Israel Defeated As A Million Palestinians Return to Northern Gaza From Exile in the South

28.1.25

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The “Great March of Return” on January 27, 2025, as a million Palestinians began their return on foot, from the south of Gaza to their homes in the north. (Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa).

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As a result of the ceasefire deal in Gaza, agreed to on January 15 — after 14 months of negotiations that were cynically and persistently blocked by Benjamin Netanyahu, with cover provided by the US — something truly remarkable is happening.

Now that the relentless carpet-bombing has stopped, and the child-killing snipers and armed quadcopters have withdrawn, along with the ever-present drones, the surviving Palestinians — no longer fearing death at every single moment of their lives — are beginning to reclaim their country, their land.

After two weekends in which, in exchange for 290 Palestinian prisoners, seven Israel hostages have been freed by Hamas — deliberately released in small numbers, eked out over at least three months, to prevent Israel from thinking that it can safely resume its previously uninterrupted genocidal assault — yesterday Israel was forced to confront the triumph of the Palestinians, despite 15 months of collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.

In extraordinarily emotional scenes, a million internally displaced Palestinians — forced to “evacuate” from the north to the south of Gaza from the very beginning of Israel’s exterminatory “war” — yesterday began a “March of Return” to their shattered homes in the north, their resilience truly inspirational, and their bond with their land and their homes very clearly, and definitively unbreakable.

Ending what Israel thought was a relentless and unstoppable genocide

For Israel, this simply wasn’t supposed to happen. Fully supported by the the US and most of the west, their giddy, self-righteous, messianically-deranged genocidal lust for revenge and colonial expansion, following the attacks on October 7, 2023, was supposed to be unstoppable.

Those attacks — the most severe blow inflicted on Israel by the victims of its relentless 76-year oppression of the Palestinian people, when Hamas and other militants broke out of the “open-air prison” of the Gaza Strip, and killed 1,139 people and took 251 others hostage — was, as Israel saw it, supposed to justify the complete annihilation of Gaza, and was also supposed to continue until the remaining population, “thinned to a minimum”, as Netanyahu described it in a briefing to his adviser Ron Dermer, the minister of strategic affairs, in December 2023, were squeezed into a tiny area in the south.

Netanyahu’s instructions led to a plan that envisaged the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, via pressure exerted on Egypt to “allow refugees to flow to other Arab countries”, and to open up sea routes to “allow a mass escape [or expulsion] to European and African countries”, as the newspaper Israel Hayom explained at the time.

It was an attempt to bypass an insurmountable obstacle to plans for the expulsion of the entire population that had been openly suggested from the very beginning of Israel’s assault on Gaza, when all manner of voices within Israel insisted that Egypt and Jordan should open their borders to facilitate a mass exodus, only to discover that, under no circumstances whatsoever were either Egypt or Jordan prepared to accept an influx of refugees.

This implacable opposition to the mass ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians remains unbreakable despite the flurry of concern, and inappropriately scaremongering headlines and articles from those on the left, in response to Donald Trump’s typically off-hand and ill-considered comment two days ago that Gaza’s Palestinians should be “cleaned out” and moved to Egypt and Jordan.

Similarly, although numerous other commentators — and especially those involved with the various violently intolerant settler movements within Israel — enthused about other, western countries taking in refugees in significant numbers, all failed to recognize that this was also unimaginable, as anti-refugee sentiment has never been as dominant as it has become over the last ten years or so throughout the US and the whole of Europe and the west.

As a result, while continuing to float unfulfillable fantasies of what the settlers euphemistically called “voluntary migration”, what Israel did instead was to continue to kill Palestinians as relentlessly and remorselessly as possible, as it systematically erased the entire country, from the north to the south, over the first eight months of its merciless assault.

By May, when it crossed an illusory “red line” raised by the Biden administration, and began pummelling the last built-up urban area, Rafah, it even managed to remove the only viable means it had of encouraging “voluntary migration”, as it sealed shut the Rafah Crossing to Egypt, which, until that point, had led to around 100,000 Palestinians escaping to Egypt by paying extortionate exit fees to organized Egyptian people-smugglers.

The Rafah Crossing had also been the main escape route for the severely wounded, who, with the assistance of international organizations, had been able to seek desperately-needed medical treatment elsewhere (if not in Egypt itself, then in countries including Qatar and even the US), but whether this was because of a pushback within Egypt, or because of pressure within parts of the Israeli government to prioritize mass slaughter over “voluntary migration” and life-saving medical care has never been adequately explained.

