The ceasefire risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal. But while Israeli authorities and forces have reduced the scale of their attacks and allowed limited amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over.
—Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International

Nearly two months ago, Israel and Hamas¹ agreed to Trump’s 20-point “Peace Plan” and a ceasefire. Last month, the United Nations Security Council approved a U.S.-sponsored resolution endorsing this plan.² By then all the living Israeli hostages held by Hamas had been freed, meeting a key requirement of the ceasefire.

But the ethnic cleansing and vicious oppression and terror being brought down on the Palestinian people has continued, even as this is getting less and less worldwide attention.

Israel is still:

* Killing: Israel’s military continues to bombard Gaza—from land, air and sea.

At least 366 Palestinians have been killed and another 938 injured since October 11, when the ceasefire took effect.³ Israel’s ongoing killing spree also spreads terror across Gaza, and makes life, reconstruction, and aid deliveries much more difficult if not impossible. 

Israel firebombs refugee camps, destroying tents and burning alive people inside them. And they have repeatedly used drones to kill people for crossing an arbitrarily drawn and often invisible "yellow line" (these are areas from which the Israeli army operates).

This past week, two children—brothers Fadi and Juma Abu Assi, 8 and 10 years old—were killed by an Israeli drone as they gathered firewood for their father, who is disabled. 

In an official statement, the Israeli army said these children were "suspects" who "conducted suspicious activities on the ground, and approached [Israeli] troops operating in the southern Gaza Strip, posing an immediate threat to them." They continued that the Israeli army "eliminated the suspects in order to remove the threat."

The threat?! These were unarmed children collecting firewood so they could eat a warm meal! 

Upon receiving their dead bodies, their father said, trembling: "I removed the shroud and hugged them. My little Juju's head was blown off... His arms were severed and parts of his torso were gone." He added that "Fadi's right hand and left leg were cut off."

* Blockading: Israel continues to blockade urgently needed food, medicine and other aid—even infant formula. Instead of the 600 trucks a day promised by Trump’s plan, Israel is allowing in only 220 daily, while some 6,000 trucks loaded with enough aid for three months wait at the border. Israel finally opened the Rafah crossing into Egypt—the only crossing open to the world and not leading into Israeli territory. But Israel opened it only for Palestinians leaving Gaza, not the thousands wanting to come back in.

* Freezing: Israel is still blocking tents, mobile homes and other housing from entering Gaza, denying Palestinians adequate shelter, even as a harsh winter is upon them. 

* Destroying: Israel is continuing to occupy growing swaths of Gaza and to destroy and level whole neighborhoods, leaving more and more Palestinians with no homes to return to.

No Change in Israel’s Genocidal Intent, No Change in Trump's Genocidal Support 

Trump and his fascist counterpart in Israel—led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (aka Netan-Nazi)—continue to work closely together. And while they do have real tactical differences on various issues, the U.S. continues to pour huge amounts of political and military support into backing Israel's military death machine. 

In fact, on December 1, Trump and Netanyahu reportedly spoke by phone. According to Netanyahu’s Office, they reaffirmed their joint “commitment to disarming Hamas and demilitarizing the Gaza Strip,” this as Israel drops U.S.-made bombs on Gaza.⁴

Amnesty International sums up: “Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signaling any change in their intent.”⁵ (Emphasis added)

It warns, “The ceasefire must not become a smokescreen for Israel’s ongoing genocide.” 

Yet that’s what it’s become, with Israel’s atrocities barely making the mainstream news, if they are covered at all. 

U.S. “Housing Solution” for Gaza = The Promise of Israeli Concentration Camps

Shelter is one of the most urgent needs people have in Gaza. Israel has systematically—and criminally—damaged or destroyed 84 percent of all structures, including completely destroying over 60 percent of its housing units. Today, 1.7 million Palestinians—over 80 percent of Gaza's population, is displaced and forced to live in tents or makeshift shelters. Especially now, with winter's freezing rains, they’re barely habitable, if habitable at all. 

If this were a real ceasefire, Israel would end its bombardments and open Gaza’s borders. This would allow the UN and other aid agencies to flood the territory with the equipment and supplies they have at the ready. It would enable the Palestinian people, with all their creativity, determination and experience, to build livable temporary shelters and then begin the process of reconstruction. 

But Israel’s objectives and the Trump plan have never been about helping the Palestinian people, much less respecting their fundamental rights and humanity. They’ve always been about suppressing and subordinating—even eliminating—the Palestinian population and ensuring U.S. imperialist domination of the Middle East, and Israel’s dominance of historic Palestine, and military dominance in the region overall. 

