For the reason that Hamas assaults on 7 October 2023, Israel has been waging what’s extensively thought-about by authorized consultants, politicians and activists to be a genocidal struggle in Gaza. Official statistics estimate that 55,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 120,000 wounded in Gaza, along with the pressured displacement of successfully the whole inhabitants. By late final 12 months, Israel had already dropped 85,000 tons of (largely US-provided) bombs on the territory: greater than these utilized in World Warfare II. Hunger can also be a weapon on this struggle, following the entire blockade imposed by Israel since March 2025, and a denial even of World Meals Program distribution of assist.
The collapse of the healthcare system and the contamination of water provides has prompted an unprecedented well being disaster. The triangle of dying – bombing, starvation and illness – threatens the lives of over 1,000,000 folks each day. Along side the Israeli blockade, 1000’s of assist vans are stalled on the gates of Gaza, prevented by the Egyptian authorities from coming into via the Rafah crossing. Youngsters, after all, endure incommensurably. Not solely is Gaza residence to the biggest group of kid amputees anyplace, however as of early June, 2,700 younger kids endure from acute malnutrition.
The sheer extent of homicide and maiming makes it inconceivable to contemplate, and grieve, over every life that’s destroyed. That is one facet of the de-humanization of Palestinians. Often, some particularly harrowing report makes it into the worldwide information circuit. One instance is the case of the paediatrician Dr Alaa Al-Najjar, 9 of whose ten kids have been killed by an Israeli airstrike, as was her husband (a fellow physician). The diligent outreach of her family via the Italian media was on this event efficient, facilitating the medical evacuation of Al-Najjar and her son Adam to Milan alongside dozens of different Palestinians.
All Palestinians, not solely Gazans, are affected by this struggle. Israel has killed 943 Palestinians within the West Financial institution since 7 October 2023. Usually via violence unleashed by settlers, Israel’s mission within the West Financial institution appears to considered one of fixed annexation, such that it recreates the info on the bottom, because it has in Gaza. Israeli officers aren’t shy about this wildly expansionist plan. On the time of writing, simply as Israel has opened one other offensive struggle entrance with Iran, it has additionally positioned the West Financial institution below lockdown.
Gaza, January 2025. Picture: Jaber Jehad Badwan / Wikimedia Commons
Inside Israel, there may be widespread help not only for the struggle in Gaza, but in addition for forcible expulsion of Palestinians. On the identical time, nonetheless, protests in opposition to Netanyahu attest to divisions inside Israel and dissatisfaction together with his prosecution of the struggle. Most clearly, Hamas has not been eradicated. Nor have all of the hostages (these not killed by Israeli airstrikes) been returned.
However Israel continues to disregard worldwide condemnation, even after the Worldwide Court docket of Justice ordered it to halt its violence. The now-extinct notion of a ‘rules-based worldwide order’, of which the United Nations varieties the liberal scaffolding, now not seems because the potential saviour of Palestinian (or any) human life.
That we’re nonetheless parsing the trajectory and implications of this genocide greater than 20 months later is damning to all regional and worldwide political gamers. However pressing ethical, humanitarian, and political questions nonetheless stay. At stake, every single day, is the instant wellbeing of Palestinians in Gaza, and whether or not they’ll reside or die. Tougher to chart, nonetheless, are the Palestinians’ political prospects, in each Gaza and throughout all of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
World and regional politics: Complicity or impotence?
The plain conclusion is that there’s world accountability to mitigate, at minimal, the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. However even the place hunger and assist are involved, the US stays Israel’s unshakable associate. Sidestepping the UN and all worldwide (not to mention Palestinian) assist distribution, the Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF) has been the disastrous American reply to hunger and siege. Run by army contractors, it has develop into the one entity allotting very important meals assist allowed by Israel to function within the Strip. Even its earlier Govt Director, a former US Navy SEAL, resigned in objection to the impossibility of sustaining the ‘humanitarian ideas of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence’. His alternative is a public relations and promoting government, an evangelical Zionist pastor who doesn’t cover his help for Israeli management of all of Palestine, even supporting the American president’s ‘Gaza Riviera’ plan.