The end result, however, was the intensification of the “thinning out” of a trapped civilian population, as they continued to be killed in bombing raids, by snipers and armed quadcopters, and by marauding gangs of IDF soldiers.

After Rafah was destroyed, Israel’s aims floundered. Because Hamas, in their tunnels, hadn’t been eliminated, and began regrouping in central Gaza and the north, the Israeli authorities first responded by sub-dividing densely built-up areas into grids, and then ordering further micro-evacuations as they claimed to be re-focusing their attentions on resurgent Hamas activity in areas that the military had previously claimed to have cleared.

By October, this relentless game of cat and mouse, with civilians permanently bearing the brunt as collateral damage, as they were shunted from one area to another, had evidently caused frustration to such an extent that a new plan was conceived for the north — the so-called “Generals’ Plan” — whereby those who remained in the north, having resisted previous evacuation orders, or having been too ill or elderly to move, would be given a final order to evacuate, and would then be treated as combatants, to be starved out, and subjected to sweeping policies of comprehensive extermination.

How I reported the start of the “Generals’ Plan” for the complete erasure of northern Gaza, on October 9, 2024.

This was undoubtedly the darkest period in the history of Israel’s genocidal assault (which I wrote about here, here and here), after the initial few months in which more bombs were dropped on Gaza than in any previous conflict in human history, and, at the time, it seemed clear that the ultimate intention was for the whole of northern Gaza to become a “closed military zone”, with Israel’s rabid settlers — represented, with a perpetually hateful and messianic fervor, by the two far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition government, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Minister of National Security, and Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister of Finance — then hoping to colonize it.

While it seemed reasonable to assume that the entire subjugation of the north would then be followed by the implementation of a similar policy in central Gaza, what was undeniable was that, while implementing a “genocide within a genocide” in the north, Israel was envisaging having a permanent military presence in Gaza, established through the creation of extensive buffer zones, as well as new roads, which involved the “clearance” of vast numbers of homes and other structures, and which were designed to fragment the Strip into tightly-controlled and manageable parcels of land, as thoroughly disconnected from one another as had been achieved, though the previous two decades, in the West Bank.

The scale of Israel’s defeat in the ceasefire deal, beyond the mass return of Palestinians from the south to the north, can also be seen in the withdrawal, yesterday, of Israeli soldiers from the Netzarim Corridor, dividing the north from the south, which Israel had expanded throughout its 15-month long assault, demolishing vast numbers of buildings (as forensically reported by Drop Site News, whose reporters identified many of those involved through their social media posts) to create what looked increasingly like an attempt to impose a permanent militarily-occupied area in the middle of the Strip, permanently separating the north from the south.

Yesterday, as Israeli soldiers withdrew, many “left the area in tears”, claiming that their “efforts were in vain”, as Israel’s Channel 14 reported. Soldiers told the channel that they felt “extremely disappointed after living for long months in difficult conditions, during which they carried out offensive and defensive operations” against Palestinian resistance factions, declaring that, “as they left the area, they felt that the goals set by the army were not achieved as expected.”

Israel’s sustained and cynical efforts to erase the protection of civilians in wartime, with the full support of the west

To its shame — which, I hope, will one day be converted into convictions for criminal conspiracy — the US under Joe Biden, and most western leaders went along with all of the above, on the basis that, as they persistently described it, Israel had “the right to defend itself”, as though that phrase alone, intoned like some sort of holy mantra, justified unlimited military aggression, and as though the rules, under international humanitarian law, regarding the protection of civilians, and the protection of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, simply didn’t exist, and anything was allowed.

Israel’s supporters in western governments also pretended that Israel’s two stated aims — eliminating Hamas and rescuing the hostages — were achievable, even though anyone with any expertise in warfare, who were largely sidelined and excluded from any public discussion, especially in the mainstream media, knew that the armed resistance movement of an occupied and oppressed people cannot be defeated militarily, because resistance, under these circumstances, is, fundamentally, a self-replicating idea.

Also missing from any discussions was a recognition that the Palestinian people have the right to resist Israel’s military occupation, including through armed struggle.

The illegal occupation of Palestinian lands has been recognized by the UN since 1967, when Israel seized the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and, as a briefing by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) explained in August 2023, in 1982 the UN General Assembly confirmed, through Resolution 37/43, “the ‘inalienable right’ of the Palestinian people ‘and all peoples under foreign and colonial domination’ to self-determination”, and “also reaffirmed the legitimacy of ‘the struggle of peoples for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.’”

