Gaza Still Needs You
This fight is not over.
Has Israel’s genocide in Gaza really ended?
That is the question on everyone’s mind right now. As of this writing, Hamas has freed the last remaining Israeli hostages, Israel is releasing thousands of Palestinian hostages, and Donald Trump has been received as a god in Jerusalem while declaring, “the long and painful nightmare is finally over.”
We can only hope Trump is telling the truth—that, after two full years of Israel trying to annihilate the people of Gaza, Palestinians can begin living again without the constant specter of death and destruction hanging over them. Hopefully, Trump’s clear desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and the grandiosity of the stagecraft around his ceasefire deal—complete with a trip to the Israeli Knesset and a lavish “peace summit” in Egypt—means that he is too invested in the end of the genocide to let it resume. We shall see.
If the current ceasefire does hold, and if Israel and Hamas agree to implement the next phases of Trump’s deal, there will be a temptation to let Gaza slip out of the foreground of our collective mind’s eye. This is, in some ways, understandable. It has been a punishing, draining two years for anyone who cares about Palestine. The devastation of the genocide has left deep scars. It’s natural to want to leave all of that behind—to allow ourselves to make this someone else’s problem for a little while.
But I am here to tell you that that is not an option. Even if the genocide is over, Gaza still needs you. Its people still need all of us. And here is why.
Gaza barely exists anymore
The scale of Israel’s decimation of Gaza is so extreme that it can sometimes feel abstract. But it is all too real.
Israel has destroyed or damaged almost every residential building and the vast majority of all the structures in Gaza. 95 percent of the population is displaced. There is virtually no health system left. Israel has committed scholasticide, obliterating Gaza’s educational infrastructure. Nearly 100 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land is unusable.
By April 2024, Israel had, by some estimates, dropped more bombs on Gaza than were dropped on Dresden, London, and Hamburg combined in World War II. By last week, Drop Site News reported, Israel had “dropped over 200,000 tons of explosives on Gaza in 730 days — roughly 13 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb.”
In other words, there is almost nothing left. And what is coming will not help.
The “peace plan” is dreadful
Trump’s 20-point plan has been presented as not only a mechanism to end the genocide but the key to what Trump described on Monday as “the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East.” But it will bring neither peace nor prosperity for Palestine. It’s a colonial nightmare whose purpose is to deepen Israeli-American domination of Gaza, complete with a ghastly, imperial “Board of Peace” led by Trump with assistance from, among other war criminals, Tony Blair. Such a scheme can never lead to real peace.
The devastation is not only physical
Last week, over at my other home at The Nation, I published a piece about the ceasefire by a young writer in Gaza named Ali Skaik. This passage has stayed with me:
I walked through the ruins of Al-Rimal to find a café with Internet access so I could submit my exam. The streets were unrecognizable. Shops were flattened. Homes were piles of ash and steel.
I ran into my friend Khaled Al-Saqqa, 27, the sole survivor of his entire family. When I told him about the ceasefire, his eyes filled with tears. “Why was I left to suffer alone?!” he asked. I had no answer. I simply hugged him and whispered, “God gives you strength.”
There are so, so many people like Khaled. According to the Associated Press, roughly 11 percent of Gaza’s population has been either killed or injured in the last two years. That’s the equivalent of nearly 38 million people killed or injured in the United States. The deaths of 3,000 people on 9/11 sent us into a spiral from which we have still not recovered. Imagine the level of trauma and suffering that the death or injury of 38 million people would cause. That’s what people in Gaza face—and they face it in an environment that will do little to nothing to help them recover.
Israel’s violence continues
On Sunday, journalist Saleh Aljafarawi was murdered in Gaza City. The people who killed him were reportedly linked to the Israeli-backed death squads that have been roaming through Gaza for months. Some of those militias have been linked to ISIS. That is not what peace looks like. It’s what a slow-motion effort to continue the destruction of the Palestinian people looks like. And it will now come with the inherent support of the so-called “international community.”
If Palestinians ever gain real peace, sovereignty, and self-determination, it will not be through this plan. It is up to all of us to not accept the plan as an eternal fait accompli, but rather to continue fighting for true liberation for Palestine. That means keeping the pressure on Israel, the U.S., and the world. That means continuing to strive for the end of occupation and apartheid. That means continuing to hold our politicians and elected officials accountable. That means not walking away from Palestine.
So yes—if the bombs really have stopped falling, that is something to celebrate. But after that, it’s time to get back to work.
Very sobering and real. I can't imagine being free of this burning hatred of the Israeli state. I pray & work for death to Jewish & European supremacy.
How can you expect Palestinians to "celebrate" their families are gone! Their lives are in turmoil. Their land is still under occupation. This isn't what the people want. They want what trump and his idiotic cease fire bullshitters cannot give them. Hope for the future, being citizens in their own land without having to bow down to their oppressors. Nothing has changed. There are just less of them to object. The first chance Israel gets they will continue to bomb them out of existence. Stop sugar coating it!