There Is Still No Ceasefire in Sight for the People of Gaza

Yara Hawari

When the ceasefire was declared on October 10, 2025, many Palestinians breathed a sigh of relief, especially in Gaza. Gaza had endured two years of constant bombardment, with roughly six times the explosive force of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, concentrated on an area less than half the size of Hiroshima.

The devastation has been all-encompassing. All hospitals and universities have been bombed. Most homes and schools have been destroyed. Vital forms of infrastructure such as sewage systems and electricity lines have all been damaged beyond repair.

This has resulted in an estimated sixty-eight million tons of rubble across the strip. Under that rubble lie the unrecovered bodies of at least ten thousand Palestinians who were killed in bombardments. The official number of those killed is thought to be well over seventy thousand, not including those who have been indirectly killed by the genocide.

An article in the Lancet, one of the leading global medical journals, explained that in typical conflict zones, the ratio of indirect to direct deaths is usually four to one. Indirect deaths will include those who would not have died if the status quo ante had been maintained.

The health system in Gaza has been brutally and systematically dismantled, so people are dying from what would have been preventable deaths. They are dying from the cold, from lack of nutrition, or from not having access to certain types of medication. People have also died from depression and heartbreak.

This is an ongoing and active genocide, within the context of a decades-old colonial occupation, that is seeking to extinguish life in all its forms and to make life unbearable for those who survive. That was where we were when the ceasefire was announced on October 10, and that is where we continue to be in this sham of a ceasefire.

Yara Hawari

Almost immediately after the ceasefire was announced, the Israeli regime started attacking Gaza again, and it hasn’t really stopped since then. At the last count, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed and many more injured since October 2025. Recently, there were multiple air strikes on Khan Younis that killed at least thirty-one people, including six children.

In addition to that, Israel is still not letting in enough aid. Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, the Israelis are not only supposed to have stopped the attacks on Palestinians — they’re also supposed to be allowing at least 600 trucks of aid into the strip every day. Israel has not fulfilled this end of the bargain.

Along with restrictions on the number of trucks, they have been deliberately restricting the entry of nutritious food, including meat, dairy, and fresh vegetables. We’ve seen from reports by people on the ground that you can buy canned food and snack food in Gaza, but fresh fruit and protein sources remain very difficult to get hold of, as well as medicine, tents, and other materials for shelters.

People need to understand that when they hear the word “ceasefire,” it doesn’t actually mean there has been an end to the violence, and it doesn’t mean that the Israeli army has withdrawn from Gaza. Part of the ceasefire agreement was that the Israeli army would withdraw to an invisible boundary known as the yellow line that effectively cuts Gaza in half. The area beyond the line is about 53 percent of Gaza. Not coincidentally, it includes most of the agricultural and industrial land, an area that has been almost totally depopulated of Palestinians.

Most Palestinians in Gaza are sheltering now on the western side of that yellow line. Many people whose homes are on the other side of the yellow line have attempted to return home to see if their houses are still standing or to recover possessions, and many of them have been shot in the process. Others have crossed the unmarked yellow line unknowingly, and they’ve been targeted by snipers or drones.

Again, this ceasefire needs to be understood not as an end to violence for Palestinians, but rather a different phase of the genocide. Certainly, it is a phase that doesn’t come with carpet bombardments every day, as we saw over the previous two years, but it’s still a reality of daily killing and daily deprivation of basic necessities.

Meanwhile, since the beginning of the genocide, Israel has been propping up criminal militias and gangs in an attempt to undermine social cohesion and ensure it has a constant presence even in areas where the Israeli army is not present. These militias are incredibly violent, incredibly disruptive, and often comprised of criminals. It’s an age-old colonial tactic, one that has been used in many different contexts.

Yara Hawari

In late December, Israel announced that it was suspending the work of thirty-seven humanitarian organizations, around 15 percent of the total number of NGOs that work on the ground in Gaza, including some of the largest ones. The list included Defence for Children International, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Medical Aid for Palestinians UK, Mercy Corps, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders).

As I’m sure a lot of people will be aware, international NGOs have been heavily involved in the humanitarian response to the genocide in Gaza. They’ve delivered more than half of all food assistance. They support a lot of health care projects, they provide shelters, etc. Their presence in Gaza both before and during the genocide has been crucial.

