IT is so clearly not a peace deal. It is so clearly a pause of uncertainty, of unfairness, of threat and of inequality.
The pause in some of the violence in Gaza is welcome. The return of hostages from Israel and Palestine is welcome. The easing of aid restrictions is welcome. But it is not a peace deal.
In the Knesset, Donald Trump, speaking on a stage that should be a war crimes tribunal, bigged up the idea of genocidal criminal Benjamin Netanyahu’s mantra that Israel will have “Peace through strength”. That is, of course, not peace. That is occupation, coercion, mass murder, theft of land, illegality and disregard for the rule of law.
There are some who are so battered by international events and the events in Gaza that they think whatever glimpse of restraint in barbarism means that we should welcome whatever that glimpse is. World leaders flew to Egypt like sycophantic serfs to a palace welcoming Donald Trump as a world leader of peace. That Emperor with no clothes had less pandering to him.
This amplification of piecemeal inadequacies feigning the cloak of peace will be written in the history books, but not for good reasons.
Gaza lies in a state of ruin none of us can imagine, bombed to pre-Biblical oblivion with the airplanes, bombs and weapons of those who gathered in self-congratulation with the blind eyes of the Arab nations that made it permissible.
Rather than accountability and promises of non-recurrence, the armies of the war criminals retain those weapons and stand barely out of sight, snarling at the returning, depleted Palestinian people, ready to enact whatever final solution they can muster, with whatever excuse comes their way. International journalists are still not allowed into Gaza, and we can anticipate why.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian children’s limbs and lives have been taken with policies of utter sadism, and we are meant to accept that there will be no accountability because Netanyahu and Trump have decided that they were expendable and their memory worthless.
We know here that peace is not a temporary absence of violence. We know that lasting peace can only be achieved with justice, agreement and commitment to democracy. We know that the hard part comes after the ceasefire. We know what happens when bad faith actors believe they can achieve their aims through violence.
For lasting peace Israel must face accountability for what it has done in Palestine. There must be sanctions against this government that seeks to eliminate the people from above and below the ground. They must be stopped from the ongoing violence of apartheid and occupation through diplomatic, economic and military actions. The people of Palestine must be guaranteed protection from land, sea and air, that what has happened to them has indeed ended.
There must be accountability for Israel’s purposely genocidal actions. And Israel’s backers must face the same. It is utterly depraved that anything other than facing the international criminal courts might be countenanced. The Western nations’ collective histories and consciences are condemned to being branded with the scars of complicity in genocide if these basic principles are not upheld.
There will be no lasting peace if Palestinian statehood and personhood are not secured and protected. The weeks ahead may prove my fear and scepticism wrong. But the signs are there for us all to be very worried indeed.
