a temporary ceasefire that will collapse in a few months allows him to return as saviour when needed again. It's recurring relevance, a subscription to conflict resolution that never actually resolves.

This explains why every American administration, from Bush to Obama to the first Trump to Biden and now Trump again, follows exactly the same pattern. Intense mediation, temporary ceasefire, deafening silence when everything collapses, then start again from scratch.

It's not a failure of diplomacy. It's a feature of the system, not a bug.

Qatar and Egypt: the economy of perpetual mediation

It's worth asking an uncomfortable question. How much do Qatar and Egypt gain from being perpetual mediators in this conflict?

Qatar hosts Hamas's political leadership in Doha whilst maintaining America's largest Middle Eastern military base on its territory. It plays both sides of the board simultaneously. Every new round of negotiations equals geopolitical relevance, regional leverage, soft power globally.

Egypt controls the Rafah crossing, the only access point to Gaza that doesn't go through Israel. Every ceasefire means a new round of negotiations over humanitarian aid flows, reconstruction, border management.

Real peace would mean both lose this role. They'd suddenly become irrelevant if Gaza truly stabilised. They have exactly the opposite incentive to what they declare: keep the conflict mediatable but never definitively resolve it.

This is classic network positioning: they prosper as the necessary bridge between the West and Hamas. If that bridge becomes superfluous because the parties talk directly or because one disappears, they lose value.

Nobody's paying mediators to solve the problem. They're paying them to mediate. It's a subtle but critical difference that explains why these cycles continue.

Europe's virtue theatre without consequences

Take Spain's case, though it applies to half the European Union. They propose arms embargoes on Israel whilst simultaneously buying Israeli military technology and intelligence software.

This is the perfect example of what Nassim Taleb calls having no skin in the game. When you've nothing to lose from your declarations, you can afford very strong moral positions.

Domestic public opinion calms because the government has done something visible. Commercial relationships continue exactly as before because there's no real enforcement. It's perfect theatre: costs nothing, produces virtue signals for the internal public, changes absolutely nothing on the ground.

France does similar things. The United Kingdom too. Germany is quieter but the structure is identical.

When you see political actors declaring strong positions without real enforcement mechanisms or concrete costs, you know it's a performance for the domestic audience, not serious foreign policy.

The fragile design that mathematically guarantees collapse

These ceasefires all have identical architecture, and this isn't coincidence. Three phases of forty-two days each. The first phase has specific details: so many hostages in exchange for so many prisoners. The second phase will be negotiated during the first phase. The third phase provides for permanent cessation of hostilities, details to be determined.

This setup guarantees breakdown almost mathematically. Why? Because each successive phase requires new negotiation when the actors involved have less pressure to reach agreement than at the start.

The first phase has real urgency: there are hostages to free, continuing deaths, public opinion in turmoil. But when you reach the second phase, that pressure has already dropped dramatically. The media have moved on, public opinion breathes easier, the most urgent hostages have already been freed.

Inevitable result: it becomes impossible to find agreement on the second phase because nobody has a strong enough incentive to make the necessary compromises.

If you really wanted to build lasting peace, you'd do exactly the opposite. A single agreement where everything happens simultaneously, no phases, no possible renegotiation cycles. All hostages and all prisoners exchanged at the same moment, with credible international guarantees and real costs for violators.

But nobody ever proposes this structure. Because all the actors involved know perfectly well that a multi-phase approach will fail. And that's precisely the point.

The historical analogy that actually works

This conflict doesn't resemble Vietnam, where the United States desperately sought an exit. It doesn't resemble the Minsk agreements in Ukraine either, where Russia was playing for time to rearm before full invasion.

It much more closely resembles the 1953 Korean armistice. Over seventy years have passed and that's still an armistice, never became definitive peace. Why? Because too many actors benefit from the status quo.

China wants a buffer state. The United States wants to maintain troops in South Korea. North Korean leadership prospers on the narrative of external threat. South Korea built its modern economy precisely on that permanent tension.

It's a perfect profitable stalemate: unstable enough to justify military spending and aggressive political postures, stable enough not to degenerate into total war.

Gaza is becoming exactly this for the Middle East. A frozen conflict that generates recurring diplomatic, military and media revenues for all the actors involved.

Why Gaza and not Yemen or Sudan

It's worth asking: why does Gaza dominate newspaper headlines whilst Yemen with over four hundred thousand dead, Sudan with over five hundred thousand dead, or Myanmar simply vanish from media coverage?

It's not just a question of absolute numbers. It's a question of what can be filmed. Gaza is urban warfare with smartphones, cameras everywhere, active social media. Every air strike gets documented. Every civilian death has a video. It's content ready to go viral.

Yemen is predominantly rural, without Western journalists, without footage quality that works in media. Sudan is too complicated for a simple narrative people can follow. Myanmar has zero proximity to the West.

Gaza also has something unique: what we might call sacred space economics. Jerusalem is a zero-sum symbolic resource. If one controls it, the other loses it. You can't divide symbolic capital like you'd divide physical territory.

This creates an emotional intensity that other conflicts, even far deadlier in absolute terms, fail to generate in Western audiences. It's the combination of media visibility and symbolic meaning that makes Gaza different.

What you shouldn't do if you really wanted peace

Nassim Taleb has a principle he calls negative way: it's easier to know what not to do than to know what to do. Applied to this situation, it becomes crystal clear.

Don't do multi-phase ceasefires with details to be determined later. Don't use mediators who benefit from perpetual conflict. Don't do gradual exchanges that keep negotiating leverage active for months. Don't allow renegotiation cycles between phases. Don't accept permanent cessation as a vague future promise.

If you really wanted to build something lasting, you'd do everything simultaneously. All hostages and all prisoners exchanged at the same moment. Third parties guaranteeing with real costs if the agreement fails. A single agreement without phases. Mediators who face concrete consequences if everything collapses.

But this will never happen. Because it would require someone amongst the principal actors to truly want to resolve the situation. And none of the key players wants that.

The truth nobody wants to admit

What we're observing isn't a conflict seeking resolution. It's a functioning market.

Hamas sells hostages, time, terror, proof of its own existence. Israel buys a security narrative, political time for Netanyahu. The United States buys Middle Eastern leverage and sells the image of peace broker. Mediators sell access, legitimacy, continuing relevance. Europe sells virtue signals to its own populations.

The ceasefire is a recurring product, not a solution. It works exactly like subscription economics: nobody wants you to buy once and solve the problem forever. They want you to stay in the cycle, renewing every six or twelve months.

The collapse isn't the system's failure. It's exactly how the system was designed to work.