Of course, there are reasons for the deliberate de-development of Gaza. This is a reliance that has been forced upon Palestinians because of conditions of siege and blockade that have rendered them heavily dependent on aid. There are legitimate critiques of how those organizations are part of this process of de-development. But undeniably, completely stopping their activity means that an entire population suffers, especially when there’s nothing to take their place.

The Israeli regime knows that. It suspended those organizations because it wants them to comply with new policies that will require them to submit to the Israeli authorities all the documentation about their staff members, both local and international, and about their funding and operations. As an occupying power, Israel doesn’t have the right to demand that kind of information.

More importantly, this is a regime that has systematically targeted aid workers and their families, including those in so-called pre-authorized aid convoys. It has bombed aid facilities. In no way, shape, or form is it a good-faith actor.

In addition, these regulations state that any organization that has called for boycotts of Israel or expressed support for the cases against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) or the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is going to be banned from distributing aid. It’s a crackdown aimed at total compliance, and it comes with very legitimate fears for local staff in particular who are most vulnerable to Israeli violence.

MSF was going to comply with this. In fact, they released a statement saying that they had consulted with local staff and they were going to hand over the information so that they could continue their operations in Gaza. But the reality was quite different. It came to light as the result of a campaign from doctors and medical staff that those local staff members were being coerced, pressured, and guilt-tripped by senior management at MSF into agreeing to hand over their information.

It now looks as if MSF has backtracked after facing a lot of outrage and will not be complying with these new regulations. But that means, of course, that their operations will be seriously limited in Gaza if they are allowed to continue at all. What’s clear from all of this is that Israel is trying to reengineer the landscape of aid distribution in Gaza and in Palestine so that it has complete control over who gets what and when.

Yara Hawari

What’s been quite remarkable to me is that on an international level, Israel has continued to enjoy unprecedented diplomatic, financial, and military cover despite carrying out a live streamed genocide. This is not because I ever had any hope or faith that the international community would protect Palestinians from such violence. But I did think they would put up a bigger fight to protect the legal framework that they have set up themselves in order to maintain the world order they designed.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza signals the start of a complete unraveling of that world order. On November 17, 2025, when the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2803, which endorsed Trump’s twenty-point plan for Gaza, that was really the cherry on the cake. It is a resolution that contradicts international law by mandating a foreign body to rule over Palestinians in Gaza, and it also contradicts previous UN resolutions.

From sources at the UN, we know that in the lead-up to this resolution, there was some of the most overt bullying, cajoling, and coercion that has ever been witnessed at the UN, because this resolution effectively gives Trump the green light to do whatever he wants in Gaza. It creates two bodies that are supposed to take control: the Board of Peace, which of course is chaired by Trump, and an international stabilization force, which is tasked with maintaining security and enforcing the disarmament of Palestinian groups.

On top of all that, it effectively bypasses all the local and international structures in the distribution of aid. Everything will have to pass through the Board of Peace. It goes without saying that the resolution made no mention of the genocide and did not propose any kind of accountability mechanism for war crimes. This is a resolution that not only contravenes international law but also gives the US, which is a co-perpetrator of genocide, complete control over Gaza.

I think states thought that by giving this to Trump, they would quell his appetite. But that was a huge miscalculation. The resolution supported the Board of Peace in the context of Gaza, but as you alluded to, the Trump administration is now making it very clear that the board is a global project — an attempt to replace the UN.

Replacing the UN wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if it was an attempt to create something more equitable and less biased toward the Global North. But Trump is trying to replace the UN with himself. The logo of the board is a knockoff of the UN logo, except that it’s in gold, which is, I suppose, Trump’s favorite color.

Instead of the world as a whole, it only includes Trump’s expansionist dreams. It includes Greenland, Canada, northern parts of Latin America, and the US. It’s almost laughable, except for the fact that this is a very real project that is going to come with very serious consequences, not just in Gaza, but on a wider scale.

Yara Hawari

We have to break this down because it is rather confusing and all over the place. What we know as far as the structure of the board is concerned is that Trump has designated himself as chairman for life with the ability to nominate a successor. This is a very important point because it means that his chairmanship of the board is not restricted to the US presidency.

