Humanitarian Intermission: A Breath Between The Bombs
As Trump and Biden applaud themselves for their roles in brokering peace, the people of Gaza are left to grapple with the wreckage of a war they never asked for.
Illustration By: (Hannah Arabella Gabling // The Underground)
We call it a ceasefire like the word alone can clean the blood off the streets of Gaza. Like it’s a bandage over an open wound. Like 42 days of silence can undo 76 years of occupation. Yes, the ceasefire offers some time to breathe, but each breath tastes like dust, carries the weight of grief, and the silence of screams.
This is not peace, this is a brief silence that the world applauds as if the genocide is over. Only the ones who endured 15 months of relentless bombings and destruction are the ones who can celebrate, even if only for a brief moment. Not us. We should know that…
Genocide does not end when the guns go silent. It lingers in the poisoned water, the polluted air, the skeletal remains of homes where families once lived and laughed.
According to the UN from over a month prior to the ceasefire, at least 45,000 lives in Gaza were taken. That’s what it cost. Not soldiers, not numbers. Fathers. Mothers. Children. Palestinians, primarily consisting of Muslims. At least 45,000 dreams reduced to statistics. At least 45,00 futures reduced to rubble.
With terms shrouded in ambiguity and no accountability in sight, this ceasefire might be less of a step towards peace and more of a prelude to the next onslaught.
Do not be naive, but pray to God that I’m wrong.
The conditions that have been announced for the “ceasefire” are as follows:
FIRST STAGE: (underway at the time of article writing): Six weeks of aid agencies increasing humanitarian aid access to Gaza, highlighting that hundreds of trucks enter the city each day. Israel and Hamas will exchange hostages and prisoners. Israeli military operations must withdraw to the shared border with Gaza. Displaced families are allowed to return home to their neighbourhoods.
SECOND STAGE: Permanent end to fighting and complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestine, with continuing hostage and prisoner exchanges.
THIRD STAGE: Focus primarily on rebuilding Gaza. This may take decades, according to National Public Radio (NPR).
Some fear that these negotiations are temporary, since communications have always been strained, no matter who is keeping international vigilance as mediators (this time around, it is Qatar, Egypt, and the U.S.), and attempts at ceasefires have only resulted in more violence, with clear violations on the part of Israel, reports Middle East Eye.
How can Palestine be free if corporations are only slowly abandoning investments involved in arming the conflict? Doesn’t a ceasefire that outlines one party is returning and another is exiting be enough indication that one is clearly the oppressor?
When U.S. President Donald Trump was asked about his confidence in keeping the ceasefire deal and seeing through all three phases, he replied “I’m not confident. It’s not our war, it’s their war.”
Trump's words are a sharp contrast to the reality that this war isn’t devoid of U.S involvement. The U.S. has spent decades financially and politically supporting Israel, playing a direct part in the ongoing violence. It’s ironic that someone who wields immense influence over foreign policy claims to be uninvolved.
It seems to me that in Trump’s view, Gaza isn’t a place of suffering, destruction, or displacement —it’s simply a "massive demolition site" with "phenomenal location on the sea," and "great weather." He speaks of the land as though it were a real estate opportunity. In reality, it is a strip of homeland from which Palestinians were expelled to in the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, and currently a place where over 46,000 lives have been lost, families shattered, and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble.
“Some beautiful things could be done with it.” Trump says.
Beautiful things?
What’s beautiful about returning “home” to dust and shattered concrete? To bodies of loved ones still being discovered in pieces? How do you rebuild memories, laughter, the walls that held generations of stories?
Trump’s development idea reflects a broader pattern in how he approaches conflict, seeing it not in terms of its human impact, but as something that can be commodified, rebranded, or turned into an opportunity for future investment.
It seems his empathy is selective. At 2022’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump addressed an adoring crowd with reverence for Ukraine: “The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling. We are praying for the proud people of Ukraine. God bless them all.” He even praised Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him “brave” for staying in Kyiv.
But for Gaza? No prayers. No mention of bravery. No acknowledgment of the beautiful, dignified, resilient, and noble people clinging to life with everything they have.
It seems as though the people of Gaza are subjects to be studied, not survivors to be heard. His plans for the region don’t involve healing the broken souls who remain, but instead turning the land into something profitable. Gaza’s destruction is seen through the lens of opportunity, because, in his world, war just seems to be another chance to capitalize.
I really do hope I’m wrong about everything.
On the other end, former President Biden, whose administration some Palestinian rights advocates associate with this genocide, ended the final month of his four-year term wanting to affirm the ceasefire as his idea.
“[The deal] was developed and negotiated by my team,” President Biden claimed. When asked if he or Trump deserved recognition for brokering the ceasefire deal, he replied “Is that a joke?”
