Tag: palestine

In the Gaza Strip, the remaining Palestinian population, who have survived two years and three months of the most diabolically well-publicized and even relentlessly celebrated genocide in history, which is still ongoing, albeit at a slower pace than before, are squeezed into just 42% of their homeland — 60 square miles in total, less than the size of Washington, D.C.

The rest, the other 58%, has been occupied by Israeli forces since a ceasefire was declared on October 10, when they withdrew to an arbitrary “Yellow Line” that was meant to be temporary, a phase in a staged withdrawal from the whole of the Gaza Strip, but which is regarded by the occupiers as a new and permanent border with Israel.

Under the terms of the ceasefire deal, which was mainly negotiated by Qatar, Egypt and the US, although Donald Trump, predictably, made it all about himself, even staging a “Peace Summit” in Egypt to which world leaders were invited to fawn over him, Israel was prevailed upon to stop its relentless bombing raids, and its ongoing and merciless ground invasion of Gaza City, in return for the immediate release of all the surviving Israeli hostages seized on October 7, 2023.

This was a considerable achievement, given how enthusiastically Israel had sunk into relentless genocidal depravity over the previous seven months since it deliberately broke the terms of an earlier ceasefire deal at the start of March, resuming its slaughter of Palestinians with horrific brutality.

However, although the death toll has dropped over the last three months from a daily average of somewhere between 60 and a hundred Palestinians, Israel has never honored the ceasefire in any meaningful sense, and has continued to break its terms on an almost daily basis, killing at least 465 Palestinians and injuring 1,287 since October 10.

In addition, Israel has resolutely refused to allow the unimpeded access into Gaza of 600 trucks a day of humanitarian aid, as stipulated in the ceasefire deal, including desperately needed shelter, medical supplies and medical equipment, as well as food and fuel, all very deliberately to try to ensure that the Palestinians will continue to die in significant numbers, as though the latest confirmed death toll of 71,548, with 171,353 injured, many grievously so — and itself a massive undercount — is still insufficient to placate its incessant bloodlust.

Israel is perpetually triggered by a refusal to recognize that the 1,200 or so people killed in the October 7 attacks on southern Israel cannot be perpetually obsessed over as the victims of an unprovoked day of horror, entirely unconnected to the previous 75 years of Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing and dispossession of the Palestinians from their own land, and their relentless oppression and arbitrary imprisonment. Nor too, can they realistically be allowed to demonstrate a callous indifference, almost beyond belief, to the catastrophic death toll in Gaza over the last 27 months, which dwarfs the death toll on October 7 to a sickening degree.

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National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir calls for a full return to war in Gaza after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office stated that the US did not coordinate with Israel on the composition of a key panel intended to play a central role in the Strip’s postwar governance.

The panel, the Gaza Board of Peace’s executive committee, includes top officials from Turkey and Qatar, both of which have been highly critical of Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza. The premier’s office said the unveiling of the board “contradicts” Israeli policy.

“I commend the Prime Minister for his important statement. The Gaza Strip does not need any ‘governing council’ to oversee its ‘rehabilitation’ — it needs to be cleared of Hamas terrorists, who must be eliminated, alongside the encouragement of large-scale voluntary emigration, in accordance with President Trump’s original plan,” writes the far-right minister in a Hebrew-language post on X.

Trump called early last year for the permanent relocation of Gaza’s population and for the US to take over the postwar Strip, but has since abandoned that plan and is focused on implementing the current Gaza peace framework, which calls for Palestinians not to be displaced from Gaza.

Ben Gvir calls on Netanyahu “to instruct the IDF to prepare to return to the fighting in the Strip with overwhelming force, in order to achieve the central objective of the war: the destruction of Hamas.”

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The ceasefire has stopped most of the bombs, but not the cancer eating away at Najat Sayed al-Hessi’s body.

The 61-year-old Palestinian from Gaza has been waiting for her monthly cancer medications for 27 months, without receiving a single dose.

“Nothing has changed for cancer patients in Gaza since the ceasefire,” she told Middle East Eye, as the disease continues to progress unchecked.

“I had an appointment to travel to Ramallah for my medication and injection on 7 October 2023, the day the war began,” she added from her makeshift tent in Deir al-Balah. “I couldn’t go that day, and I have been waiting ever since.”

Since the war started, medical referrals outside Gaza have stopped, and hospitals in the war-battered enclave are unable to provide even minimal treatment for cancer patients.

“I fear the disease is advancing in my body with each passing day,” al-Hessi said.

Her plight reflects the wider crisis in Gaza, where nearly two million people continue to live under dire conditions three months after the ceasefire.

After two years of Israeli bombardment, much of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and public health system has been destroyed.

People had hoped the October ceasefire would bring some respite and a gradual path to recovery. 

But with continued Israeli restrictions on border crossings, aid, and goods, residents feel the situation has merely shifted from an intense genocide to a slower-paced one.

For those like Al-Hessi, the pause in fighting has brought no pause in suffering.

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