Ahmad Abu Saadi celebrated when the ceasefire was announced last October. In late December, he married his wife Walaa Jaha in a small ceremony in a Gaza displacement camp, attended by those left of their loved ones. Missing were all five of his brothers, killed during the genocide. The couple were both 20 years old. Three days later, a wall collapsed onto their tent and Walaa was killed as they lay together in bed. In videos and photos of him afterwards, Ahmad lies on their mattress with a pool of blood next to him, refusing to move from the place his wife was killed. While politicians and media in the West attempt to paint a picture of the end of a war and a new era of peace, in reality, Gazans are entering a new phase of hell.
Since the ceasefire was signed, more than 449 Palestinians have been killed. Israel has breached the terms of the ceasefire at least 969 times. Thousands of tents sit among the bones of bombed buildings, and under the rubble are an estimated 9,000 bodies. Israel controls more than 50 percent of Gaza, and has systematically destroyed 2,500 buildings since the ceasefire, some of them more than 270 metres outside of the “yellow line” demarcating Israeli control. Palestinians like Niveen Nofal, 35, are being forced to watch as their neighbourhoods are flattened. “Our hopes and dreams have been turned into mounds of rubble”, she told the New York Times.
The so-called yellow line through which Israel demarcates its occupation remained invisible at first. Then, Israel began dropping yellow concrete blocks outside tents and homes. Those blocks now mark the line, and anyone who approaches can be shot and killed by Israeli troops. Shortly after the ceasefire began, Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, urged soldiers to shoot “children and donkeys” who approach the line. Israeli troops have also entered Palestinian-controlled areas to shoot and kill Palestinians. And the missiles haven’t stopped. In November, the Israeli military launched a wave of missile and drone strikes at northern and central Gaza, killing 22. In January, missiles pounded into the land around tents and killed at least thirteen. Al Jazeera has reported that, up to 14 January, Israel had attacked Gaza on 82 of the previous 97 days.
Since November, storms have pelted Gaza. Extreme winds have repeatedly destroyed hundreds of tents, forcing people to construct new ones out of inferior materials because Israel is preventing tent poles from entering the territory. Now, tents sit in deep mud. Disease is spreading through these squalid encampments, which are periodically completely flooded. Many, in particular children, are dying of hypothermia. On top of this, the bombed shells of buildings are unstable, and some have collapsed, killing their inhabitants. Still, people with nowhere else to go are forced to sleep in partially destroyed buildings that lean dangerously.
In early January, Eman Abu Zayed wrote that the ceasefire had “invisibilised” Palestinians. This is undoubtedly true, in that many political figures in the West have used it to argue that the war is over and the demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine should end. In particular, the ceasefire has obscured Israel’s ongoing role in the killing of Palestinians. Storms, flooding and freezing temperatures can be presented as natural disasters. But Israel is blocking the construction materials and aid that would enable Palestinians to survive these events. At the end of November, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told reporters: “Not a single hospital in Gaza is fully functional”. Only eighteen of the territory’s 36 hospitals are even partially functioning, after many were targeted for bombing during the most intense months of the genocide.
On 15 January, the United States government announced the beginning of the second phase of the ceasefire. The same day, Israeli forces bombed two houses belonging to the al-Hawli and the al-Jarou families in the central town of Deir el-Balah, killing six people, including a 16-year-old. The new phase will be carried out by a committee overseen by a “board of peace”, which US President Donald Trump will chair. The board will include Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Tony Blair, who led Britain into the Iraq war. Trump, Kushner and Witkoff have been some of the key backers of Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza. Their government, as did the Democratic administration of Joe Biden during the first phase of the genocide, gave Israel’s regime carte blanche to wreak as much destruction as it wanted. Now, these monsters have put themselves in charge of Gaza’s future.
Ali Shaath, a former deputy minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA), will head the broader committee. It’s widely being described as technocratic, staffed by bureaucrats rather than political figures. But the personnel have been approved by the United States, which means they are made up of those they know they can bend to their will. Many of those now staffing the committee were formerly bureaucrats for the PA.
The PA has long governed the West Bank as a de facto cop for Israel, suppressing Palestinian dissent and arresting political figures who oppose it and Israel. It runs the largest per-capita police force in the world, and uses it to conduct mass arrests, surveillance and repression of Palestinians on behalf of Israel. And before 7 October, the Fatah leadership of the PA collaborated with Israel in the oppression and killing of Palestinians in Gaza. The PA faces a legitimacy crisis and governs in a top-down manner, which has led to protests in recent years. Even so, Israel has refused to equip it with even the basic civil servants necessary for it to begin administration.
Trump, Netanyahu and Blair will have nothing but horrors in store for the Palestinians. The committee is unlikely to stand up to them seriously. In these dark hours, those who stand with Palestine can’t look away. To do so would be to let the criminals who run our world get away with the worst crimes of our generation.
