We are told the ‘war’ against Gaza is finally ‘over’. Is it? | Arwa Mahdawi

4 hours ago 4

Thank you, Donald Trump. Thank you, Benjamin Netanyahu. Thank you, Jared Kushner. Let’s all pause, shall we, and have a moment of appreciation for these three wise men who have finally brought peace to the Middle East. Blessed are the peacemakers!

And, of course, thank you to the Israeli military which, as a US taxpayer, I have done my part to help fund. To echo Kushner: “Instead of replicating the barbarism of the enemy, [Israel] chose to be exceptional.”

It took exceptional restraint, I’m sure, not to level every single building and destroy all the arable land in Gaza. Instead only about 90% of homes are estimated to be damaged or destroyed. The school system has also been eradicated: according to Unesco-Unosat satellite damage assessments, more than 95% of school buildings require rehabilitation or reconstruction. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has similarly said 97% of tree crops, 95% of shrubs and 82% of annual crops are gone.

It took exceptional humanity, I’m sure, not to kill every single child in Gaza. Instead a mere 20,000 children are dead, probably an underestimate, and an unknown number are rotting under 50m tonnes of debris. The toxic rubble is now home to the biggest cohort of child amputees in the world.

So, again: thank you, thank you, thank you.

What do you reckon? Am I doing this right? Am I grateful enough? Because, judging by the coverage of this supposed “peace deal”, this is the sort of gratitude that is expected of Palestinians right now. We’re expected to be ever so appreciative that the Gaza strip hasn’t been completely nuked or entirely occupied. We’re expected to ignore the increasing number of brutal settler attacks in the West Bank, as if this was an issue completely unrelated to Gaza. Ignore the fact that Israel is still arbitrarily imprisoning Palestinians like Layan Nasir without charge and without any evidence being presented against them. We’re expected to feel celebratory that the “war” is over. We’re expected to believe that this is what a path to peace looks like.

Don’t get me wrong, of course I am glad that the bombing has stopped in Gaza, and that a ceasefire is in place. I am ecstatic that more aid is now going into the strip, even though Israel, which has long weaponized food, keeps threatening to throttle the amount of supplies let in.

But I am not celebrating the end of the “war” because this was not a war. Children and toddlers are not systematically shot in the head by snipers during a war. IVF centers and maternity patients don’t tend to be targeted in wars. A place is not deliberately rendered uninhabitable during a war. No, this was not a war. It was, as scores of human rights experts and international organizations have concluded, a genocide.

Genocides don’t just happen overnight; dehumanization is normally a crucial preparatory step. And, conversely, humanization is an essential foundation for long-term peace, justice and accountability. There can be no real path to peace until the dehumanization of Palestinians stops. Until Israelis, and their allies, see Palestinians as equal human beings rather than “barbarians” and “human animals”. Until Israeli politicians such as Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker of the Knesset, do not feel comfortable that every child born in Gaza today is “already a terrorist, from the moment of his birth”.

Over the past two years, more people have been educating themselves about the 100 years’ war on Palestine. Support for Israel is at record lows in the US as people learn more about apartheid, settler violence and occupation. Palestinians have been humanized among many ordinary people who can’t quite swallow the idea that burning displaced civilians alive in supposed “safe zones” and executing healthcare workers is just an unfortunate part of a normal war.

Among world leaders, policymakersand the media, however, the dehumanization of Palestinians only seems to have ramped up. See, for example, a recent episode of Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO, where the CNN commentator and former Obama adviser Van Jones jokingly referred to “dead Gaza babies”. He’s now apologized for being “insensitive” but can you imagine a joke like that being made by a major media figure about dead Israeli hostages? Of course not, because Israelis are seen as human beings. It’s also worth noting that Jones’s fellow panelist, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, didn’t push back at all about this “joke”. And why would he? This is a man who wrote a column comparing the Middle East to the animal kingdom and Arabs to insects.

Van Jones, by the way, made that joke about dead Gaza babies while claiming that Iran and Qatar are running a disinformation campaign to manipulate young Americans into caring about Gaza. Ironically, however, hundreds of millions of dollars are now being spent on a propaganda campaign trying to convince young Americans not to care about Palestinians. US marketing companies have been working on a “bot-based program” to amplify pro-Israel narratives on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and other platforms. Google has a $45m contract with Netanyahu’s office to spread Israeli governmental talking points. And Drop Site News reported last week that Jones himself, along with journalists at places such as the New York Times, are now “mentors in a fellowship founded for pro-Israel ‘information war’”. This is not what a path to peace looks like; this is what rehabilitating the image of a country that has committed genocide looks like.

And the genocide, I should note, hasn’t stopped. Yes there is a ceasefire, but already it is very clear that it is an Israeli-style ceasefire, along the lines of the “ceasefire” in Lebanon, where Israel is still allowed to fire. On Tuesday, at least five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza City. Israel said its soldiers fired against “suspects” who were “crossing the yellow line”, which is the line to which Israel’s military pulled back under the ceasefire deal. Israel has a habit of shooting people who cross invisible lines; IDF soldiers are on record saying that they were ordered to shoot anyone entering what soldiers defined as no-go zones, regardless of whether they posed a threat. “There’s an imaginary line that they tell us all the Gazan people know it, and that they know they are not allowed to pass it,” one IDF soldier told Sky News in July. “But how can they know?”

Again, I am thankful that the killing has slowed down. But let us not be naive here. Gaza has been rendered uninhabitable for a reason; settler attacks and home demolitions in the West Bank have ramped up for a reason. When people like the Israeli prime minister talk about “peace” in the region, the peace they appear to be referencing is the peace of finally being able to ignore the existence of Palestinians. A peace in which Palestinians have been expelled from their homeland. In May, for example, as Haaretz noted, the Israeli daily Maariv reported that Netanyahu told the Knesset foreign affairs and security committee: “We are destroying more and more homes. They have nowhere to return to. The only expected outcome will be the desire of Gazans to emigrate out of the Strip.” Netanyahu has made frequent references to the idea of mass population transfer from Gaza, the so-called “Trump plan”. This is the “peace” that Israel and the US seem to be working towards.