Below Trump comes the board proper, which is comprised of national leaders. About sixty countries were invited. Most European countries turned down their invitations, except for Hungary and Bulgaria. The main reason they gave for turning down the invitation was that the board was going beyond its mandate, and also that Trump invited Vladimir Putin to join. There was no objection to the role of Benjamin Netanyahu — a man who is the subject of an ICC arrest warrant and who couldn’t even travel to Davos for the board’s inauguration because he would have been arrested by the Swiss authorities.

Then we have the executive board, which has seven members. Nickolay Mladenov has the title of “High Representative for Gaza,” which is both ridiculous and frightening at the same time. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state; Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East; and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, are all members. We also have Tony Blair, who needs no introduction; Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management; Ajay Banga, the president of the World Bank; and Robert Gabriel Jr, an American political advisor.

There is also another body called the Gaza Executive Board, with Mladenov as its head. It is comprised of the same people who are on the executive board with a few additions, such as government ministers from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, an Israeli businessman, and the UN special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Sigrid Kaag. Finally, we have the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, the Palestinian technocratic committee, which reports to the Gaza Executive Board and to Mladenov.

Yara Hawari

The US announced phase two of the ceasefire mid-January. The reality is that most of the goals that were supposed to have been achieved in order to reach phase two have not been reached, namely a halt to violence, Israeli withdraw to the yellow line, and full resumption of aid. In fact, the only goal that has been achieved is the return of all the Israeli hostages.

Phase one has not delivered, definitely not for Palestinians. But what marked this transition into phase two was the announcement of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. It’s a fifteen-member body chaired by Dr Ali Shaath, an engineer who is originally from Gaza and has worked for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank in various capacities.

In the grand scheme of things, this committee signals a shift toward depoliticized governance in Gaza amid the ongoing genocide. It is being presented as a neutral, technocratic governing structure, but the reality is that it’s going to function as a managerial mechanism that stabilizes conditions. This committee has been tasked with managing the reconstruction of service provision in Gaza, under the watchful eyes of Mladenov and Blair, who are going to report directly to Trump.

There are a lot of things that still remain unclear about the committee and how it’s going to be able to carry out this work. The issue of Israeli withdrawal to the yellow line is unclear, for example. For now, the committee is supposed to be operating in the western part of Gaza, the part that doesn’t really have the presence of Israeli forces. But at this stage, it still hasn’t been allowed into Gaza by the Israelis.

What is very clear is that this committee is not going to have any kind of political function. There was an interview where the chair was explicitly asked about Israeli forces and the disarmament of Hamas — he just referred all of these questions to the Board of Peace. It’s very important to understand the limitations of this committee. It’s not a new government or a new leadership in Gaza.

The US approach is to completely depoliticize the issue of Palestine and turn it into an economic or real estate issue. This committee creates this appearance of Palestinian involvement, but it will operate totally under the supervision of the Board of Peace. In practice, it’s positioned to play a very similar role to that of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, as a service provider operating under colonial oversight with political questions deferred indefinitely.

The big question is whether Israel will allow this technocratic committee to do the work that it’s mandated to do. We’re already seeing it being sabotaged at every possible stage. There was recently a big row because the committee shared its new logo, which incorporates the logo of the Palestinian Authority, and the Israelis lost their minds over it.

We’ll have to wait and see if this committee is allowed to operate in any way, shape, or form. Obviously Gaza is in urgent need of relief, recovery, and reconstruction, and the committee might be able to facilitate some of that. But speaking with Palestinians on the ground in Gaza specifically about the committee, I think there are a lot of mixed feelings about it. The reality is that its ability to deliver is completely dependent on the Israeli regime.

The other thing that marked phase two was Jared Kushner’s plan that he presented at Davos for Gaza. It was a dystopian presentation of high-rise buildings in a futuristic-looking enclave. As details of this plan have emerged, you start to realize what the Americans have in store for Palestinians, which is incredibly disturbing.

The idea is to force Palestinians into so-called planned communities that are going to be controlled and surveilled to an even greater extent than is already the case. Only approved Palestinians will be able to live in these areas. They’ll be subjected to security checks and will have to give over their biodata. They won’t have access to cash — it will be a cashless community — and the schools and curriculums will be tightly controlled.

