The Ceasefire Myth
On January 15th, news broke of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that would take effect on January 19th, one day before the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump.
The agreement included proposals to exchange hostages in phases, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, a plan to rebuild Gaza within three to five years and a permanent ceasefire.
The ceasefire deal included the longstanding practice of extremely disproportionate release of Israeli to Palestinian hostages, with the 33 Israeli hostages to be exchanged for around 1,900 Palestinians under captivity during the first phase. This fact draws attention to the enormous numbers of Palestinians who are held in Israeli prisons, many of whom have never gone through the due process of being tried and convicted, which calls into question – who is really taking hostages? It also highlights how little Palestinian lives are valued by the Israeli state.
As limited as the ceasefire deal is, it was essentially identical to a proposal in May 2024 that former president Biden proposed, Hamas accepted and Israel rejected – putting forward the hard-line position that stopped at nothing short of totally eradicating Hamas. Instead of punishing Netanyahu for sabotaging the ceasefire, the Biden administration continuously rewarded him with more and more weapons and diplomatic immunity. What changed? Why did Netanyahu appear to change his mind and agree to a ceasefire deal this time? Donald Trump.
The incoming Trump administration threatened Hamas that “all hell would break out in the Middle East” if all of the hostages weren’t released. But what threat of violence did Trump have on Hamas and the Palestinians that Netanyahu hasn’t already carried out? What could Trump have done to the Palestinians that Netanyahu hasn’t done already? Days before the agreement, Trump sent his special envoy, billionaire businessman Steve Witkoff, demanding to meet with Netanyahu to force him to make a deal. Pressure was put on Netanyahu to reluctantly accept the deal, even if it meant alienating some of the most far-right Zionist forces and their leaders like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. But clearly, Netanyahu knew that there was something for him in this deal.
This exposes a clear reality: Israel, not Hamas, has been the real obstacle to peace this entire time.
In fact, Hamas has been ready to agree to a ceasefire deal since November of 2023. Hamas has even agreed to totally step down from governing the Gaza Strip so long as an independent Palestinian state would be recognized. The difference this time was that the United States, with the incoming Trump administration, wanted to opportunistically score a political point against the Democrats by posturing as an “anti-war” figure. This momentarily reigned in Israel for once. This exposes the pathetic excuses that Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken put forward for months, that “they couldn’t tell Israel what to do.”
Among Palestinians and other people of the region, who have endured unimaginable hell, no doubt there was much justified relief upon learning the news of a ceasefire deal. But what is the reality?
Genocide in Gaza
The damage that has been done in Gaza since October 2023 has been unthinkable. The Gaza Health Ministry estimates that there have been 48,365 Palestinian deaths, overwhelmingly children, and 111,761 injuries. The real numbers are likely much larger with untold numbers of bodies buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings. The Lancet estimates that life expectancy in Gaza has been cut almost in half. The United Nations estimates that it would take 350 years to rebuild Gaza. Hospitals that once provided some limited healthcare have been destroyed. Schools that once provided young people with some opportunities for a better future have been destroyed. Factories that once employed people to support their families have been destroyed.
This is nothing but a policy of genocide. According to the United Nations, ‘[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Even if all of the Israeli attacks were suddenly to stop, how could peace ever be possible under these horrendous conditions where hunger, mass displacement and disease are rampant? It couldn’t.
People’s lives have been destroyed.
In Gaza, the brutal blockade continues, which is considered a war crime under international law. Whatever aid trucks might be able to enter into Gaza, Israeli officials continue to arbitrarily prevent them from entering and getting around. As Gazans face freezing cold temperatures, temporary shelter tents are continuously blocked from entering into Gaza. If the aid trucks make it inside of Gaza, they face the impossible task of navigating through roads that have been destroyed and are littered with unexploded bombs.
One Gazan described the reality on the ground of the little aid making its way in that, “hundreds of families here are sleeping in the open and in the cold…We need electricity and shelter, and meanwhile markets are flooded with chocolate and cigarettes.”
As Israeli forces hold up tents from entering Gaza, at least six children, including infants have died from hypothermia from the lack of shelter in recent weeks. What ceasefire? How is this not violence?
According to the signed deal, by the end of the first phase, Israeli forces were supposed to have withdrawn from the Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt. As of March 3rd, the end of Phase One, the Israeli military hadn’t followed through, violating the terms of the agreement and refusing to engage in Phase Two negotiations.
The reality is that Israel’s attacks on Palestinians haven’t stopped since the so-called ceasefire. They have just taken a different form.
West Bank
While much of the world’s attention has been on the supposed ceasefire deal in Gaza, attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank have escalated. Over the past 15 months in which the siege on Gaza was taking place, over 800 Palestinians, including stone-throwing youth, have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces and right-wing settler vigilantes. Israel launched a military offensive in the West Bank on January 21, with tanks rolling in for the first time since 2002. With backing by the Israeli military, bands of armed settlers have attacked Palestinians, particularly people living in refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams, displacing some 40,000 people. As all of this takes place, Israeli politicians have not been shy about their interest in annexing the West Bank.
