Ahmed NajarLate on Tuesday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered fresh strikes on Gaza, claiming that the Palestinian resistance group Hamas had violated the ceasefire.
The script is painfully familiar: public declarations of violations, claims of military necessity, and proclamations of a “response”.
Yet none of this masks the fundamental reality: the genocide never stopped.
More than a hundred Palestinians were killed in the weeks after the ceasefire began. And in the latest escalation, Israel killed 104 people in one night alone — including at least 35 children.
For Gaza’s people, the bombs may have paused temporarily, but the killing continued. What the world has witnessed is not a ceasefire. It is a brief intermission in the systematic destruction of a trapped civilian population.
Netanyahu is simply looking for an excuse to restart the full machinery of genocide.
His government has never hidden that ambition. Hard-right ministers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have repeatedly demanded a return to large-scale bombings and ground offensives.
Any slowing of military escalation is portrayed by them as weakness, even betrayal. These are not fringe agitators, they are senior figures steering policy.
Their pressure is consistent and their message is explicit: Gaza must remain a target. No ceasefire, no matter how fragile, was ever intended to lead to peace.
Israel insists these renewed strikes are reactive, forced by Palestinian actions.
But history shows that a state committed to devastating another people rarely struggles to find a pretext.
When genocide is ongoing, justification becomes a performance. Label the victims as threats. Manufacture the need for self-defence. Present overwhelming violence as a reluctant necessity.
Then rely on global powers to nod along.
Netanyahu’s never-ending war
To stop this genocide would require Israel’s leadership to confront political and legal accountability.
Netanyahu faces enormous pressure inside Israel for past failures. A permanent ceasefire would puncture the illusion that endless war is somehow in Israel’s interest or security. It would expose the moral collapse at the heart of his rule.
The continuation of genocide becomes his political armour.
As long as Palestinians are dying, the public conversation inside Israel remains focused on the myth of “victory” rather than the truth of catastrophe.
While those in power play these political games, the people of Gaza face only the consequences.
Their days under the ceasefire were not days of safety. Displacement remained total. Starvation intensified. Clean water was still scarce. Hospitals lacked basic supplies.
Children went to sleep not knowing if they would wake up. Civilians died from untreated wounds, curable illnesses, and hunger.
The absence of bombs did not bring the presence of life. Survival under siege is still a form of violence.
Israel’s supporters abroad continue to stress caution and balance in their public language. They urge restraint while providing weapons. They express concern while offering diplomatic cover. The contradiction is glaring.
If the international community truly believed the killing must stop, it would stop enabling it. If Palestinian lives held equal moral weight, the response would reflect that urgency.
The gap between words and deeds reveals complicity.
Every new strike deepens this stain. Tuesday night’s attack proved something that should have been obvious long ago. There was never a commitment to peace.
There was only a strategic pause to regroup, recharge, and reassure allies that Israel was still acting within the framework of “international legitimacy”. Meanwhile, on the ground, the bomb craters never fully cooled.
Genocide in the guise of a ceasefire
Netanyahu and his ministers have spoken openly of intentions that should horrify any society that claims to value human rights.
Their vision for Gaza does not include safety, dignity, or freedom for its people.
It includes domination, displacement, and devastation. They speak as if Palestinians are obstacles rather than human beings. That language creates a world where genocide can be denied even as it unfolds in daylight.
A ceasefire that still includes killing is not a ceasefire. It is a linguistic shield for violence.
It allows diplomats to feel useful while civilians bleed. It creates headlines of “progress” while families dig graves. It reassures distant observers that the crisis is being managed, that the world is not abandoning its conscience, even as it does exactly that.
The question the world must now face is brutally simple.
How many more times will Israel be allowed to restart this genocide before the word “ceasefire” stops being used to describe its pauses?
What even counts as peace in a place where survival itself is an act of resistance?
There is still time for a different answer than the one that has been given so far.
Yet the window is closing. Every new explosion narrows it further. Every lost life underscores the urgency. The international community must confront what it is enabling. Not tomorrow. Not after the next round of negotiations. Now.
Because if this is what the world calls a ceasefire, what word is left for genocide?
