Welcome ceasefire: now fight for justice

NEWS OF the ceasefire agreement – reached in the last days of the Biden Administration in the USA and under the watchful eye of Donald Trump – saw celebrations in Gaza and around the world. Now we fight on – for permanent peace, and for justice.

Biden could have ended the Israeli state’s invasion of Gaza long ago. He could have stopped giving the Israeli state the weapons they used to massacre the Palestinians: that would have brought a quicker end to the genocide.

UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer has said that the ceasefire is “long overdue”. He’s right: the ceasefire is indeed “long overdue”. One of the reasons why it is so overdue is that Starmer refused to call for a ceasefire in November 2023. Back then he told the BBC that if a ceasefire was agreed, Hamas would retain “infrastructure and capability” which would allow it to attack the Israeli state again in the future.

The Israeli state continued: reducing much of Gaza to rubble and murdering many ordinary citizens, politicians and professionals such as doctors. That’s dealt with the problems of “infrastructure and capability”, then. And if Starmer thinks a ceasefire is “long overdue” it just shows that even he found it hard to stomach the scale of the slaughter in Gaza and in the Israeli state’s other neighbours – the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran.

Stage 1 of the ceasefire will bring, we are promised, prisoner and hostage releases. There will be very, very welome and long overdue immediate deliveries of food, medical supplies and perhaps other necessities such as tents and blankets and fuel

While this goes on, there will be further talks on the even bigger question of what to do about Gaza. These talks should address questions such as who will pay reparations? Who will compensate civilians who took no part in the hostage-taking for which the invasion of Gaza was a disproportionate act of revenge? Who will pay to rebuild Gaza? Who will put security in place which will keep a rebuilt Gaza safe from being bombed to rubble again?

There may not even be any further talks. Once it has welcomed its hostages home, the Israeli state may continue its attacks on Gaza in an attempt to cow the population further, or it may just let the “ceasefire” drift on and become the new normal. The western states which claim to uphold democracy and elections of governments in their own countries are not at the talks to see these practices upheld in Gaza: they want to choose who will govern the Palestinian people.

The Israeli state has doubtless murdered many Hamas leaders since October 2023, but this does not leave the state safer. The scale of their attack has created a new generation who will want to fight back. Peace can only come through talking – not through genocide. Those running the Israeli state and western leaders have to acknowledge that.

One of the reasons why western leaders felt they could not stomach the attack on Gaza any longer was the protest in their own lands. So let’s breathe a brief sigh of relief and get out on the streets on Saturday.

●Read more about it:
More stories about Gaza