They call it peace

Since Trump declared ‘peace’ on his terms, the besieging, bombing and killing of the young population of Gaza has continued. On 16 January, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that the Israeli army had violated the ceasefire for a 97th consecutive day:

 Two Palestinians were killed and five others injured over the past 24 hours, with additional victims believed to be trapped under rubble or lying in streets inaccessible to rescue teams.

At least 451 have been killed since the 10 October ceasefire and 1251 injured. The total death toll stands at 71,441, with 171,329 wounded. On 19 January several more people were reportedly injured across Gaza by Israeli drone attacks. Eight children have died of hypothermia since the beginning of winter. Earlier this month Unicef announced that more than a hundred children have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire – ‘roughly one girl or boy killed every day’.

According to satellite analysis by Unosat more than 80 per cent of structures in Gaza have been damaged by the Israeli military offensive. Stormy weather and heavy rainfall led to at least four Palestinians, including a child, being killed when damaged buildings collapsed in Gaza City.

Trump has heralded the start of the second phase of his plan, even though the first phase was never implemented and the situation on the ground could not be worse. Ali Shaath and the other Palestinians on the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza are technocrats with no authority in the Board of Peace structure and no credibility or legitimacy among the Palestinian population. Haaretz reports that they have also been refused entry into Gaza. Everyone involved – Tony Blair joins Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and others on the Gaza Executive Board – is complicit in the further undercutting of what remains of the rules-based international order.

A recent documentary, UNRWA: 75 years of a Provisional Mandate, reveals the sustained efforts of Israeli campaigners to dismantle the agency that provides health, education, relief and medical supplies to 110,000 Palestinian refugees in Jerusalem alone. The most recent UNRWA report failed for the first time to mention the root cause of the ‘refugee problem’ that the agency seeks to alleviate – namely, the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in what is now Israel – but it did describe the unswerving dedication and abilities of the UNRWA staff.

On 12 January, the governorate of occupied Jerusalem announced that it had received official notices from the Israeli Electric Corporation and the Gihon Company indicating their intention to cut off electricity and water to UNRWA buildings within fifteen days. On 20 January, declared a ‘historic day’ by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli national security minister, bulldozers moved in to destroy UNRWA headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem. Aryeh King, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, vowed to ‘kick out, kill and destroy all of UNRWA’s people, god willing.’ An Israeli flag now flies over the agency’s premises.

The Geneva Conventions forbid the ‘extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly’. Satellite images show that Israel has moved some of the blocks demarcating the Yellow Line, expanding their area of military control. In addition to the blocks that were moved, BBC Verify has mapped the location of 205 other markers, the majority of which were placed ‘significantly deeper’ inside Gaza than the line marked on official maps. Last month, the Israeli chief of staff, General Eyal Zamir, described the Yellow Line as a ‘new border’. Between the ceasefire and 12 January, Israel demolished more than 2500 buildings in occupied Gaza, according to the New York Times, on both sides of the Yellow Line.

In the south, Rafah is being razed. Israel has announced plans for a ‘green zone’ there. As Raja Shehadeh documented in Occupier’s Law: Israel and the West Bank (1985), ‘green zones’ are frequently used by the Israeli government as a first stage of land appropriation, partly because they sound so innocuous. My friend Atef Alshaer’s family are still in tents in central Gaza, desperate to return home to Rafah.

At Trump’s launch of the Board of Peace in Davos, Ali Shaath said that the Rafah border crossing will reopen next week. According to Israeli officials, however, the question will be discussed in a cabinet meeting on Sunday. The international press is still denied access. The French writer Jean-Pierre Filiu and BBC correspondent Fergal Keane are among the very few journalists to have entered Gaza since October 2023. Thirty-seven NGOs were proscribed by Israel at the end of last year and have been denied entry since then.

The destruction of Palestinian lives is now a base line in a holding pattern. The ferocious white heat of the past two years of unrelenting attacks has receded from view, but the genocide continues. There is far less coverage on social media, where my accounts are instead filled with requests for aid: ‘Please I need your help, don’t leave me alone,’ reads one. ‘Since October we have received nothing, no support, no likes, no funding and no aid is getting through.’ Tens of thousands of lives hang on trending patterns and the small print of crowdfunding platforms that are increasingly blocking the transfer of funds to Palestinian territories.

The ceasefire was preceded by an intensive ground invasion of northern Gaza by Israeli forces. K., who had managed to stay on in the north for two years, was forced to leave Gaza City. She was looking after the children of several family members who had been killed. They relocated to Deir al Balah in the south, the densely overcrowded area that Israel was referring to as a ‘humanitarian zone’. K. returned to Gaza City on 26 November and went back to work with one of the NGOs that has since been proscribed:  

Yes, we are in a ceasefire, but there is still bombardment, and this truce can be violated at any moment.

As I head to work, I walk for about fifteen to twenty minutes. On my way, I see children early in the morning collecting papers and plastic bags from the streets to help their families light fires. Some wear shoes, and others have no shoes in this cold. Some are dressed in heavy clothing, while others wear light summer clothes – and on their faces you can see how cold they feel.

I kept walking, and what stopped me was a small tent nearby. There were three children –about ten, four and two years old. The two little ones were calling their older brother ‘Dad’, saying: ‘Dad, when will you come back to the tent?’