In what one Palestinian journalist has referred to as a ‘grotesque theatre of cruelty’, the GHF has taken over assist distribution in Gaza, entrenching displacement by forcing ravenous Palestinians to stroll lengthy distances for meals within the desert warmth. In iterative chaotic scenes, dozens have been killed adjoining to the GHF assist distribution factors. The GHF has been extensively accused of the ‘weaponization’ and ‘militarization’ of meals assist, and even the facilitation of ethnic cleaning. But the group remains to be energetic. Curiously, the Yasir Abu Shabab gang has additionally emerged in close by areas. The militia, which has a historical past of smuggling weapons and medicines, is extensively understood to be working below Israeli safety, together with in its clashes with Hamas. On the identical time, its presence reinforces Netanyahu’s narrative that Gaza is ungovernable and shouldn’t be dominated by Palestinians.
Given its historic alliance with Israel, the broad contours of the US place aren’t shocking. However different western nations (e.g. UK and Germany) have additionally continued to arm Israel. The response of the Arab states, in the meantime, has been non-existent, except one consists of Qatar’s and Egypt’s function as ‘mediators’ between the US/Israel and Hamas. The Arab League, largely defunct for many years, has provided little however inertia. There are few grounds for confidence within the success of its plan for the reconstruction of Gaza ($53 billion) and a transition to a brand new political part after the struggle, which might finish as soon as all of the hostages are launched. Based on the plan, the Strip could be dominated by a technocratic authorities, with Hamas faraway from energy however probably taking part in safety alongside both Arab peacekeepers (Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf) or overseas troops.
The plan’s fundamental flaw is, after all, that Israel and the US have largely ignored it. Egypt and Jordan, alternatively, have refused to take part within the US-Israeli ‘Gaza Riviera’ plan, which might contain the displacement of Gazans en masse. Just like the annexation of extra territory (in each the West Financial institution and Gaza), the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza has develop into a objective of the struggle, as Netanyahu repeatedly and brazenly admits. Arab international locations broadly oppose this, for causes of their very own, as do regional and worldwide organizations.
Hamas has been prepared to debate numerous iterations of the plan for a 60-day momentary truce proposed by President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff. In return, the militia is demanding a whole ceasefire and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. In pursuit of this intention, Hamas launched American-IDF hostage Edan Alexander, however appears to have been duped, as a result of there was no ceasefire to talk of since. Netanyahu hinted in early June at progress in ceasefire negotiations, however the consideration of each regional and world powers quickly after turned to the Israel-Iran struggle, which started on 14 June 2025. It appears that evidently Israel is, as standard, shopping for time to drive as many Palestinians from their properties as doable.
World solidarity and goals of statehood
The worldwide solidarity motion has been an necessary dimension of the whole genocidal struggle in Gaza. This has been extra outstanding exterior the Arab world, since virtually all Arabs reside below numerous levels of dictatorship, armed battle, or each. The motion consists of protests at universities and, extra not too long ago, flotillas and convoys heading to Gaza within the hope of breaking the famine-inducing siege.
The newest try was the Sumud Qafilah (Solidarity Convoy), made up of some 1,000 Tunisians and 200 Algerians, in addition to activists from Mauritania. After departing from Tunisia and crossing the Ras Jdir crossing with Libya, the convoy was stopped on 13 June earlier than it might enter Egypt. Each the convoy and the World March to Gaza, which it had been planning to affix in Cairo, have been attacked by Egyptian safety forces, with activists turned again and deported. The infamous baltagiyya – thugs blessed if not despatched by the Egyptian authorities – have been additionally reported to have assaulted activists.
Even medical evacuees allowed by Israel to go away Gaza are extorted by Egyptian corporations and compelled to pay backbreaking charges on their perilous journey out. The world media has repeatedly reported that assist vans stand dormant and ineffective on the border, not let in by the Egyptians till foodstuffs rot. The Egyptians, in flip, blame the Israelis. However Arab public opinion typically sees the Egyptian authorities as complicit with the Israeli blockade of Gaza, particularly since 7 October.
