The claim that “both sides won” in the recent Gaza ceasefire brokered by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu is a global delusion.[1] There were no victories to be had. Netanyahu was forced into a deal that exposes weakness rather than strength, and Palestinians are now reduced to searching through the ruins for their dead families, whilst relying on grudging aid to feed their children. Another way forward is urgently needed even if it seems far away at present.
Netanyahu was facing corruption charges when the 2023 attack happened, and his government was deeply unpopular. Hamas saved him. His campaign in Gaza was not about security but political survival. Many in his government actively believe in driving the Palestinians out of Gaza and the occupied territories, and support using terror to make that happen. These absolute horrors have been allowed to call the shots because Netanyahu could not survive without them. The endless “war on terror” is the political capital that sustains him, but its value is declining.
Many Israelis have realised that he was never truly focused on freeing the hostages – something that could have been achieved months earlier. Even after the much-hyped “seven-day war” on Iran – marketed as the strike that would end the nuclear threat, which Israelis understandably fear – Netanyahu’s popularity barely touched 40%. Israelis knew the campaign failed to achieve its stated goals; Trump himself ordered Netanyahu to call it off mid-air.[2]
The ceasefire gives Israel military control over roughly half of Gaza – far from the “total victory” Netanyahu promised. Hamas remains armed and is already reestablishing administrative control, executing opponents in public.
The scale of devastation defies comprehension. According to the United Nations, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed – many of them children – with entire neighborhoods flattened and the social fabric of Gaza destroyed. UNWRA puts the number of dead at 67,000 – about 2% of Gaza’s population. UN experts have called Israel’s campaign genocidal in intent and effect.[3]
The Israeli Defense Force have made themselves despised globally as monsters, capable of any atrocity, much as the US Army was seen during the Vietnam War – civilians gunned down in breadlines, hospitals and schools bombed, whole neighbourhoods reduced to ash. They specifically targeted healthcare workers and journalists.
Israel’s decade-long campaign to force governments and institutions – particularly universities – to equate opposition to the government of Israel and its actions with antisemitism – is no longer enforceable.
Millions have marched against the genocide; millions despise what has been done in Gaza and are now educating themselves about the history of the conflict in a way they might never have done before. Israel is formally accused of genocide at the UN; Netanyahu is wanted by the ICC.
A new generation of supporters for the rights of Palestinians has been created. At the same time, a big development of the goals and ideological stance of the protest marches is urgently needed; the current slogans are either empty rhetoric or, in some cases, downright reactionary.
Calls by some activists for driving seven million Jews out of Palestine is lumping all Israeli Jews together as if they were all in favour of what their government is doing. It only serves to fuel the Israeli state’s rhetoric that Jews all over the world are facing a new holocaust, which is not true but at the same time, attacks on Jewish institutions have risen, most recently the terrible bloodshed in Manchester.
This lack of a clear proposition to put as an alternative to genocide is partly a result of ideological degeneration on the Palestinian side. Hamas IS antisemitic; also anti-women’s rights, anti-gay and the 2023 attack was an act of terrorism by any measure. The Palestine Authority that exists in the Occupied Territories is corrupt and in reality has nothing to say to the world community, or their own people.
Inside Israel, most of the Jewish population has acquiesced – horrified by the October 2023 attacks, many support the devastating response in Gaza. But there have been big protests too, and protesters have faced jail, being sacked from their jobs, raids on their homes and overall harassment, but they have persisted. A few brave young Israelis – refuseniks – have chosen prison over fulfilling their legally-required national service in the IDF.
The lie that Israel was only defending against Hamas in Gaza is exposed by what is happening in the illegally occupied West Bank, where there is no armed resistance. Armed “settlers” are randomly shooting people; land seizures, and expulsions have become state policy. UNRWA estimates that “Operation Iron Wall” has displaced over 30,000 people from refugee camps in Tulkarem, Nur Shams, and Jenin.[4] The aim is transparent: erase Palestinian presence, town by town, family by family, acre by acre.
Now, after the illusory ceasefire, the next stage of Trump’s “peace” is simply political theatre. No country has agreed to join the “international force” meant to disarm Hamas. Only an idiot would volunteer for that task. Gaza’s future remains undefined, a vacuum already drawing in opportunists and profiteers – property developers, foreign “fixers,” like Tony Blair, and NGOs ready to cash in on reconstruction.[5]
Arab governments, drawn into Trump’s “peace talks,” maintain their alliance with Israel and Washington, including, would you believe it, shared military exercises with the IDF, while claiming to oppose the bloodshed. Their hypocrisy is as old as the occupation itself.
The two-state solution is a diplomatic corpse, dragged out of the UN’s basement whenever it becomes too disgraceful for governments to entirely ignore the plight of the Palestinians. It was not on offer before and it is not on offer now.
Governments of the world have failed to offer a way forward, but that doesn’t mean one does not exist. A transformation of the situation must emerge from a historical leap beyond the current situation and their current leaderships by both Israeli and Palestinian people.
Leaving behind the idea that eternal enmity is inevitable they can embark on a project to achieve shared citizenship, constitutional equality, and real democracy in a united, democratic, and secular state – a common republic for Jews, Palestinians, Druze and all the demographics.
A genuine roadmap might include:
- Shared citizenship: Offer citizenship to Palestinians and Israelis within a new state; everyone from the river to the sea becomes a citizen of Palestine-Israel, or Israel-Palestine.
- A democratic constitution – united to draft a new constitution that abolishes all legal distinctions between citizens based on ethnicity or religion. Every person – Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze – must enjoy the same rights and responsibilities. Repeal the law that says that Israel is a Jewish state.
- Truth and Justice Commission – modelled on South Africa’s post-apartheid experience, to document crimes, grant conditional amnesty, and create a shared historical record.
- Return and Reconstruction – guarantee the right of return or compensation for Palestinians and their descendants, displaced at any time since 1967, funded by an international reconstruction fund.
- Regional Solidarity – an open-border policy with neighbouring Arab countries to promote trade, labour mobility, and ecological cooperation rather than militarization.
This vision is not simply utopian. In fact, it represents the only realistic alternative to endless conflict. The population of Israel is already over 20 percent Palestinian; coexistence is not an aspiration – it is a fact. The question is whether Israel must be forever a militarised state, or instead can move towards real equality, getting rid of racist laws, discrimination and illegal occupations.
A democratic republic of Palestine-Israel would be a revolutionary precedent: a new state that could inspire youth from Tehran to Cairo to Riyadh. It would strike a blow against imperialism and the authoritarian regimes that depend on perpetual conflict to survive. It would be inspiring too for the millions of youth in the Americas and Europe who have marched against genocide but lack an alternative to fight for.
If such a transformation seems impossible today, remember that history turns on moments of collective imagination.
As the anarchist thinker David Graeber once wrote: “The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction… from a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”
Footnotes
[1] Washington Post, “Ceasefire Analysis” (2024)
[2] Reuters, “Seven-Day War and U.S. Pressure” (2024)
[3] United Nations, Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, UN Commission finds (16 September 2025)
[4] UNRWA Situation Report (2024)
[5] Financial Times, “Postwar Reconstruction Deals” (2024)
Excellent Penny.