Lebanon
In Lebanon, Israel has killed an estimated 4,000 people since the most recent conflict in October 2023. A ceasefire deal with Israel was passed on November 27, but again this has meant nothing but hollow words. While Hezbollah has virtually stopped its military attacks, Israel has not. Since November 27, Israel has carried out at least 330 air strikes or shelling incidents while it has also refused to pull its military from southern Lebanon, meaning that displaced people cannot return to their homes.
In addition, Israeli fighter jets flew low over the public mass funeral of Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah. In a statement following this show of force, an Israeli defense minister said, “Those who threaten and attack Israel will meet the same fate. You focus on funerals—we focus on victories.”
The combination of all of these provocations shows yet again that Israel has no interest in a meaningful peace settlement.
“Finish the Job”
Within days of Trump taking office, he exposed the hypocrisy of his “anti-war” posturing with his various threats of military action against countries including Mexico, Panama, Venezuela and Greenland. In addition, any commitment to a ceasefire and to a resolution to the conflict in the Middle East was quickly exposed for the lie that it is when he described his interest of the United States “taking over” and “owning” Gaza, turning it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Trump touted the idea that once the United States took over Gaza, it could be a vibrant economic zone creating thousands of jobs. Notably, these statements received no push back at all from Netanyahu but rather support for the “revolutionary creative” Gaza plan.
When pressed further, Trump openly conceded that the Palestinians currently living in Gaza, almost two million people, would have to be removed to whatever countries might take them, presumably neighboring countries like Egypt and Jordan. In describing why people would want to leave the Gaza strip, he characterized it as a “hellhole.” If Gaza is currently a “hellhole” for the people living there, noticeably absent was any discussion of why it might be a hellhole, given the unimaginable terror campaign carried out by Israel supported by the United States.
Trump even posted on social media a surreal video about “Trump Gaza” that made it look like it could have been a resort like Mar-A-Lago or in Cancun with money raining from the sky. The message was unmistakably clear: the vision is to create a Palestine without Palestinians.
Israel has since heard the message and understood exactly what it meant – ethnic cleansing.
Within weeks, the Israeli airforce dropped leaflets in Gaza clearly referencing Trump’s comments, saying that they would “impose forced displacement upon you whether you accept it or not…The map of the world will not change if all the people of Gaza disappear from existence, and no one will ask about you.”
“Palestinians are seen as a problem to be solved, just like Jews in the 1930s” – Palestinian writer, Ahmed Najar
Even though the Trump administration has had to walk back some of these comments, total ethnic cleansing is still the long-term aspiration for many in ruling circles.
Zionists like Benjamin Netanyahu have openly promoted the idea of “Greater Israel,” which wipes Palestine off of the map (with many Israeli politicians taking a step further by advocating taking over territory in Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia). Rather than holding Netanyahu the slightest bit accountable for war crimes of which he has been convicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), Trump has signaled his attitude by openly embracing Netanyahu and imposing sanctions on members of the ICC.
Donald Trump’s newly appointed ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has openly argued that there is “no such thing as Palestinian.” Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, praises the “very valuable potential of Gaza’s waterfront property.”
Trump received $100 million for his most recent election campaign from billionaire Zionist and eighth richest woman in the world, Miriam Adelson, who supports Israeli annexation of the West Bank.
For Trump, his Gaza resort video showed how he looks at the situation – a good real estate deal to capitalize on. For Netanyahu, it showed how he looks at the situation – an opportunity to finally remove Palestinians who stand in the way of the Zionist project. But it is genocide and Palestinians see it as such.
It is true that opinions among the U.S. ruling class and policy makers are not uniform regarding giving Israel a total green light to ethnically cleanse Palestine. But it is also true that the political pressure exerted by Zionist groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) by funding recall campaigns as well as fueling the fear of being labeled as an “antisemite,” is intended to force many politicians to stay or get in line.
In fact, U.S. imperialism has always had reasons to support the State of Israel in its assault on Palestine. Israel sits in the center of the Middle East as a major military outpost of imperialism in the midst of multiple oil-rich Arab nations, many of which have often been hostile to imperialist interests, and whose populations are strongly supportive of the Palestinians. The Middle East also has great strategic geographic, economic, and military characteristics. It sits at the intersection of Europe, Asia, and Africa and, therefore, multiple tremendously important trade routes, crowned by the Suez Canal in Egypt, almost immediately adjacent to Israel. As long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict boils or even simmers, it poses a threat to imperialist business-as-usual far beyond the Middle East.
