Cease-Fire 'Only the First Step' for Gaza Plunged Into 'Horrifying Abyss' by Israel
Human Rights Watch warned that "continued weapons sales to Israel by its partners despite vast evidence of its unchecked atrocity crimes are putting those countries and officials at risk of direct complicity."
Children hold a Palestinian flag as they stand on rubble in the Bureij Refugee Camp in Gaza City, Palestine on January 17, 2025.
(Photo: Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Brett Wilkins
Jan 17, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
While people around the world welcomed Wednesday's announcement of an agreement to pause Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip and free the remaining hostages held by Hamas, human rights defenders stressed that the only way to truly end the suffering of Palestinians is to address the root causes of their oppression and for countries to stop arming Israel.
"The news that a cease-fire deal has been reached will bring some glimmer of relief to Palestinian victims of Israel's genocide. But it is bitterly overdue," Amnesty International secretary-general Agnès Callamard said Thursday. "For Palestinians—who have endured more than 15 months of devastating and relentless bombardment, have been displaced from their homes repeatedly, and are struggling to survive in makeshift tents without food, water, and basic supplies—the nightmare will not be over even if the bombs cease."
"Israel's continuous and deliberate denial and obstruction of humanitarian aid to Gaza has left civilians facing unprecedented levels of hunger and children have starved to death," Callamard continued. "The international community, which has thus far shamefully failed to persuade Israel to comply with its legal obligations, must ensure Israel immediately allows lifesaving supplies to urgently reach all parts of the occupied Gaza Strip to ensure the survival of the Palestinian population."
"Unless Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza is promptly lifted, this suffering will only continue," she added. "Israel must dismantle the brutal system of apartheid it imposes to dominate and oppress Palestinians and end its unlawful occupation... once and for all."
Human Rights Watch (HRW)—which highlighted Israel's alleged "unchecked crimes against humanity and war crimes" in its annual World Reportpublished Thursday— asserted that "all countries which provide weapons to Israel, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, should suspend weapons transfers due to the Israeli military's repeated, unlawful attacks on civilians."
HRW added that nations should defend the International Criminal Court—which last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense chief—as well as the International Court of Justice, which is weighing a genocide case against Israel and has ordered its forces to prevent genocidal acts and allow the unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid into besieged Gaza. Critics have accused Israel of ignoring the ICJ orders.
"Israel's decadeslong systematic repression of Palestinians worsened dramatically and plunged civilians in Gaza into a horrifying abyss, but possibilities for international justice are emerging," HRW Middle East and North Africa director Lama Fakih said on Thursday. "Continued weapons sales to Israel by its partners despite vast evidence of its unchecked atrocity crimes are putting those countries and officials at risk of direct complicity."
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem welcomed the cease-fire—which was approved by Israel's Security Cabinet on Friday and, if agreed upon by the country's full Cabinet as expected, is set to take effect Sunday—but stressed that "the catastrophe persists" in Gaza.
"Millions of people in Gaza remain destitute, starving, and homeless," the group said in a statement. "A cease-fire is only the first step, and one that should have happened long ago. There is a real concern that Israel will resume fighting after the first phase of the deal is complete."
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, Israeli forces killed scores of Palestinians in Gaza following Wednesday's cease-fire announcement.
"The international community must do everything in its power to demand Israel stop the war completely and permanently," B'Tselem said. "Beyond a lasting cease-fire that includes enough humanitarian aid for the entire Gaza Strip, its residents must be allowed to return to all parts of Gaza."
"Israeli decision-makers responsible for serious violations of the laws of war and for crimes against humanity must be held accountable, and all Israeli violence against the Palestinian people in the entire area between the Jordan [River] and the Mediterranean must cease," the group stated.
"The only way to break the cycle of bloodshed is to end the occupation, oppression, and apartheid regime and ensure the human rights of everyone living in this space," B'Tselem added.
Displaced Gazans awaiting truce so they can go home
By AFP
January 17, 2025
Most Gazans have been displaced at least once by the war
In a sprawling tent city in central Gaza, Palestinians displaced by war to other parts of the territory are all waiting for one thing: a ceasefire so they can go home.
Most of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the Israel-Hamas war to other parts of the territory.
With a long-awaited truce deal due to take effect on Sunday, they may finally be able to return to their neighbourhoods.
Umm Khalil Bakr has been living with her family in the Nuseirat camp, where displaced Palestinians have tried their hardest despite the war to lead a semblance of normal life.
There, they bake flatbread on clay ovens, play cards to pass the time when there are no bombings, and sweep the streets as an act of dignity.
If the ceasefire takes hold, people will start moving back to their neighbourhoods, though they are under no illusions as to what they might find.
“I will take my tent, remove the rubble from the house and place my tent on the rubble, where I will live with my 10 children,” Umm Khalil told AFP.