The UNGA drew on the supplementary amendments to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which were introduced under Protocol I in 1977. This, as CJPME explained, “expanded the scope of the law, explicitly affirming that it applies to situations including ‘armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist régimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination.’” As CJPME added, “This update to international law gave legal legitimacy to “the resort to arms by national liberation movements, including the PLO,” giving Palestinians a ‘legal right’ to use force against military occupation, similar to that enjoyed by sovereign nations.”

While this right requires a distinction to be made between military and civilian targets, which was broken, at least to some extent, by Hamas and other militants on October 7, Israel’s unforgivable erasure of the distinction between civilian and military targeting in Gaza over 15 months of the most intense and sustained military assault in history has broken new ground when it comes to genocidal intent, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

As a result, Israel’s pretence that it is a civilized presence in the world has been irrevocably shattered, in particular because it has so deviously and incessantly sought to hide its nakedly genocidal intent by pretending that all civilian housing is a legitimate target. Israel’s twisted rationale has been that, in some kind of sweeping, generalized sense, every civilian is being used as a “human shield” by Hamas, either because militants are lurking in tunnels beneath civilian housing, or because of the alleged presence of militants in homes in what are otherwise blocks of civilian apartments.

Israel has also applied this cynical interpretation of innocence and blame to the whole of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, which has also been targeted and destroyed on the basis of completely unverified claims that, to cite the most glaring example, all of Gaza’s hospitals were being used to conceal Hamas command centers, or had been otherwise infiltrated by Hamas militants, a breathtakingly cynical effort to sidestep the absolute prohibition on targeting hospitals and healthcare facilities.

The same protections, of course, apply to all civilian infrastructure, and yet, as Israel systematically destroyed everything in Gaza, including schools, universities, courts, mosques, churches, administrative offices, libraries, shops, restaurants, factories, fields for agriculture, water supplies, sewage treatment plants and much more, it clearly didn’t even bother to pretend that most of these were legitimate targets, relying on its flimsy “human shield” argument and the indifference of its supporters in the west.

Just as chillingly, this was also the world’s first AI war, as Israel relied on untested AI programs, deliberately given sweepingly unjustifiable targeting programming, and little or no human oversight, to generate tens of thousands of targets — all, again, destroying any notion of precision or proportionality.

What it means to recognize that Hamas cannot be eradicated, and why the cynical definition of an administrative government as a terrorist organization is so flawed

Now that an uneasy peace has finally been established via the ceasefire deal, both Israel and its western supporters are finally waking up to the reality that all “wars” — even one-sided aerial pogroms lasting 15 months — come to an end, as all conflicts eventually have to end via the surrender of one party, or through compromise.

As established above, the complete surrender of Hamas was never a possibility, because resistance movements are self-replicating, and, although Israel managed to kill some of Hamas’ leaders, others will arise, while others will undoubtedly be recruited, and in significant numbers, as soldiers, because of the brutality to which they have been subjected over the last 15 months — which, if we were to try to assess a proportionate figure, is of a magnitude that is thousands of times more horrific than that to which Israel was subjected on October 7.

So what is the way forward?

In an important, and nuanced article for Reuters last week, their veteran correspondent Nidal Al-Mughrabi, who has 25 years’ experience covering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, pointed out how, as soon as Israel’s relentless bombing stopped, Hamas re-emerged. As he described it, “In neighbourhoods levelled by 15 months of war with Israel, Hamas officials are overseeing the clearance of rubble in the wake of Sunday’s ceasefire. The group’s gunmen are guarding aid convoys on Gaza’s dusty roads, and its blue-uniformed police once again patrol city streets, sending a clear message: Hamas remains in charge.”

While Hamas’ most obvious reemergence involved armed soldiers presiding over the release of the Israeli hostages, Al-Mughrabi’s commentary underscored a reality that has been obscured throughout this horrific conflict: that Hamas is both the administrative government of the Gaza Strip, and one that has a military wing.

This has been conspicuously and persistently overlooked by the western nations who, taking their lead from the US in 1995, have queued up to designate Hamas as a terrorist organization, without making any distinction between its administrative and its military functions, and it has also formed much of the basis for Israel’s sweeping slaughter of civilians, and its deliberate destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure.

In the AI programs mentioned above, the programmers deliberately included what were described as “junior Hamas operatives”, as well as, to cite just one example of inappropriate “terrorist” targeting, those working for the Internal Security Ministry, to the consternation of an Israeli source who spoke to +972 Magazine, who stated that he did not consider any of the Ministry’s employees to be militants.

