March 13, 2025
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.
On 27 January 2025, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians left their temporary shelters in southern Gaza and marched en masse to the north. They crossed various towns along the way, one long line of people alongside the Mediterranean Sea. It was clear that this was not a spontaneous action because so many people seemed to know that this was the perfect day for them to go back to their destroyed homes. Cameras mounted on drones filmed their progress, and young men climbed metal towers to place Palestinian flags, almost to mark their historical journey. Hamas called the march northward ‘a victory for our people’ and a ‘declaration of failure’ for Israel’s attempt to annex Gaza. A former close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben Gvir, agreed with Hamas. He said that the march to the north was a ‘Hamas victory’ and an ‘Israeli surrender’. By the end of the day, Palestinians who made it into Gaza City lit their cooking fires, sending a signal to the satellites that the light – even if made by fire and not electricity – was back in Gaza City.
Due to the ceasefire deal, aid trucks began to enter Gaza in much larger numbers than before (up to 600 a day in mid-February 2025). The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) opened thirty-seven shelters in the north, including seven in Gaza City (one of them only for women, as well as modest medical support for pregnant women). On the day before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, UNRWA announced that it had begun to provide food assistance to about 2 million Palestinians (90% of those who remain in the Gaza Strip). ‘We are ready for Ramadan’, Ahmed al-Raqab, who lives in Gaza City, told me via WhatsApp. The ninth month of the Islamic calendar is celebrated as Ramadan, a month of reflection and prayer. The first ten days of Ramadan are known as the Days of Mercy (Rahmah), but these first ten days turned out to be an ordeal.
‘We do not have much, but we will fast and then we will share what we have in the evening so that we can have a memorable time with our family and friends’. Then, later, as the night fell, he wrote again, just to reassure me: ‘Even if there is nothing left, my friend, we have some duqqa, and we will dream of sayadiyya for when you eat with us’. Duqqa is a delicious mix of crushed hazelnuts with cumin and mint, while sayadiyya is fish cooked with chilis and eaten with rice and fried onions. Even in the midst of nothing, there is the something of dreams.
But Ramadan began for many Palestinians in Gaza with sadness. Fatima al-Absi in Jabaliya could not go worship in her usual mosque because it is bombed out of existence. ‘Everything has changed’, she said. ‘There’s no husband, no home, no proper food, and no proper life’. Her husband was killed by an Israeli bomb. Her life had been reduced. But she surrounded herself in northern Gaza with the remainder of her family and found her own way to celebrate Ramadan.
On 2 March, Israel stopped allowing any humanitarian aid truck from entering Gaza, thereby cutting off supplies (including food) to the Palestinians who had just started their month of Ramadan. This act of war violated the ceasefire agreement. The Israeli government said that it was because Hamas had not released the hostages. But this is not the exact reason why Israel restarted its genocidal policies towards the Palestinians. It is important to remember that just a few days before the shutdown of humanitarian deliveries, Israel had been humiliated by the Palestinian great march northwards. Blocking the humanitarian trucks was a form of revenge against the Palestinians for undoing the ethnic cleansing that had set in motion Israeli plans to annex – at least – northern Gaza. With hundreds of thousands of Palestinians back in the north, it would be impossible to build US President Donald Trump’s Riviera and build the massive settlements that the Israelis had dreamed about. The punishment was the end of humanitarian aid. The crime was the Palestinian great march northward.
But it did not end with the stoppage of the trucks. On 11 October 2023, the Israeli government ordered the Israel Electric Corporation to cut off the electric supply to Gaza and therefore shut down Gaza’s power plant. What remained working, even if under very hard circumstances, was the South Sea desalination plant. Then, on 9 March 2025, Israel announced that it would cut off whatever power had been allowed in, including the power to the desalination plant – which would mean that Gaza would have a very, very limited regular supply of clean water.
And then, as if from nowhere, the airstrikes began to intensify. One raid, on 11 March, killed five people in Gaza City. In Rafah, a Palestinian woman was killed by an Israeli drone. It is the Israeli war machine itching to restart the bombardment and push the Palestinians back south.
Cutting off water, food, and electricity; the bombings again; the threats of bulldozing all of Gaza into Egypt; the threat of building resorts for the holidaymakers from Tel Aviv and Houston. This is the reality for the Palestinians in Gaza. The scale of the Israeli actions feels much greater than anger that the prisoners have not been released. This is plainly revenge for January 27.
‘How is everyone surviving this situation?’ I write to Ahmed. ‘You must all be exhausted from the tension’.
‘We are ok’, he answered, and then added, as if for emphasis or to convince himself, ‘We are ok’.
This article was produced by Globetrotter and No Cold War.
