Three separate ceasefire agreements are currently in effect across the Middle East. In all three, deadly attacks continue to occur frequently.
Subscribe to read this story without ads
Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.
This contradiction reveals growing questions about what a ceasefire without a complete cessation of fighting actually means.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday cited the continuing gunfight with Iran in the Gulf and appeared to suggest that promises to stop fighting in the region are not necessarily reliable.
“This is a different part of the world,” he told reporters. “In that part of the world, I think a truce is when you’re shooting in a softer way.”
On the same day as President Trump’s comments, at least nine Palestinians were killed overnight in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, according to local hospitals in the Gaza Strip. A ceasefire agreement has been in place in the Gaza Strip since October as part of a peace plan brokered by President Trump.
Although the heaviest fighting has subsided, Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes and frequent firing on Palestinians since the deal took effect, killing more than 936 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Both Israel and Hamas have accused the other of violating commitments under the ceasefire and agreement.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that Israel wants to tighten its control of the Gaza Strip, despite a provision in the peace plan that Israeli forces initially withdraw to the demarcation line known as the “Yellow Line.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the military to increase control of Gaza to 70%. “We were 50 years old, and we’ve moved on to 60,” he added.
Further progress toward peace in Gaza has largely stalled, with no signs of disarming Hamas or further withdrawal of Israeli troops as laid out under President Trump’s complete 20-point peace proposal.
The situation is similarly uncertain in Lebanon, where a cease-fire agreement between Israel and the Lebanese government announced in April has not prevented near-daily airstrikes against people and targets that Israel says are linked to the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. The Lebanese government claims Israel’s actions are a violation of an agreement brokered with U.S. support. Israel has announced that Hezbollah continues to fire rockets and drones into northern Israel.
The Lebanese embassy in Washington announced Tuesday that Hezbollah has accepted the terms of a U.S. proposal for a “cessation of mutual attacks” to prevent Israel from attacking Beirut. The threat sparked panic in the Lebanese capital after a US ally made its deepest incursion into its neighbor in 26 years.
However, conflicts have continued since then. Hezbollah officials denied endorsing another ceasefire and rejected demands for a withdrawal, which the group said meant “surrender, defeat, and the accomplishment of the enemy’s goals.”
Israeli forces continued their offensive in southern Lebanon on Saturday, with the Lebanese National Army condemning “repeated Israeli aggression against Lebanon” after two officers were killed. The Israel Defense Forces said it would review the incident.
The IDF did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on accusations of violating ceasefire agreements in Lebanon and Gaza, or on President Trump’s comments about the meaning of ceasefires in the Middle East.
Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, said Trump’s comments “speak volumes” about what the term ceasefire really means.
He noted that Israel “can attack both Lebanon and Gaza based on its own estimates of serious or potential threats that Israel believes threaten its security. That’s a very loose definition of a ceasefire.”
“It appears that the term ceasefire no longer really has any operational meaning,” he added.
But HA Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said Mr Trump’s suggestion that a ceasefire meant something different in the Middle East was “class bias”.
“There have been many ceasefires in this region throughout history, and they make just as much sense as anywhere else,” he told NBC News.
The United Nations says there is “no single universally accepted definition of a ceasefire.” It added that a ceasefire could be expected to “outline prohibited military activities and permitted military and non-military activities.”
A ceasefire agreement in the U.S.-Israel war with Iran was reached nearly two months ago and successfully halted major attacks while negotiations take place toward a broader peace deal. But over the past week, both sides have launched new attacks as negotiations have publicly stalled.
The U.S. military said Friday it shot down Iranian ballistic missiles and drones fired toward the Strait of Hormuz and its Gulf Arab allies, and struck some of the Islamic Republic’s coastal surveillance radar sites in response.
Iran has accused the United States of violating the ceasefire by blocking its ports and said it is targeting American forces in the region. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the alleged violation of the ceasefire agreement.
“It’s clear that the Trump administration simply doesn’t want to restart fighting, but it hasn’t found a way to get Iran to agree to terms that Washington will accept,” geopolitical and security analyst Michael A. Horowitz told NBC News.
“So we’re stuck with a ‘ceasefire,'” he said. “These cease-fires do not mean ‘no firing’, but simply that both sides agree not to return to full-scale war.”
Hellyer added that language is important because the war between the United States and Iran is “being waged in a public relations campaign.”
“The war has had a huge impact on the economy,” he said, adding that stability depends on how the market feels. President Trump has tried to calm markets by saying there is still a ceasefire, but “I just don’t want to say we’re back to war.”