As a result, virtually no reconstruction has taken place in Gaza. Why? Because of Israel’s ongoing attacks and blockade, and because the Trump plan gives Palestinians no authority to govern their own land, determine their own future, or protect themselves from Israel’s murderous assaults. So the U.S.-sponsored UN resolution calls for disarming all Palestinians and “demilitarizing” Gaza (except of course for Israel and forces chosen by Trump) before any construction can be authorized there. 

What the U.S. has reportedly decided to do is begin building new, temporary housing in the so-called “Green Zone.” That’s the 53-58 percent of eastern and southern Gaza that’s been seized and occupied by Israel, cleared of nearly all Palestinians, largely razed to the ground, and is now policed by the genocidal Israeli army.

The so-called “Red Zone” to the west, where over two million Palestinians have been forced into, would be left to rot for the time being.⁶ 

All the details of this plan have yet to be decided on or released, but it’s not hard to see how it could lay the groundwork for new genocidal outrages:

• There are reports that Israel will only allow in "well vetted" people—with no ties to Hamas. But Israel has a long history of claiming people have ties to Hamas to set them up for assassination or imprisonment and torture, providing zero proof—from journalists, doctors, aid workers and on and on. This provides a political pretext to only allow in people who will collaborate with Israel.
• Would Palestinians be allowed to leave, for example to see family members, or are they to be locked into a concentration camp disguised as a housing development?
• Would Palestinians trying to enter be detained or imprisoned?
• Would the whole operation turn into the kind of killing field that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid stations did? (See box on new CNN exposure of mass graves.)
• By refusing to rebuild in the “Red Zone,” where well over 90 percent of the Palestinian population is living, is this a means for forcing a mass exodus from Gaza?
• Does this plan open the door to a permanent Israeli occupation, or annexation of over half of Gaza and perhaps “repopulate” it with Israeli settlers?

What's Driving This?

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a reactionary attack on Israel which included the targeting of civilians. some 1,200 people were killed and some 250 taken as hostages. In response, Israel launched a full-scale genocide aimed at the Palestinian people as a whole. 

In the two years plus, Israel has murdered at least 70,117 people, including at least 20,179 children. At least 170,999 people have been injured. And these numbers do not include the thousands still buried under the bombed buildings and ash. Israel obliterated the entire infrastructure of Gaza, leaving only trauma, terror and rubble—schools, hospitals, mosques and churches, libraries... all gone.

In November 2023, revcom.us spoke to why this was happening: 

Netanyahu (aka Netan-Nazi) and Israel’s rulers are seizing on Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel—which included the war crimes of taking hostages and the murder of civilians—to attempt a “final solution” to the “Palestinian problem.” This means, at a minimum, reducing the Palestinians to such a state that they can no longer pose any obstacle to Israel’s objectives. Beyond that, it could mean mass expulsion and/or slaughter on a massive scale, beyond even what Israel is now carrying out.

This is what has continued to unfold—in new and horrific ways. And because the U.S. system of capitalism-imperialism requires Israel as a military and political outpost in the strategic region of the Middle East—the rulers of this system have continued to back and fund and support Israel's open genocidal slaughter.

Trump’s Fascist, Imperialist “Peace Plan” Must Be Opposed

To maintain the cover of stability, Trump is insisting that his “peace plan” is moving ahead, despite problems (including Israeli airstrikes), into Phase 2, and that he plans to announce his “Board of Peace” before Christmas. This is the board—with Trump himself at the head—that would assume total control of Gaza, and eventually—supposedly—replace Israeli forces with an international stabilization force. Whether this will actually come to pass is impossible to know with certainty.

However, people should recall that in 2001, the U.S. invaded and occupied Afghanistan, promising to liberate its people, end “terrorism,” and build a new society. In 2003, it invaded Iraq, promising to create a liberated, “democratic” Iraq. These grandiose promises and real plans of the U.S. imperialists failed abysmally, while costing hundreds of thousands of Afghans and nearly a million Iraqis their lives. 

What we can say with certainty about the current situation in Gaza, and which revcom.us has previously exposed HERE and HERE, is that Trump’s is a thoroughly reactionary, predatory plan which represents a further assault on the Palestinian people, a further bolstering of the genocidal Israeli state, and a further and deeper U.S. intervention into the Middle East.

End Israel’s Blockade of Gaza!

Stop the U.S.-Israeli Genocide of the Palestinian People

This whole system is rotten and illegitimate! We need and we demand: a whole new way to live, a fundamentally different system!