On 27 January 2025, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians left their temporary shelters in southern Gaza and marched en masse to the north. They crossed various towns along the way, one long line of people alongside the Mediterranean Sea. It was clear that this was not a spontaneous action because so many people seemed to know that this was the perfect day for them to go back to their destroyed homes. Cameras mounted on drones filmed their progress, and young men climbed metal towers to place Palestinian flags, almost to mark their historical journey. Hamas called the march northward ‘a victory for our people’ and a ‘declaration of failure’ for Israel’s attempt to annex Gaza. A former close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben Gvir, agreed with Hamas. He said that the march to the north was a ‘Hamas victory’ and an ‘Israeli surrender’. By the end of the day, Palestinians who made it into Gaza City lit their cooking fires, sending a signal to the satellites that the light – even if made by fire and not electricity – was back in Gaza City.
Due to the ceasefire deal, aid trucks began to enter Gaza in much larger numbers than before (up to 600 a day in mid-February 2025). The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) opened thirty-seven shelters in the north, including seven in Gaza City (one of them only for women, as well as modest medical support for pregnant women). On the day before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, UNRWA announced that it had begun to provide food assistance to about 2 million Palestinians (90% of those who remain in the Gaza Strip). ‘We are ready for Ramadan’, Ahmed al-Raqab, who lives in Gaza City, told me via WhatsApp. The ninth month of the Islamic calendar is celebrated as Ramadan, a month of reflection and prayer. The first ten days of Ramadan are known as the Days of Mercy (Rahmah), but these first ten days turned out to be an ordeal.
‘We do not have much, but we will fast and then we will share what we have in the evening so that we can have a memorable time with our family and friends’. Then, later, as the night fell, he wrote again, just to reassure me: ‘Even if there is nothing left, my friend, we have some duqqa, and we will dream of sayadiyya for when you eat with us’. Duqqa is a delicious mix of crushed hazelnuts with cumin and mint, while sayadiyya is fish cooked with chilis and eaten with rice and fried onions. Even in the midst of nothing, there is the something of dreams.
But Ramadan began for many Palestinians in Gaza with sadness. Fatima al-Absi in Jabaliya could not go worship in her usual mosque because it is bombed out of existence. ‘Everything has changed’, she said. ‘There’s no husband, no home, no proper food, and no proper life’. Her husband was killed by an Israeli bomb. Her life had been reduced. But she surrounded herself in northern Gaza with the remainder of her family and found her own way to celebrate Ramadan.
On 2 March, Israel stopped allowing any humanitarian aid truck from entering Gaza, thereby cutting off supplies (including food) to the Palestinians who had just started their month of Ramadan. This act of war violated the ceasefire agreement. The Israeli government said that it was because Hamas had not released the hostages. But this is not the exact reason why Israel restarted its genocidal policies towards the Palestinians. It is important to remember that just a few days before the shutdown of humanitarian deliveries, Israel had been humiliated by the Palestinian great march northwards. Blocking the humanitarian trucks was a form of revenge against the Palestinians for undoing the ethnic cleansing that had set in motion Israeli plans to annex – at least – northern Gaza. With hundreds of thousands of Palestinians back in the north, it would be impossible to build US President Donald Trump’s Riviera and build the massive settlements that the Israelis had dreamed about. The punishment was the end of humanitarian aid. The crime was the Palestinian great march northward.
But it did not end with the stoppage of the trucks. On 11 October 2023, the Israeli government ordered the Israel Electric Corporation to cut off the electric supply to Gaza and therefore shut down Gaza’s power plant. What remained working, even if under very hard circumstances, was the South Sea desalination plant. Then, on 9 March 2025, Israel announced that it would cut off whatever power had been allowed in, including the power to the desalination plant – which would mean that Gaza would have a very, very limited regular supply of clean water.
And then, as if from nowhere, the airstrikes began to intensify. One raid, on 11 March, killed five people in Gaza City. In Rafah, a Palestinian woman was killed by an Israeli drone. It is the Israeli war machine itching to restart the bombardment and push the Palestinians back south.
Cutting off water, food, and electricity; the bombings again; the threats of bulldozing all of Gaza into Egypt; the threat of building resorts for the holidaymakers from Tel Aviv and Houston. This is the reality for the Palestinians in Gaza. The scale of the Israeli actions feels much greater than anger that the prisoners have not been released. This is plainly revenge for January 27.
‘How is everyone surviving this situation?’ I write to Ahmed. ‘You must all be exhausted from the tension’.
‘We are ok’, he answered, and then added, as if for emphasis or to convince himself, ‘We are ok’.
This article was produced by Globetrotter and No Cold War.
Vijay Prashad
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. Tings Chak is the art director and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and lead author of the study “Serve the People: The Eradication of Extreme Poverty in China.” She is also a member of Dongsheng, an international collective of researchers interested in Chinese politics and society.
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