Expressions of well-liked solidarity could have been what pushed Eire, Norway, Slovenia and Spain to affix Sweden in recognizing Palestinian statehood. France can also be working with Saudi Arabia in the direction of this objective. This shifting tide shouldn’t be full by any means, however it’s a change that will have been laborious to think about even just a few years in the past. One other notable growth has been the EU evaluate of the bloc’s partnership settlement with Israel. Beneath the settlement, which entered into power in 2000, the EU and Israel agreed that their relationship ought to be primarily based ‘on respect for human rights and democratic ideas, which information their home and worldwide coverage’. The Dutch International Minister Kasper Veldkamp, who initiated the evaluate, voiced alarm not solely on the humanitarian scenario in Gaza and the West Financial institution, but in addition at statements by members of the Israeli authorities a couple of everlasting presence in elements of Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. Coming too late to forestall the destruction of Gaza, nonetheless, critics have described it as not more than ‘performative’.
Whereas the evaluate cited ‘indications’ that Israel has violated the settlement, solely Spain referred to as for outright suspension of the settlement. This was to be anticipated, particularly within the context of Israel’s present battle with Iran. An EU that’s divided over Ukraine won’t immediately arrive on the identical web page in relation to Israel and Gaza. It’s doable, nonetheless, that some elements of the settlement will likely be renegotiated. Even the UK has stalled talks on new commerce agreements with Israel, and imposed sanctions on settlers within the West Financial institution. The British overseas secretary David Lammy’s unprecedentedly harsh language, which included direct criticism of Israel’s army operations in Gaza, could also be paradoxical given British arms gross sales to Israel; but the change is price noting.
The relative dynamism of European diplomacy on Israel and Gaza shouldn’t be, after all, mirrored by the US. The American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has taken a stand that seems to deviate from the longstanding (although perpetually deferred) US pursuit of a two-state answer. As an alternative, Huckbee mentioned, a Palestinian state could be declared on territory belonging to a different Arab nation. This astonishing suggestion is on par with Trump’s ‘Gaza Riviera’ plan, or the reported US negotiations with Libya to absorb 1 million Palestinians forcibly displaced (ethnically cleansed) from Gaza.
For sure, none of those proposals presents a workable plan. The People know that. However the message is evident: no Palestinian state below Trump, simply as there was no Palestinian state below Biden, or Obama earlier than him, or George W. Bush earlier than him. There have been options that Israel’s newest enlargement of the theatre of struggle would possibly partly be an try to thwart a French-Saudi Arabian initiative for widespread recognition of a Palestinian state. A UN convention on the matter was certainly postponed after the strikes on Iran.
Palestinian divisions
Each regional and world momentum for a ceasefire in Gaza, and even for statehood, would possible be stronger have been Palestinian political factions not themselves divided. This has been an ongoing drawback since at the least the 1993 Oslo Accords.
In January 2025, Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Motion primarily based in Gaza) invited Fatah (the faction dominating the internationally acknowledged Palestinian Liberation Group, primarily based in Ramallah) to type a ‘group help committee’ that will oversee the administration of the Gaza Strip. Apparently motivated by plenty of Palestinian initiatives and proposals, Hamas expressed the hope that Fatah would conform to collaborate inside the framework of nationwide consensus.
Hamas endorsed proposals by Egypt, which has provided to mediate between the 2 teams, to type a authorities of technocrats. On this, Egypt has the help of many Arab and Islamic international locations. A group help committee would handle the affairs of Gaza briefly inside the framework of a Palestinian presidential decree. Hamas has introduced it is able to implement any agreements reached nationally and is open to any system that will unite the Palestinians and their establishments. The Egyptian plan comes after a number of earlier makes an attempt at mediation and reconciliation, and tentative agreements reached in Egypt, Algeria, Russia and China to comprehend Palestinian-Palestinian unity. In every case, nonetheless, the President of the PLO refused to ratify the preliminary offers.