After over a year of negotiations, the world, and Gazans themselves, watched as Hamas officials were blamed for ceasefire slowdowns and refusals for peace. But, according to quotations collected and published by the South African Ambassador to The United Nations’ Security Council, many might not want this ceasefire:
Eliyahu Revivo, Israeli politician and Likud activist (major right-wing political party in Israel) on November 1st 2023: “Every resident of the Strip who is not fighting against Gaza ISIS, is a son of death. I am convinced that it will be possible to evacuate those sane few from the Strip area.” (Article 11, Page 83/121)
While Israel feeds its hero complex and promotes the same war on terrorism campaign that the U.S. does,, how was indiscriminate bombing meant to protect the “sane”, or even ensure their sanity remained intact? How much “terrorism” has truly been wiped out when a version of it is trampling through the lands it assumes it is purging of ill intent?
Zvi Sukkot, of the Religious Zionist party on January 3rd 2024 said “First of all, I reject this whole idea that we have a responsibility towards the residents of Gaza…What would I do with them? It’s none of my business. I’m not letting them return home.” (Article 14, Page 84/121).
Israel, you acknowledge Palestinians’ native connection to the land. You call them residents, not invaders or occupiers, yet you restrict their access to their land. It is true what they say about history — no matter the unfairness, it will be written by the winners. But if this is anything to go by, it’s not set in stone.
This war was waged under the claim of dismantling Hamas’ military infrastructure, and seeing the return of captives taken on October 7th. The ruins of Gaza tell a different story. If the primary goal was truly to eliminate Hamas, why did it manifest as the annihilation of critical civilian infrastructure, the destruction of entire neighborhoods, and the slaughter of thousands of civilians?
Perhaps, the war did not just miss its mark, it never aimed for it.
Instead, it carved through Gaza, leaving behind ash and bone, while the very fighters it claimed to target stand defiantly in numbers, present at the post-ceasefire hostage releases, unbroken and unbowed.
Hamas remains a reality, standing amidst the debris that was supposed to be their grave. How can anyone speak of success when the rubble holds no victory? The truth is sharp and brutal; this operation was perhaps never about dismantling Hamas but dismantling Gaza, and eventually, all of Palestine.
Moreover, Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel and leader of the Likud party, January 13, 2024: “Nobody will stop us –- not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anybody else.” (Article 10, Page 109/121).
What kind of impression does that give for repeated international law infractions, all associated with human rights violations as outlined by the UN? There is a vast amount spanning across the previous reporting year (2023-2024). Repeated and mass forced displacement, targeting journalists, limiting humanitarian aid with the intent of starvation, keeping hostages in unlawful environments, communications blackouts, explicit hospital attacks and eradications, attacks on civil society, among countless others. Could it be that the intent has always been bloodshed and forceful occupation of the land, disguised behind the thinnest veil of “self-defense” in recent memory? If the situation truly revolved around the hostages and retaliating against Hamas, why would his military operations have mistakenly caused the deaths of three of his own?
This ceasefire, like the lives it is hanging over the precipice of death, is like another political plaything for Western governments. The devaluing of the desperation with which Palestinians cling to their lives is morally deplorable. To put forth a ceasefire knowing this, acting like it’s something to be grateful for and a sign that Middle Eastern affairs have a better chance for positive change under the Trump administration (that couldn’t relent as to whether or not it needed the support of its other war-mongering rival to come to it), only affirms the opposite of a heroic deed: it’s a long time coming, and it’s still not enough. Politics seem to have become casual.
Deciding you don’t want to go to war anymore, long after the damage has been done, will not easily clean the blood off your hands. Surprise! It’s the same hands, no matter the ruling party, making the finger paintings every time.
Ceasefires are not conclusions. They are intermissions in a play, in which the actors change more than the story.
How can Palestine be free when the West Bank, and major Palestinian neighbourhoods such as Jenin, are still being bombed? It’s surprisingly underreported.
How can Palestine be free when evidence is being denied before our very eyes of the clear differences between released Israeli hostages, and released Palestinian prisoners? One has the war permanently etched into their every facial expression — crazed, wide eyes; tight lips; battered faces and bodies. The other is dapping up the so-called terrorists, kidnapped but without a hair out of place, saluting them as they stroll out of the compound.
Non-essential items are most of the arrivals into the Gaza strip since the ceasefire came into communicative effect on January 19. 85 percent of Gaza’s water wells have been destroyed and nothing has been brought in to repair or restore them. Fire-destroyed hospitals have no MRI machines, no generators, reports Reliefweb, a humanitarian information service provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs(OCHA).
Border crossings are slowly being pieced back together, with an uncertainty that suggests a populace collectively holding its breath as much as lack of resources. If this feels like the lull before the storm, it very well could be. Hatred inspires a kind of defiance. Israel is no stranger to defiance.
So, the most important thing for the community to do is watch attentively and critically. Do not look away as politicians elbow one another for the best war crime apology. Notice every law that bends until it breaks, while the mediators remain silent. Keep every martyr in your heart. Whatever you give visibility is ultimately what you give power, and ignorance will never be bliss if it means the annihilation of human empathy. Once you feel it is in your power to be unsettled by your passiveness, fight. Protest, show up, donate when/if you can, learn. Have difficult conversations.
It cannot truly be victory if it is fleeting. It cannot truly be victory if hatred is allowed to persist. Palestine is not free, yet. Prove me wrong, though genocide hardly needs a second opinion.
UPDATE: Since the publishing, Israel has violated ceasefire deal by a single strike killing approximately 400 people in Gaza reports CNN.
