Israeli officials have confirmed what’s long been laid bare by the reality on the ground in Gaza—that Israel is violating the ceasefire by withholding food, fuel, and housing assistance. The ceasefire agreement outlined the entry of the following into the besieged Strip: 200,000 tents, 60,000 mobile homes, 50 fuel trucks per day, and 12,000 aid trucks. Gaza’s government media office has confirmed that there are no mobile homes entering, and 180,000 tents, 35 fuel trucks, and 3,500 aid trucks are missing.
The siege on Gaza, the slowly tightening vice of the Israeli occupation, has consistently prevented the civilian population from the right to live a dignified life. Before the recent war, the blockade of Gaza resulted in power outages that lasted upwards of 16 hours, a surging unemployment rate, and a majority of the population being dependent on aid. In 2005, before IsraeI’s blockade of Gaza, the poverty rate was 40% — at the start of 2023, the number soared to 61%. Israel’s insistence on inflicting maximum suffering on the native population is reflected not only by the direct violence of its US funded weaponry, but in the way the state demands the control of every aspect of Palestinian life.
Israel’s breach of the Gaza ceasefire has compounded the devastation endured by those who have lived through over one year of the US-Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign. According to Dr. Monir al-Barsh, the Director-General of Gaza’s Health Ministry, Israel has killed 92 Palestinians in a campaign of targeted killing since January 19, which has also resulted in the wounding of 822 people. Despite this, Israel is now attempting to sabotage the ceasefire arrangement by independently claiming that Hamas is not abiding by the terms of the agreement, with Netanyahu further emboldened by White House briefings with Donald Trump. By Israel’s own admission, it’s not Hamas breaking any ceasefire obligations but Israel.
The political theater taking place in the background is not enough to obscure the depth of depravity that Palestinians are still coming to terms with. The level of destruction and death that overwhelms Gaza, with some still searching for their loved ones in the dirt and debris with their bare hands, is palpable across the Strip. Writer Mohammad Mhawish documented the lives of 20 people in Gaza, interviewing them hours and days after the announcement of the ceasefire and in each case the reader is given a snapshot of the layers of catastrophe and loss that will undoubtedly be felt for generations.
Khaled, a 28 year old fisherman, describes burying his brother with his bare hands: “We didn’t have a shovel. Just our hands. I dug until my fingers bled. My brother loved the sea, so I buried him by the water. I sat there for hours, watching the waves. I couldn’t cry. I just kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ His face is just there every time I look at the sea.” In another case, a taxi driver from the Gaza Strip carried his daughter’s lifeless body to the cemetery in a blanket: “She was so light in my arms. Like a bird. I wrapped her in her favorite pink blanket and walked to the cemetery. No car, no ambulance. Just me and her. I kept whispering, ‘Don’t be scared, habibti. Baba’s here.’ I remember the mornings when I would drive her to school. The road feels so empty now.”
Israel, seemingly unsatisfied with the catastrophe unleashed upon Gaza, is now also threatening—with direct US support—to empty the land of its people. Trump’s proposal to ethnically cleanse the Strip is what Joseph Massad, professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, describes as a “capitalist evangelical plan to steal and colonize Gaza”. Massad argues that Trump and Israel’s plan is not so much to access the beaches on the shores of Gaza but the theft of “the oil and natural gas reserves that lie in its sea – worth billions of dollars – which Trump and the Zionist settler-colony can divvy up between them.”
Reflecting on statements made by Donald Trump about the proposed ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Palestinian author and director of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah, tweeted: “The Palestinian people are not going to be expelled from their land, but the open embrace by the Zionists of the evil ethnic cleansing schemes they’ve always harbored, on top of genocide, is an admission that their racist colonial entity can survive and exist no other way.”
The threats to depopulate Gaza are not without consequence for Israel and its allies, as evidenced by a recent statement from the leader of Yemen’s Ansarallah, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, who has responded to the US-Israeli escalation with a resounding message of unconditional support for Gaza, reiterating that should Israel reopen the war on Gaza the people of Yemen are ready to re-engage in military action. “Our hands are on the trigger,” said Al-Houthi in a recent speech. In a statement directly addressing Trump, Al-Houthi said that “From whom will you buy Gaza? Do you, you foolish and ignorant man, believe that the honorable people of Gaza, after all their unmatched steadfastness and great sacrifices, would sell you their homeland? Ignorant, idiot, and a reckless fool, who deals with everything like a merchant and imagines that others will bargain with him on everything.”
Jordan and Egypt have also rejected Donald Trump’s plan to “clean out” Gaza and displace the inhabitants of Gaza into both countries. The scenes of Palestinians walking back to their villages, despite many of their homes having been wiped out in a war that is unparalleled in all of Gaza’s history, solidifies the Palestinian people’s connection to the land. The Palestinians will not be abandoning Gaza. “This time, we stay, no matter the cost.”
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