The Palestine solidarity movement must continue
“From there we came outside and saw the stars.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno
After two years, Israel’s genocidal campaign of bombing in Gaza could be over. In the days since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was signed in Egypt, videos have emerged of children roller-skating through the ruins of Gaza City and hundreds of thousands of people making the long march northward along Rashid Street to return to blasted homes and ravaged land.
For millions across the world who have fought for the Palestinians, time seems to have a different quality, no longer measured by videos of ashen limbs and wrecked bodies. While Palestinians rightly celebrate the reprieve, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s statement calling this ceasefire the “biggest contribution to peace in the Middle East for a generation or more” recalls the words of the Roman historian Tacitus: “They make a wasteland and call it peace”.
The fate of Gaza is being decided by the very people who imposed starvation and approved the bombing of homes, schools and hospitals. The global Palestine movement must push for the right of Palestinians to self-determination, not a future designed by their killers.
Of course, Israel could break the agreement—just as it did both previous ceasefires, in November 2023 and March 2025. Under the “Phase One” arrangement, Hamas will release all Israeli hostages still held in Gaza. Israel will release thousands of Palestinians from its prisons, and the Israeli military will withdraw from cities. Once the Israeli hostages are released, Hamas will have no leverage left.
At this point, the ceasefire looks likely to hold. The US military is sending 200 troops to oversee it, unlike the last ceasefires. And key US regional aims have been met, with blows struck against Hezbollah and Iran. Gershon Baskin, a US negotiator, wrote for the Times of Israel that Hamas agreed to something like the current deal in September 2024, and for more than a year, the outcome depended on whether the US government would push Israel to sign on. The role of President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration in this genocide must be remembered.
But it’s important for those who stand with Palestine to be clear that Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians will never end until Israel is defeated. Israel is fundamentally expansionist. Since its foundation, its rulers have aimed at the creation of Greater Israel, incorporation Gaza, the West Bank, and sections of Lebanon. In that sense, any ceasefire is only a pause and we can be certain that the barbarity will resume.
While President Donald Trump’s twenty-point plan has been widely publicised, it’s unlikely to be fully implemented; a special economic zone among rubble and devastation is far from reality. Gazan analyst Muhammad Shehada said, based on discussions with mediators involved in the negotiations, that he’s certain the plan is a propaganda exercise.
While the details are yet to be settled, it’s clear that if President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu get their way, life in Gaza will remain unbearable for decades. Before 7 October 2023, Gaza was already an open-air prison, besieged by land, air and sea. Israel staged regular bombings and restricted construction materials, so rebuilding was impossible. Israel even calculated calories to allow in only enough food to keep people barely alive.
The West Bank is broken up into isolated villages, fenced off and blocked to control Palestinian movement. Israeli settlers regularly seize land and commit atrocities. Now, conditions are even worse. Half a million Gazans face famine, disease is spreading, and all of the key infrastructure has been destroyed.
In an 8 October Fox News interview, Trump claimed that he phoned Prime Minister Netanyahu and told him, “Israel cannot fight the world, Bibi, they cannot fight the world”. Who is this world he’s referring to? Not the Western and Arab governments, which have watched the genocide play out without lifting a finger. Even small gestures like statehood recognition were won only by the Palestine solidarity movement. Israel hasn’t been fighting rulers; it’s been fighting the masses.
The movement for Palestine has opened the floodgates in country after country, unleashing workers and young people into the streets.
Israel and the US now have reasons to end the genocide. Hamas is militarily defeated and Gaza’s population is decimated. But the movement seems to have played a role in Trump’s push for an end, against Netanyahu’s wishes, and created a political cost to continuing. In silence, Netanyahu might have kept destroying Gaza and seizing the West Bank.
We can’t stop now.
The Palestine movement worldwide must keep marching, striking, occupying and sailing for a complete end to genocide—not just what Israel started fast-tracking in 2023, but the longer-term genocide of Palestinians it’s been carrying out since 1948. Gaza must be rebuilt on Palestinian terms with freely given food, medicine and building supplies. The blockade must end. The illegal settlement of the West Bank and the apartheid system must be dismantled. War criminals must be held accountable.
But more is needed. An international working-class revolution must overthrow the capitalist system that produced this genocide. Every grave in Gaza is an indictment of the capitalist institutions that brought us here: from the market, which incentivises imperialist domination of oil-rich regions and rewards the creation and sale of weapons, to the capitalist governments built to put the flow of profits before every single human life.
“Never again” means little in a system soaked in violence. Destruction of the oppressed has happened, again, before our eyes, and will again, unless socialists build a movement strong enough to finally replace capitalism with a system organised for collectivity and human liberation—a world where no-one wakes to the sound of bombing or the barrel of a gun. It’s time to step out of this hell and see the stars.
