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| Israeli soldiers during a military operation in Jenin, West Bank, 4 March 2025. Photograph: Alaa Badarneh/EPA |
It has been just over six weeks since a ceasefire came into effect in Gaza, and it’s clear that it would more accurately be called a “reduce” fire, rather than a cessation. Scores of people are still being killed; enough, in any other scenario, to be deemed both alarming and newsworthy. More than 100 people have died since 19 January, Gaza’s civil defence service spokesperson says. Those killings constitute, alongside other breaches, a grim record of hundreds of reported ceasefire violations by the Israeli government.
The latest among them is Israeli authorities’ decision to halt humanitarian aid into Gaza, in order to put pressure on Hamas to accept new ceasefire terms: mere hours after the first phase of the ceasefire expired, Israel cut off all supplies. In doing so, Israel is using food and civilian relief as a political tool to achieve its objectives, a move that the Qatari foreign ministry, the midwife of hostage releases and ceasefire agreements over the past few months, called “a clear violation” of the terms of the truce and of international humanitarian law.
This is a blockade that won’t affect just a few Palestinians: it encompasses every single person living in Gaza. The entire population is held hostage. According to Amjad al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza, “the whole of Gaza’s population relies fully on aid, of all kinds, as a result of the demolition of the economic and social infrastructure”. The ceasefire as it stands now is no impediment to the death, starvation and besiegement of an entire population whose homes have been destroyed, and whose babies are still freezing to death in the chill of torn tents.
In the West Bank, the pattern of slow but grinding assault has been unfolding for months, and escalating for weeks...READ MORE
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