Yara Hawari

There hasn’t been enough coverage of what’s been happening in the West Bank. Obviously the violence of the genocide in Gaza has been so horrific that it has taken up a lot of coverage, and rightly so. But under the cover of the genocide, over the last two years, the Israeli regime has expanded its control over the West Bank.

We’ve seen an increased use of what the Israeli authorities call counterinsurgency operations, operations such as operation Iron Wall or Operation Summer Camps — weird names used to describe what are military operations. They are always presented as temporary, targeted operations in response to some kind of so-called terror act or cell, but this is far from the reality. These operations are designed not only to disrupt Palestinian life but also to create facts on the ground.

With each new military operation comes a new permanent checkpoint, or a permanent road closure, or a permanent takeover of land. Operation Summer Camps, for example, resulted in the largest mass displacement campaign Palestinians have faced since 1967. This operation saw the depopulation of the camps in the northern West Bank. Nearly 50,000 Palestinians were kicked out of their homes, and then the camps themselves were destroyed. Some of them have been effectively turned into Israeli military headquarters.

These operations create new realities on the ground, and it’s a coordinated effort between the army and the settlers to reengineer the spatial and social environment. The goal is to reduce the area of land that Palestinians live on but also to create an atmosphere where there can be no dissent or resistance to occupation. Often in the media, when we hear about settler violence, it’s very much separated from the state. But the reality is that the settlers operate hand in hand with the Israeli army and as part and parcel of Israeli government policy.

In February 2023, prior to the genocide, we saw that settlement planning was transferred from COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories), the Israeli occupation administration, to the minister of finance, Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician. Under Smotrich, there has been unprecedented settlement growth and a massive increase of checkpoints and military gates that prevent Palestinians from accessing their land. This creeping annexation of land has been accelerated since the start of the genocide.

Finally, the Israelis are in the final stage of ending UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) operations. They began bulldozing part of the UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem. There is no international UNRWA staff in Palestine today, as I understand it — all the operations have been seriously scaled down.

For better or worse, UNRWA plays a huge role in the lives of Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands of kids are educated in UNRWA schools, and tens of thousands of adults are employed by the agency. The UNRWA mandate keeps the Palestinian right of return alive on an international level.

Yara Hawari

A lot of Palestinians are talking about this as our post-Nakba moment. There is a sense of shock and ongoing trauma about what has happened — not only the devastation of the genocide in Gaza but also the violence that has engulfed the West Bank. The political repression is something that we haven’t seen for a long time and perhaps is similar to what Palestinians experienced after the Nakba. The political space inside of occupied Palestine is very limited.

That’s not to say that there isn’t organizing or any kind of political movement going on, but it’s more repressed now than it has ever been. The number of political prisoners has increased dramatically, with many of them being held indefinitely under administrative detention. Others are taken for a few days, beaten up, and threatened. People are also being arrested for social media posts, and university campuses are being raided frequently.

There is an atmosphere of fear, but there is also a recognition that this is an existential moment for us as a people. We either achieve liberation and regain sovereignty over our homeland and return our people to their homes, or else we are going to be exterminated as a people and as a collective seeking self-determination.

The big question for me is this: How do we reconcile the fact that over the last two years, the Palestine solidarity movement has grown exponentially and achieved international recognition and support at unprecedented levels, yet the situation on the ground has gotten drastically worse? Why has the solidarity movement not been able to stop the genocide?

I think the answer is bigger than Palestine. Gaza has emerged as the epicenter of global politics. The future of Palestine has been understood to be connected to the future of the world. The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said that what we’re seeing in Gaza is a rehearsal for the future, and I think that future is already here.

Why is it that governments are willing to oppress their own people in their own streets for protesting against a foreign state committing genocide? Why is it that so many corruption scandals involve arms manufacturers and security companies that are complicit in the Gaza genocide? Why is it that a politician’s downfall can be orchestrated because they stand up against genocide somewhere that is very far away from where they are based?

People are asking these questions in a very serious way, and I think they understand that Palestine cannot be understood on its own, isolated from global dynamics. Palestine exists in a profoundly unjust and violent world. This reality is what allows the machinery of genocide in Palestine to continue.

The task at hand is to build that understanding of Palestine into political momentum that can bring about radical change in political structures worldwide. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to do that, but I think that’s what has to happen.