It is clear now that the ceasefire in Gaza is only a “reducefire”. The onslaught continues. There are near-daily attacks on the territory. On a single day at the end of October, almost 100 Palestinians were killed. On 19 November, 32 were killed. On 23 November, 21. And on it goes. Since the ceasefire, more than 300 have been killed and almost 1,000 injured. Those numbers will rise. The real shift is that the ceasefire has reduced global attention and scrutiny. Meanwhile, Israel’s emerging blueprint becomes clearer: bloody domination not only in Gaza, but across Palestine and the wider region.
A “dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal”, is how Amnesty International’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, described this post-ceasefire period. Israeli authorities have reduced attacks and allowed some aid into Gaza, she said, but “the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over.” Not a single hospital in Gaza has returned to being fully operational. The onset of rain and cooling weather has left thousands exposed in dilapidated tents. Since the ceasefire on 10 October, almost 6,500 tonnes of UN-coordinated relief materials have been denied entry into Gaza by Israeli authorities. According to Oxfam, in the two weeks after the ceasefire alone, shipments of water, food, tents and medical supplies from 17 international NGOs were denied.
The result is that a population whose homes, livelihoods and stable shelter have been eliminated still are not allowed to secure safer tents or adequate food. Israeli authorities hold people in Gaza in a painful purgatory, continuing collective punishment, preventing the conditions for a normal life from emerging and establishing Israel as sole unaccountable overlord, with unlimited power over the people of the territory.
Gaza is at the sharp end of an expansion of Israeli imperialism, one that stretches to the West Bank and beyond. In the occupied territories of the West Bank, a crackdown that has intensified since 7 October 2023 continues to escalate into a full military siege. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forced out of their homes this year in a pattern that Human Rights Watch said amounted to “war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing … that should be investigated and prosecuted”. Last week, footage emerged of two Palestinian men in Jenin being executed by Israeli soldiers after it appeared that they had surrendered. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, said that the forces involved in the killings have his “full backing”. They “acted exactly as expected of them – terrorists must die”.
Moment Israeli forces shoot dead surrendered Palestinians – video report
And this is only a small window, in a rare filmed moment, into the bloodshed. More than 1,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank over the past two years. One in five of them are children. More than 300 cases were suspected “extrajudicial executions”. In October of this year, the UN registered more than 260 settler attacks, the highest level since its records began 20 years ago. More than 93% of investigations into these attacks end with no charges filed. Scores of Palestinian prisoners are reported to die in Israeli prisons of physical violence or medical neglect, and those who do make it out alive recount a hellscape of torture and abuse.
And still, the parameters of Israel’s mandate to assault, kill and land grab continue to widen. Last week, Israeli forces launched a ground incursion in southern Syria, killing 13 Syrians, among them children. The Israeli military refused to provide information on the group it claimed to be targeting in the raid. It was simply reserving its right to reach into Syrian territory, as it has several times since it invaded and occupied the buffer zone between the two countries, and other parts of southern Syria. Since it has done so, Israeli forces have been accused by Human Rights Watch of applying the colonial playbook seen in Palestinian territories: forced displacements, home seizures, demolitions, cutting of livelihoods and unlawful transfer of Syrian detainees to Israel. Israel intends to maintain its presence indefinitely.
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To Lebanon, where 64,000 people still remain displaced from their homes after last year’s war, and where Israeli attacks have been intensifying. Despite a peace deal negotiation last November, Israel has launched almost daily bombings in Lebanese territory. The latest was only last week. It continues to occupy five vantage points from which it launches attacks on targets it claims are linked to Hezbollah. According to a UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, Israel is guilty of more than 10,000 air and ground violations of the ceasefire, during which hundreds of people have been killed. In the melee, civilians are, once again, ejected from their lands, vulnerable to Israeli military assaults and essentially subjects of a sort of Israeli super-sovereignty. According to a recent New York Times report, “the situation in Lebanon offers a compelling example of a new Middle East where Israel’s reach is near ubiquitous”.
What sort of ceasefires are these? What sort of status quo is this? A volatile and unsustainable one, is the answer, one during which no reasonable mind can expect any sort of peace to materialise, either in Palestine or in the wider Middle East. Brokers and stakeholders and diplomats may repeat the language of phased ceasefires and reconstruction schemes, but the reality is that these are plans for a future that is never going to emerge unless Israel’s unlawful acts across territories that it has no legal rights over come to an end. The dangerous illusion that life is returning to normal applies not only in Gaza, but across Palestine and the wider region. It will soon shatter.