We can see the consequences of all of this with the Democratic Party in the 2024 election. By and large, they were more than willing to go along with supporting the genocide of Palestinians, even if it meant losing the election to Donald Trump (who they have argued for years was an “existential threat to democracy”) by alienating many in their voting base.
With Friends Like These…
Regarding the plan to displace the Gazans into neighboring countries like Egypt and Jordan, at best there have been shallow words of condemnation. In fact, the rulers of Egypt and Jordan, as with the other Arab countries, have been complicit in the oppression of the Palestinians for years despite their population’s strong affinity with the Palestinian struggle.
The Arab regimes can remember that not that long ago, revolts during the Arab Spring that challenged their corrupt political establishments were largely sparked by demonstrations in support of the Palestinian cause. The last thing that they would want would be a rebellious Palestinian population resisting Israel from inside their borders, provoking the wrath of Israel.
Egypt in particular has enforced Israel’s blockade on Gaza for 15 years. Despite some nominal pushback from Egyptian president Sisi towards Trump’s recent comments about ethnically cleansing Gaza as a “red line,” there still have been efforts to create a “security zone” concentration camp in the Sinai desert to absorb an anticipated influx of Palestinian refugees fleeing Gaza.
As a reminder of who really calls the shots, Trump threatened to cut off aid to Egypt and Jordan if they push back in any way.
How will all of this play out? We don’t know. But it should be clear that the Palestinians shouldn’t put much confidence in the Arab regimes. The real potential for support is the millions of working class and poor people of the region who are all struggling for freedom and dignity.
Where Do We Go from Here?
The “ceasefire” is a cynical political ploy. It does nothing to negate U.S. complicity in genocide. While a temporary pause in the onslaught that Palestinians face is certainly welcome, there can never be a true peace under the current conditions of occupation.
Martin Luther King Jr. famously stated that, “true peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” In this context, real justice means dismantling the occupation and apartheid state of Israel as it is currently constituted into a society in which everyone has basic human rights.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, Israel’s genocidal response, and the recent farce of a ceasefire deal, horrendous as they have been, are together but an episode in the 78-year-old colonial war. These events can’t be judged in a limited two-year context. Israel’s colonial project and U.S. imperialism have a symbiotic relationship with each other. Israel gets immense amounts of military aid and diplomatic immunity on the world stage. The United States gets a strategic military outpost in a crucial and often hostile part of the world. Within the political landscape in the United States, this outlook is bipartisan, passing from Democratic to Republican administrations.
The Palestinians will continue to struggle for their survival. They have every right to exist and return to their homes from which they have been displaced. They have every right to resist colonial occupation and fight for their own self-determination, including the right to armed struggle.
With that said, Palestinian liberation cannot come through the dead-end perspectives of groups like Hamas. While the guerrilla strategy of groups like Hamas may have momentarily prevented normalization of relationships between Israel and Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, such a strategy will never stand a chance of challenging the military might of Israel and U.S. imperialism. Their nationalism also creates obstacles to build bridges with the potential real allies of the Palestinian struggle, in the working classes of the region and around the world. This nationalism promotes the lie that Palestinian workers and Palestinian business-people share common interests, binding the working class to their exploiters. Their imposition of religious fundamentalism oppresses the population, especially women. Finally, their pro-capitalist worldview leaves even the most militant struggles incapable of challenging the capitalist system, the root cause of their oppression.
The only path to sustainable victory against Israel’s Zionist policies is to get at the root – a world system dominated by imperialism. Challenging that system is only possible by truly connecting their struggle with that of workers and poor people throughout the region, whose deep sympathy they have. Perhaps even more importantly, it must mean taking on the center of global imperialism – the United States.
For those of us in the United States, we have a responsibility to organize against U.S. imperialism, regardless of the administration in charge.
Donald Trump yet again demonstrated his “free speech” credentials by signing an executive order to deport international students who attend pro-Palestine demonstrations. Attacking the free speech of advocates of Palestine is certainly not new. But we need to recognize that, if our voices had no power, they wouldn’t bother trying to silence us. They want to get out in front of the struggles to come by creating a climate of fear.
A majority of Americans support an end to U.S. arming of Israel. But regardless of the administration, the bipartisan war on the Palestinians will continue. Despite whatever disagreements exist among big U.S. capitalists, they benefit from many of the Trump administration’s attacks on the working class. Republican and Democrat politicians have overwhelmingly agreed on continuing to arm the State of Israel. Both parties are proud to say they defend capitalism. The attacks on Palestine and the attacks on the working class and oppressed groups in the U.S. come from the same source. The brazen assaults by the Trump administration in all spheres are matched by the flimsy handwringing of the Democrats’ leadership.
The truth is there for all to see. We cannot look to any of the people in power. We need to organize independently from them to confront their system of imperialism that seeks to continue to dominate and control the world’s resources, even if it means wiping out entire populations that happen to be in their way. It is the Palestinians now. Who is next?
The Palestinian struggle for self-determination is our struggle!
