After 15 months of devastating attacks, the announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza has been greeted with relief among Palestinians and in the wider ranks of the global solidarity movement. Brian Kelly asks whether the US-brokered plan offers hope for permanent peace, or a viable pathway to Palestinian liberation.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who has watched the relentless devastation inflicted on Gaza that the announcement of a ceasefire has been greeted with massive relief among Palestinians. For fifteen months, a destitute civilian population that had already been deprived of basic necessities and kept on the brink of starvation by a brutal Israeli siege has been subjected to a genocidal bombing campaign, hunted day and night by one of the most technologically sophisticated armies in the world, and one that could count on unwavering support from every major power in the West. Exhausted, starving, overwhelmed with loss, and having been brought to the brink of a deal so often in the past only to see them scuppered at the last minute by their enemies, there should be no mystery in understanding the cause for celebrations in Gaza.
All credible reports about the mood in Gaza—mainly from Palestinian journalists who have survived Israel’s targetting of independent sources—convey the clear sense that relief at the cessation is everywhere mixed with immense grief, with anger, and with a sense of uncertainy over the future. “We are not celebrating because we are happy,” displaced mother of five Akaber Mahdi insists, “but at least we have got rid of the fear and terror [over] the killing that does not differentiate between anyone.” “Israel destroyed everything in our lives,” she said, “But with the ceasefire, we have time to grieve and mourn our loss and to cry over our loved ones who were killed in cold blood.”
“I feel joy, sadness, oppression, pain and anger all at the same time,” Amir Al-Ashi declared after having lost 35 family members when his Gaza City home was obliterated. “We have lost everything. I wanted my mother, my brothers and my relatives to be alive, but all I have left is my brother so we can suffer the pain forever,” he said. “Our hearts are still heavy with worries.” “The pain has disappeared a bit, though it’s still there,” another Gaza resident told journalists working for BBC. “Let our prisoners get freed and the injured get treated. People are exhausted.”
The Complict West Pats Itself on the Back
Little of this will make its way into mainstream treatment of the ceasefire, of course. Across the West, media coverage about the breakthrough has followed the same script that has been in place throughout fifteen months of genocide. In the US, the big corporate news outlets dutifully follow the White House’s lead, with coverage overwhelmingly taken up with sympathetic profiles of the handful of American-Israeli hostages and their families, but barely a word about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed or maimed in a war underwritten by Washington. This flagrant devaluing of Palestinian life—the West’s ongoing determination to ignore Gaza’s suffering—is evident in every single statement released by governments complicit in Israel’s war of retribution: from Starmer in UK, Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, and from von der Leyen on behalf of the EU.
Across the ‘democratic’ West, a state/corporate media complex that has gone out of its way to prove its wartime loyalty is engaged in gaslighting of the highest order. Already they seem transfixed with crass assessments of how the agreement will figure in US President Joe Biden’s foreign policy ‘legacy’, as if his relentless support for genocide can be swept under the rug without anyone taking notice. Journalists weigh up whether ‘credit’ for the agreement belongs rightfully with Biden or with the incoming Trump regime. Coinciding with the deal’s announcement, Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken embarked on a media and diplomatic offensive aimed at rehabilitating US influence across the Middle East—in particular, salvaging Israeli ‘normalisation’ and imposing Washington’s ‘day after’ plans for Gaza.
One question that we can safely predict Blinken will be unable to answer is why a ceasefire agreement has taken so long to put in place. Biden himself let it slip that nothing in the currrent deal goes beyond what the US was seeking in May—eight months and perhaps 15,000 Palestinian lives ago. The May negotiations stalled, as did previous attempts, because the Netanyahu government was determined to carry on the genocide, and because despite global revulsion at the scale of the slaughter, no one in Washington felt the least bit inclined to call them on it. This was part of a pattern of US bending to Israeli demands to continue the killing, and in every single instance Blinken did his best to blame the Palestinian resistance for failure to get an agreement over the line. It’s notable that the US push for a ceasefire came only after the IOF has carried out massive destruction in northern Gaza and the Jabalia camp, with upwards of at least 900 Palestinians killed over the past 10 weeks and upwards of 1200 missing.
Will the Ceasefire Bring Peace?
Although Palestinians have good reason to welcome a cessation, there is justifiable sceptism over whether the full terms of the agreement will ever be implemented. While the first phase—involving a prisoner exchange and mutual ceasefire—seems certain to go ahead, there are major issues that will need to be resolved to move on to the second stage. Sober commentators note that this second phase—due to commence 42 days after the initial cessation and, crucially, involving IOF withdrawal and the opening of Rafah Crossing—is “not a done deal at all”, and prominent Western diplomats have privately expressed “fear that after the first phase…war could resume.”