One would possibly assume that the genocide in Gaza would have made the seemingly inconceivable doable. However Israel’s onslaught has deepened the chasm between Fatah and Hamas, moderately than bringing them nearer. The context right here is mounting criticism of Hamas, which has unsurprisingly intensified in Palestine and Arab quarters as a consequence of the colossal Palestinian losses and destruction in Gaza. Mahmoud Abbas is exploiting this example by looking for to speed up PLO reforms that he has beforehand rejected or averted for worry that they might be interpreted as compliance with exterior dictates. The Fatah message has develop into sharper and extra forceful: a requirement for Hamas to confess its failure and quit energy. This has had a two-fold impact on Hamas. First, the group has been placed on the defensive; second, tensions have been exacerbated inside its ranks, between those that took half within the planning of the 7 October assaults and those that have been pressured to defend it after the actual fact.
The devastation of Gaza has additionally rekindled enmity between Fatah and Hamas on the difficulty of coping with Israel as a fait accompli. This rivalry derives from the perennial battle within the Arab world between secular-nationalist and conservative–Islamic actions. Whereas the previous have aspired to forged off the constraints of faith and custom and to modernize society alongside western traces, the latter has railed in opposition to forms of modernization that threaten Arabo-Islamic identification and the values upon which Arab societies (together with Palestine) are primarily based. Fatah describes the struggle not as a Individuals’s struggle, however one which Hamas has introduced upon the Palestinians, contrasting Hamas’s actions with the trail the Palestinian Authority is making an attempt to advertise – that’s: avoiding violent battle within the pursuit of liberation or statehood. Hamas, in return, has repeatedly accused Fatah of delegitimizing the resistance in opposition to Israeli occupation, which it claims has helped justify the worldwide definition of the ‘resistance’ as terrorism and strengthened the notion that political negotiations are the one authentic solution to finish the battle with Israel.
Abbas, extensively despised even in Ramallah, is desperately making an attempt to salvage no matter is left of his political profession. Just lately, he has begun taking steps geared toward demonstrating power and presence. A mechanism has additionally been established for choosing a alternative for Abbas, who’s ailing. In November 2024, the PLO president issued a decree regulating a handover of energy to the speaker of the Palestinian Nationwide Council, when the instances comes. He has additionally determined that elections could be held inside 90 days ought to his submit develop into vacant or ought to he develop into severely sick. Moreover, Abbas has declared a normal amnesty for all these expelled from Fatah, together with Mohammed Dahlan and his followers in 2011, after claims that Dahlan had murdered Arafat. In late April 2025, Abbas appointed Hussein al-Sheikh as deputy chairman of the Palestine Liberation Group. The transfer was controversial as a result of it was executed single-handedly, not democratically.
Given each Palestinian fragmentation and the absence of a ceasefire, Hamas faces a tricky selection. Life in Gaza is considered one of steady devastation and struggling, with out Arab, Muslim, UN or western aid of any form. In all this horror, what’s defeat? Is it the acceptance of a truce? Or the failure to get the aid into Gaza, whose folks want it most? Offered with this dilemma, Hamas could also be inclined to outline victory in minimalist phrases, specifically denying the IDF its objective of destroying the group, and to prioritize saving Palestine for an additional day. However meaning a united Palestine, not one divided into three fronts: Abbas and the Palestinian Authority; Dahlan, a UAE adviser and a rival of each Fatah and Hamas; and probably Israel’s choice to rule Gaza; and Hamas, the final bastion of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hamas is bleeding, with no political cowl left. Even sympathizers are altering their discourse to keep away from the wrath of the powers that be in Trump’s world of ‘bone crunching’ energy relations. Its high leaders have been killed, whereas the one politics Hamas representatives in exile can play is through regional mediators, who’ve their very own agendas, irrespective of how altruistic their rhetoric sounds. Tens of 1000’s of Hamas fighters have been killed and its arms provide routes are virtually closed. In Lebanon, the talk now’s about the best way to disarm Hezbollah, moderately than about Hezbollah arming Hamas or others within the area. Iran’s affect and energy is on the wane, having misplaced dependable figures amongst its proxies within the Center East, most prominently the Hezbollah Secretary Basic Hassan Nasrallah. The present struggle with Israel, which can entail main destruction to Iran’s nuclear programme and army capabilities, will trigger it to ‘retreat’ farther from regional affairs.
