The ceasefire still does not feel quite real to me. After so many months of grieving I had forgotten what it is like to let joy enter my heart. It is hard to be joyful when the conditions that brought about the genocide remain unchanged. It is hard to celebrate when over 46,000 people have been massacred. That said, I smiled easily the night the hostages were freed. Even though I couldn’t stay up late and missed the moment when the buses came, the energy of the city was electric in the hours leading up to the release. Everyone here knows someone who has been captured by Israel. My heart was buoyed from hearing my friends talk about their friends and family whom they would be reunited with after years of false imprisonment kept them apart.
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It remains to be seen how this agreement will affect the West Bank overall. People here believe that the West Bank is the next Gaza. It certainly feels like that when every day there are settler attacks and every week Israel carries out air raids and incursions. At a meeting yesterday in Ramallah a few of the Palestinian coordinators had to leave early because Jenin was bombed and flying checkpoints were erected to block many main roads, causing kilometers of stopped traffic all across the region. It had been only two days since the ceasefire.
Donald Trump’s presidency certainly will not be good for Palestine. He has staffed his administration with Zionists and has lifted sanctions against violent settlers who attacked several Palestinian villages. I am worried that he will allow Israel to annex the entire West Bank. Something must have been leveraged to secure this deal. Why else would it have passed now, when it is the exact proposal that Israel refused on May 27, 2024? It is not a good sign that several members of the Knesset have increased their stock in settlement building companies.
While I do have hope that the ceasefire is a step toward true liberation (it is easier for people to organize when they aren’t being bombed), I do not trust Israel to keep its end of the deal. Ever since the Oslo Accords, each agreement has served only to strengthened and legitimize the Zionist state. And as long as Israel exists, there won’t be peace.
Pictured below, after settlers beat an elderly Palestinian man, the IOF came to arrest other members of his family while the settlers continued to graze their sheep on his land. When the ambulance came, several police cars prevented it from reaching the man. Just a typical day in the south.