Negotiations over the terms of the second phase will take place after the Trump administration has taken the White House, and with its ranks stacked with Christian Zionists and prominent supporters of Israel’s far right, there is credible speculation that Netanyahu and his supporters have settled for ceasefire now as an easy and cost-free gesture to Biden, well aware that the imminent shift in Washington is likely to hand them carte blanche not only to resume genocide in Gaza, but to embark on full-scale annexation of the West Bank, with all the carnage that entails. Palestinian freedom is incompatible with a regime bent, since its inception, on the eradication of Palestinian life, and anyone who believes a ‘two-state solution’ remains viable after the horrors of the past year and a half is delusional. A lasting peace demands liberation, and none of that is on offer from those who have overseen this genocide.
A Victory for the Palestinian Resistance?
In the face of Western back-slapping and Washington’s campaign to resurrect its plans for Israel’s ‘normalisation’, solidarity activists should resist the tendency to read recent events as evidence of Zionist invincibility. The simple fact is that Israel has never been more isolated, the cause of Palestinian liberation has never had more popular support around the globe. Try as they might, it will not be possible for Zionism or its allies to sweep the immense crimes of the past fifteen months under the rug.
But there is another stubborn fact that emerges from the rubble of Gaza, almost completely unacknowledged by Zionism or its supporters in the White House and elsewhere. Despite its colossal technological advantages and the massive firepower at its disposal; despite its vast numerical superiority and the propaganda cover it has enjoyed across the West throughout the duration of its assault on Gaza, the Israeli military has failed to achieve the most basic of its strategic objectives. “Israel’s agreement to move forward with phase one of the truce,” global security experts at Soufan Centre insist, “signifies that…Israel’s stated intent to eliminate Hamas politically and militarily from the Gaza Strip was not fulfilled. The Israeli strategy of applying significant military pressure on Hamas to force an unconditional surrender and hostage release was not successful.”
In the conditions we have witnessed over the past fifteen months, the IOF’s failure is an incredible testament to the tenacity and resilience of the Palestinian resistance. Israel maintains a tight lid on its own military losses, but reports from late last last spring point to major disruption of the IOF brigade structure. There is no question that Hamas and others have managed to inflict severe losses on the occupation in the face of overwhelming disadvantages.
Re-Shaping the Movement: From Solidarity to Anti-Imperialism
It has to be acknowledged that the combination of Israeli military power and US and western military and diplomatic support has allowed Netanyahu and the Israelis to rack up significant strategic gains on the ground across the Middle East. In Lebanon, the blows against Hezbollah have worked, in the short term at least, to shore up the influence of forces amenable to US influence: the past week saw the election of a president and prime minister both committed to reasserting the Lebanese state’s monopoly on arms—a longstanding demand of the US and Israel. In Syria, the overthrow of the hated Assad dictatorship seems, on the surface, to have diminished the military threat to Israel and opened the possibility of shaping a regime there that will bend to US and Israeli demands. Iran is clearly weakened in terms of regional influence, and the regime there is almost certainly in the crosshairs of an incoming Trump administration that may already have signalled to Zionist expansionists its intention to aid in regime change. In Qatar, in Jordan, Turkey and Egypt, Blinken and the US have squeezed their allies to keep a lid on public objections to the genocide, and have managed this—until now, at least—without facing serious consequences.
But appearances can be deceptive, and for every strategic gain, the US empire has stored up problems for the future that could explode at any moment. Assad’s fall may bring temporary relief to the Zionists, but there are possibilities in the new Syria that could shift things dramatically against them. Already the Egyptian regime is nervous that the Syrian example could spread and pose a threat to the al-Sisi dictatorship, which plays such a critical role in shoring up the brutal order that dominates the region.
The complicity of the Arab regimes in keeping a lid on popular support for Palestine has been crucial in facilitating the genocide. While Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere have been vocal in expressing bitterness at their ‘betrayal’ by the Arab rulers, the regional despots’ reactionary role, and their close ties to US empire, are rarely acknowledged among solidarity activists in the West.
“What about the future? Will we return to this hell again?” one of the Gazans quoted above has asked. “We need real guarantees; we need guarantees that we will not return to living in darkness and fear.” The only permanent guarantee for that lies in a successful challenge to empire across the region. Whatever the prospects for the current agreement, to sustain an effective challenge to Zionism going forward, the solidarity movement that has emerged in every corner of the world will need to move decisively from Palestine solidarity to a broader understanding of the complex alliances through which imperialism dominates the Middle East.