Weeks after the truce trumpets sounded on October 10, the guns have barely fallen silent. Gaza’s skies may be quieter, but the killing has not stopped. The war has simply spilled sideways into Lebanon, Syria, and the occupied West Bank; widening the circle of violence while the world looks away.
Even if Washington may call it de-escalation, a new label can change nothing on the ground. Since last year, over a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank alone. Settlers, emboldened by state protection, continue to move deeper into occupied land while Israel’s far-right ministers speak openly of annexation.
Behind the headlines, Gaza remains unlivable. More than 67,000 Palestinians are dead; a third of them children. The rest are trapped in rubble, starvation, and silence. Entire neighbourhoods have vanished. Hunger has become a weapon.
More than half a million people face famine, and one in four children is acutely malnourished.
And yet, the world behaves as if this is progress. A few Western governments, moved by the scale of horror, have finally recognised a Palestinian state; a moral gesture decades too late. However, power still lies elsewhere.
The so-called Gaza peace plan, drafted by men who have never lived under siege, promises order without justice. It speaks of ceasefires, reconstruction, and technocratic governance, but not of sovereignty. Gaza, it seems, is to be managed, not freed.
You cannot build peace by denying people the right to exist as a nation. No amount of diplomacy can disguise the fact that Palestinians have been excluded from decisions about their own future. Israel’s government, meanwhile, moves ahead with annexation as if the matter is already settled. Even the United Nations–long reduced to issuing statements of concern–seems content to count the bodies and move on.
This is the world’s failure as much as Israel’s. For decades, the international system has demanded restraint from the occupied and offered indulgence to the occupier.
Human rights are preached everywhere, yet enforced nowhere. The siege of Gaza, therefore, is not an aberration. It is the logical end of a world order that punishes defiance and rewards impunity.
There is still a narrow path left. The war will only truly end when Palestinians are granted the same dignity the world takes for granted elsewhere: the right to statehood, security, and self-determination. The ceasefire may have stopped the sound of bombs, but it has done nothing to silence the injustice that fuels them. *