These developments comprise an enormous blow to Shiite political revival (and enlargement) in a area experiencing Sunni buoyancy, with key Gulf states staging a appeal offensive in the direction of the returning Trump Administration. Syria’s former jihadist leaders, yesteryear’s morbid foe, have been rebranded as companions by the Gulf and the USA. True to Trump’s phrases, Syria has been given ‘a second likelihood’, after sanctions have been lifted months after the autumn of Assad. Syria’s newly inaugurated officialdom is in no temper to take up the reason for Gaza or Palestine, it appears.
Given these regional shakeups, Hamas’s ‘final man standing technique’ could backfire if nobody can cease Israel’s slaughtering of the Gazans – least of all of the US, which is able to defend Netanyahu to the bitter finish. Few hopes might be positioned within the EU, whose coverage in the direction of Palestine is confused, its brightest spots coming from the actions and stands of particular person member states, not as a unitary establishment with coherent insurance policies.
However this doesn’t translate into victory for Israel. World public opinion has swung and can by no means return to wholesale, blind help for the ‘solely democracy within the Center East’. Regardless of official denials, this seems to have sunk into the Israeli psyche. When a former Israeli PM states that the struggle is ‘with no goal’, with ‘pointless Palestinian victims’, it’s an admission that the struggle has develop into a burden on Israel’s picture. Even when the toothless tiger that’s the ICC fails to cease Netanyahu and his struggle, the symbolic weight of the worldwide recognition of Israeli struggle crimes is critical in itself for a lot of peoples within the area.
The dilemma going through Hamas is that, because the world shuts diplomacy in its face, diplomacy is its final remaining choice. In combating too many adversaries directly, with no single actor having its again, Hamas condemns Gaza to a state of everlasting siege. Witkoff stays an necessary hyperlink. Negotiations with him would be the solely real looking manner of ending the struggling. No Arab events have the facility to do this. Be aware that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohmmed Ben Salman satisfied Trump to raise the sanctions on Syria, however to not rein in Netanyahu.
Constructing Palestinian–Palestinian belief away from ideological narrow-mindedness is the important thing. The lack of life and territory is a loss for Palestine, not only for Hamas or Fatah. By recruiting different Palestinians into a technique of battle decision, Hamas could possibly achieve credit score for reopening the seek for primarily humanitarian outcomes and aid, in addition to for addressing the foundation causes of the battle. Right here it would enlist the help and participation of EU states equivalent to Spain or Norway, which facilitated the Oslo agreements.
The paradox
The scenario is paradoxical. Since 1948, Palestine has by no means been in a worse place. The relentless pounding of Gaza and its folks, and the continued displacement of starved Gazans into smaller and smaller areas are, for a lot of if not most, a transparent case of ongoing genocide. The Arabs won’t save Gaza, that’s clear. Intra-Palestinian political disagreements and the more and more brazen land grabs by Israel within the West Financial institution recommend that Gaza’s future is politically decimated. Even exterior Gaza, Palestinians haven’t any political clout.
However, the ravages of this struggle have spurred world expressions of solidarity on an unprecedented scale. For the reason that crackdown on US college activists over the previous 12 months, the burden of this western solidarity appears to lie in Europe.
Unspeakable violence, dying, hunger, displacement and trauma, mixed with political paralysis (if not complicity) due to this fact coexist with a counter-movement. Talking out in opposition to Israeli crimes in Gaza shouldn’t be as taboo because it as soon as was within the West. Diplomatic overtures to Palestine are on the rise. There isn’t a longer European consensus on Israel. One can solely hope that this paradox will ultimately give rise to a political alternative, vouched for by what stays of ‘world civil society’.
The query of Palestine won’t go away. Gaza is destroyed, however not obliterated. Will probably be recorded within the historical past books that the Arabs, and the world, allowed a genocide to unfold and persist for greater than 600 days whereas they sat apart and watched. Even a genocide can’t extinguish the dream of liberation from a colonial occupation. With each life misplaced in Gaza and the West Financial institution, Palestinian aspirations for self-determination and cultural identification develop. The gutting of Gaza and the ensuing oppression – inherent in all colonialism, previous and current – are precisely what hold alive goals and tales of freedom.