“We know the weather will be cold, and we won’t have blankets for the bedding, but what matters is that we return to our homeland.”
Around her, young children gathered to watch their mother speak, bouncing idly on the tent sides.
Her determination to rebuild her life despite the utter devastation from 15 months of war was shared by her fellow camp residents.
Whatever the state of their homes, the hardships of life in the camp were far worse, said Umm Mohamad al-Tawil.
“We will return, and whatever hardships we might face, we will return,” she said.
“This is not life, and it is not our life.”
– ‘Live in the tent’ –
A few kilometres (miles) to the south, in Deir el-Balah, the Moqat family were packing their few belongings into cardboard boxes, ready to go back to Beit Lahia in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The family were looking for a truck to take them home, said Fatima Moqat.
“We will take the tent with us… and live in it just as we stayed here inside the tent,” she said.
“There we will live in the tent until they find us a solution for reconstruction.”
With the truce not yet in effect, there has been no let-up in the violence.
On Friday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 113 people had been killed by Israeli bombardment of the territory since Qatar and the United States announced the deal.
The scale of the destruction in Gaza wrought by month after month of air strikes, shelling and street-to-street fighting means reconstruction could last well into the next decade, international agencies have said.
The World Health Organization said rebuilding the territory’s health system alone would cost $10 billion and take five to seven years.
According to the UN, United Nations, by December 1, nearly 69 percent of buildings in the Gaza Strip had been destroyed or damaged, with the UN Development Programme estimating last year that it could take until 2040 to rebuild all destroyed homes.
– ‘Kiss my land’ –
The Gaza war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas staged the deadliest attack in Israeli history.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has left 46,876 people dead, the majority civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, figures the UN has described as reliable.
To Moqat, it was the grief over lives lost in the war that would be the hardest to overcome.
“Gaza was destroyed and rebuilt a hundred times before… Houses can be replaced, but people cannot be replaced,” she said.
Back in Nuseirat, reclining on the floor inside his carpet-lined tent, Nasr al-Gharabli could not wait to return to his home.
“I am waiting for Sunday morning when they will announce the ceasefire… I will go to kiss my land,” he said.
“If I die on my land it would be better than being here as a displaced person.”
Gaza Ceasefire Raises Hopes of Renewed Security in the Red Sea
On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that an agreement for a ceasefire and hostage exchange had been reached with terrorist group Hamas, setting conditions for the end of hostilities in Gaza - though an unspecified last-minute issue has delayed an Israeli cabinet vote to finalize the deal. If approved, it appears to satisfy most of the demands of Yemen's Houthi rebels, who have attacked shipping in the Red Sea for more than a year in protest of Israeli operations in Gaza.
In a response to Netanyahu's announcement early Friday, Houthi leader Malik Al-Houthi cast the ceasefire as a loss for Israel and America. He suggested that the group's "naval operations have reached a decisive result and a real victory," and contributed to a "failure" for Israel in the Gaza Strip. He cautioned that the group would monitor the situation for the next three days as the deal takes effect; notably, Al-Houthi did not pledge a halt to attacks on shipping, and he left open the possibility of renewed strikes. "At any stage in which the Israeli enemy returns to aggression and escalation, we will be ready to support [Hezbollah]," said Al-Houthi.
Shipping and security analysts have given mixed predictions about the group's intentions going forward. Dimitris Maniatis, CEO of Marisks, told Reuters that the Houthis' capabilities have been significantly reduced by Israeli and American airstrikes over the past month, leaving the group eager for "a pretext to announce a ceasefire" and end their campaign. Multiple other sources told Reuters that shipping interests are already eyeing a return to the Red Sea route after a year of disruption, so long as sky-high war risk insurance rates come down.
Others are less sure, especially since Houthi fighters have reportedly developed a revenue stream from their campaign. A UN panel on Yemen investigated their operations and spoke with regional shipbrokers and service providers; the panel heard multiple accounts that the group was extorting shipowners out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for each safe transit past Yemen, and estimated that the Houthis are earning about $2 billion per year from "security" fees. While the exact amount of the fee is debated, "there's clearly some deal-cutting," U.S. special envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking told The Economist - and those deals may create a business incentive for Houthi fighters to continue launching attacks.
Blue-chip carriers have signaled that they do not plan a quick return to the route. Maersk has predicted that the Red Sea will stay shut down for global container liners "well into 2025," and a spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday that it is "still too early to speculate about timing." Hapag-Lloyd concurred, saying that the "agreement has only just been reached."
Others will be unaffected. The Russia-linked "shadow fleet" tankers that ferry Russian oil to buyers in India and China have consistently used the Suez-Red Sea route, without interruption, and will likely continue to do so after an eventual cessation of Houthi hostilities. Chinese shipping interests have also benefitted from a public nonaggression pact, and many continue to use the route.
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