The Electronic Intifada 6 November 2025
Palestinians clear rubble to search for survivors in a house destroyed by an overnight Israeli airstrike on 29 October.
APA imagesOn 19 October, Israel launched a barrage of airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, killing dozens of people in a blatant violation of US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan, which had come into effect just over a week earlier.
And a day after world leaders had gathered in Egypt to discuss implementation, I went back to my neighborhood in eastern Khan Younis on 14 October to gather anything that could protect me and my family against the approaching winter; clothes, sheets, wood, books even, for those cold nights where there will be little else to do but read.
I had not long been searching through the rubble of my home – which has been completely destroyed – when I heard shooting and saw people running. I had been in enough of such situations to know not to ask questions. I left everything I had pulled from under the rubble and fled back toward downtown Khan Younis.
While we were – yet again – fleeing our area, I learned that an Israeli quadcopter had attacked a group of civilians in the area. One of them, I was told, was shot right in the heart.
I’ve faced death many times throughout the genocide. But this time was different. This was just one day after Trump, backed by a number of world leaders, announced a plan to bring peace to Gaza and the Middle East. That day, Israel had also announced that Zikim beach, which is located in the Gaza Strip envelope, to enable the Israeli settlers there to “breathe again.”
When I arrived in my tent in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, I pondered just one question: Is this the ceasefire they want to bring us? Or do they just want to announce a cessation of violence, but have no interest in enforcing it?
Targeting global solidarity
As a person in Gaza who has been living through a genocide for two years and five major Israeli attacks on Gaza before that, the term “ceasefire” is selective and always shadowed with deadly threats.
As far as I have experienced, the word simply means that Israel is able to do whatever it wants. We aren’t.
More broadly, for Israel, ”peace” in Palestine equals a Palestine with no Palestinians, as Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior government ministers have made very clear.
Over the years, Palestinians have learned the hard way that when the colonial plans and their various institutional manifestations – from the Peel Commission in 1936 to Trump’s “Board of Peace” – are formed, allegedly to bring peace, the oppressed people’s rights are lost. The reason is that behind the proposal, there is always a gun pointed at us.
Or, like how Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, put it: “Ceasefire according to Israel = ‘you cease, I fire.’”
When I read through the Trump-Netanyahu 20-point ceasefire plan for Gaza, all I could think of is that we have gone back a century in time: It is another colonial promise of peace that includes everyone but Palestinians, the land’s native population.Of course, in Gaza, we all want this ceasefire to hold, to save what remains of our home. Still, it does not take a genius to see that the ceasefire plan is nothing but a grotesque charade directed by Trump and Netanyahu – a desperate move to save Israel from being internationally isolated, especially after the unprecedented pro-Palestine demonstrations across the globe.
Thus, the plan deprives Gaza of the increasing momentum of world support, while also resulting in the continued loss of people and land in Gaza. It is either Netanyahu’s rock or Trump’s hard place.
On-off genocide
The ceasefire plan depends fundamentally on a phased Israeli withdrawal “based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization that will be agreed upon between the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], ISF [International Stabilisation Force], the guarantors, and the United States.” In more precise terms, there is no specified timeline.
This means that if Israeli troops withdraw to the yellow line on the plan’s map, it would still be in control of 58 percent of Gaza, and while some people might be able to return to their areas of residence, I could not.
The plan has allowed Israel to do what it does best: stall, manipulate and deceive. By 28 October, according to Gaza’s authorities, Israel had breached the ceasefire 125 times.
The killings continue, aid is still being hindered and the Rafah crossing remains closed, denying people travel to receive urgent medical treatment.
A significant reason for the continued killing in Gaza is that the Israeli withdrawal lines are tricky and ambiguous, even unknown to locals, especially those who live in the eastern part of Gaza.
On 17 October, for instance, Israel killed 11 members of the Abu Shaaban family: seven children, three women and the father, as they returned to check on their house in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood of eastern Gaza City.
In my neighborhood, Sheikh Nasser, in eastern Khan Younis, neighbors marked a destroyed house with a big red sheet to warn others not to cross further.
We have witnessed two prior ceasefire agreements in the past two years of genocide. Both times I hoped they would bring an end to our misery. Many of us in Gaza remain very skeptical about this ceasefire, and we can’t afford to let hope in our hearts again.
Israel loves to fish in muddy water, or, like we in Gaza like to put it, ala nakshah, meaning that Israel is merely awaiting any slight excuse to resume the killing.
Netanyahu has repeatedly made it obvious that it’s either his political future or our future. For as long as he is in power, Israel will keep coming for us in an on-off genocide in order to make our misery constant.
This is the “peace” we are offered after two years of suffering the crime of crimes.
Qasem Waleed El-Farra is a physicist based in Gaza.
