Genocide resumes

It took all but two months for Israel to unilaterally shatter the ceasefire it had agreed to with Hamas back in January. The Zionist state launched a massive assault on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday night, killing at least 330 Palestinians. As is usually the case with Israeli strikes on Gaza, the majority of those killed are thought to be women, children and elderly people, with the strikes reportedly concentrated on built-up neighbourhoods, schools and residential buildings. Along with the strikes, Israel has also issued evacuation orders to Gazans living or sheltering near the border areas. Driving people out of their homes under the threat of violence is not exactly an evacuation. ‘Forced displacement’ would be the more appropriate term for this. As such, the genocide of Gaza, which has already killed over an estimated 60,000 Palestinians, has resumed — not that it ever really ended. What prompted the Israelis to take this step? According to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, the main author of the genocide, the resumption of hostilities came due to Hamas’ alleged refusal to release Israeli hostages or agree to offers that would extend the ceasefire.

This is patently false. What Hamas did was refuse to extend the first phase of the January ceasefire instead of proceeding to the second phase as was initially decided. The second phase of the ceasefire was supposed to sort out the return of all remaining Israeli captives and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Strip. Extending the first phase, as Israel wanted, would have forestalled the latter while possibly allowing Israel to continue with the former. No reasonable party could be expected to agree to this. However, it is perhaps unlikely that the Israelis wanted the ceasefire to hold in the first place. They were not happy about being pushed by the Trump Administration into it when it was signed and reportedly violated it over 350 times. Adherence to the deal appears to have been almost as lopsided as how it was broken.

While it is extremely regrettable for Gaza to be plunged back into genocide, there is somewhat of an inevitability over what has transpired. Many analysts commented on the fragile nature of the January ceasefire from the start and some reports even argued that it would not make it past the six-week mark. They appear to have been off by only a fortnight. The fact is that the primary drivers of the genocide, the Israeli desire to ethnically cleanse and colonise Palestinian land and the US willingness to back its ‘special friend’ to the hilt, were never addressed. In fact, they might have even gotten stronger during the period of the ceasefire, which saw US President Donald Trump back a plan to depopulate Gaza and turn it into some sort of a tourist resort. The US president even posted AI-generated videos to his social media account showcasing this grotesque vision. It comes as no surprise that the US special envoy to the Middle East hinted that he was favourable to the Israeli position of wanting to extend the first phase of the ceasefire instead of wanting to go into the second phase of the deal he helped put together, arguably contributing to its demise. So long as Israeli imperialism and US complicity remain intact, there will be no sustainable peace in Gaza or any other Palestinian land.