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Whose interests does the ceasefire serve?

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The home of Ibrahim Muhammad Hamad, who was preparing to get married next month in Gaza, is reduced to rubble by an Israeli attack in Nuseritat camp, near Deir al Balah, Gaza, Palestine on October 23, 2026. [Moiz Salhi – Anadolu Agency]

by Ramona Wadi walzerscent

A new report released yesterday by the UN Commission of Inquiry states that Israel is still committing genocide in Gaza after the ceasefire agreement which was reached on 10 October 2025. Referencing earlier reports concluding that Israel had committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza, the report goes on to state “The cases investigated for this report … show that the Israeli authorities and forces continue to commit genocidal acts with the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza.”

In the occupied West Bank, the report notes, there was an increase in the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes: from six between 2008 and 6 October 2023, to 254 between 7 October 2023 and 30 September 2026.

Whose interests does the ceasefire serve, if Israel is still committing genocide against the Palestinian people?

Since the ceasefire, discourse has mostly centred on humanitarian aid, rebuilding Gaza, the Yellow Line and forced displacement. Taken together, including the farce of rebuilding Gaza when Israel has repeatedly said it will not withdraw from the territory it occupied, the report reflects the Commission of Inquiry’s statement regarding genocide. The only change has been the vocabulary – with the ceasefire, genocide is rarely spoken of by world leaders. Instead, the focus is once again on separate human rights violations, limiting the context of Israel’s genocide and completely obliterating colonialism from the equation.

Such rhetoric served Israel well throughout the decades. In his final UN General Assembly speech, Secretary General Antonio Guterres referred to the International Court of Justice’s reference to genocide but spoke of “raising the spectre of ethnic cleansing” in his UN role. “We cannot allow the two-state solution to disappear before our eyes,” Guterres said. What better way to ensure Israel’s impunity than to talk of saving the defunct two-state paradigm?

READ: The failed humanitarian paradigm exposes governments’ complicity in violence

Under the diplomatic shelter provided by the ceasefire, world leaders can pretend to restore the status quo and use the same discredited framework to whitewash their conduct. There is no international opposition to this equation. There is Gaza, of course, which bears the full consequences of the genocide, including the impunity the international community has granted Israel and, by extension, itself.

Gaza also pays the price of the failed ceasefire, which the international community uses as cover to avoid confronting the evidence of genocide. That evidence is well documented, yet governments prefer to describe Israel’s actions as a series of separate violations of international law rather than as genocide.

Israel did not stop its genocide during the ceasefire; it scaled it back to a level the international community finds acceptable. The only ones who benefit are those complicit in it. Beyond periodic calls on Israel to respect the ceasefire, the international community has made no real move to hold it accountable. On the contrary,  it is relieved to return to the language it used before, when diplomats did not have to confront an open genocide and ethnic cleansing could be dismissed as isolated cases of forced displacement. This is what the ceasefire has achieved. It will likely rescue the rhetoric of a two-state solution before it rescues Palestinians in Gaza.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

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