It is also abundantly clear, from Israel’s attacks on hospitals and journalists, to cite just two examples, that officials have repeatedly sought to target both doctors and journalists through completely unsupported allegations that they held military roles within Hamas or other militant organizations.

Even without these invented associations, none of which have ever been proven, the deliberate blurring of distinctions between administrative and military functions enabled Israel to target police officials, who were maintaining law and order and working to ensure the distribution of humanitarian aid, just as it allowed Israel, with breathtaking cynicism, to describe UNWRA (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), which is the main provider of aid to Palestinians throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the wider Palestinian diaspora, as a terrorist organization, because of claims, almost entirely unverified, that a tiny proportion of its workers were allied with Hamas.

Why Israel must accept Hamas

When it comes to maintaining the peace that this fragile ceasefire has brought, Israel, in particular, will need to drop its cynical insistence that, as Al-Mughrabi described Netanyahu’s position, Hamas “can play no role” in Gaza’s post-war future, a position also taken, as he added, by the UAE and by Donald Trump’s new administration in the US.

Last Tuesday, as Hamas’ “police and gunmen — who for months were kept off the streets by Israeli airstrikes — were stationed in neighbourhoods through the Strip”, in Al-Mughrabi’s words, he spoke to Ismail Al-Thawabta, the director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, who told him that “some 700 police were protecting aid convoys and not a single truck had been looted” since the ceasefire began — “a contrast to the massive theft of food by criminal gangs during the conflict.”

Al-Mughrabi also noted that, although, in the last few weeks of the conflict, Israeli airstrikes had cynically “targeted lower-ranking administrators in Gaza, in an apparent bid to break Hamas’ grip on government” — a truly damning revelation — Al-Thawabta told him that the Hamas-run administration “continued to function”, and that 18,000 employees were “working daily to provide services to citizens.”

While all manner of ideas have been floated for Gaza’s future governance, including the Palestinian Authority, which partly administers the West Bank, but is widely regarded as both incompetent and corrupt, Netanyahu “has not articulated a vision for Gaza’s post-war future” beyond insisting that Hamas “can play no role and stating that the Palestinian Authority … also cannot be trusted under its current leadership.”

Netanyahu’s opinions about the PA echo those within Gaza, where, as Al-Mughrabi noted, it “has no presence” and “little popular support.”

Other ideas, according to various diplomats, involve “models involving international peacekeepers, including one that would see the United Arab Emirates and the United States, along with other nations, temporarily overseeing governance, security and reconstruction of Gaza until a reformed Palestinian Authority is able to take charge”, while “[a]nother model, supported by Egypt, would see a joint committee made up of both Fatah and Hamas run Gaza under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority.”

Realistically, however — and realism has been in short supply for the last 15 months — the only answer to the “problems” posed by Gaza and its governance is for it to be given its independence, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and to let the Palestinians themselves decide, without outside pressure, who should represent them, in what would be the first elections in either territory for nearly 20 years.

Ironically, as Dana El Kurd of the Arab Center Washington wrote in the Guardian yesterday, this may involve a way forward that no one can even foresee right now. As she noted, neither Fatah nor Hamas has overwhelming support in either the West Bank or Gaza, and the majority of Palestinians “want both parties to enter into a unity government as their first preference for political change after the war”, ending the split between governance in Gaza and the West Bank, which is helpful to Israel’s ambition to constantly disorient and divide Palestinians, but which is “outrageous to many who prioritize the unity of Palestine.”

Independence for Palestine

As for the independence of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, this has not only been recognized by the international community since 1967; it was also the focus of a hugely important advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice in July.

How I reported the International Court of Justice’s groundbreaking ruling about the illegality of Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in July 2024.

As I described it at the time, the Court ruled that “the State of Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful,” that Israel is “under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible”, that it is also “under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities, and to evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, and that it also has “the obligation to make reparation for the damage caused to all the natural or legal persons concerned in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

The Court also ruled that “all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the continued presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, and also ruled that “international organizations, including the United Nations, are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” and that “the United Nations, and especially the General Assembly, which requested this opinion, and the Security Council, should consider the precise modalities and further action required to bring to an end as rapidly as possible the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

With an end to the occupation, and with sovereignty handed back to the Palestinians, any perceived threat from Hamas would, realistically, vanish, as the main thrust of the Palestinians’ armed resistance for the last 76 years has, fundamentally, not been to seek to destroy Israel, but to establish their own independence, and to be free of Israel’s oppression and apartheid.

Some argue with this, on the basis that Hamas’ initial manifesto in 1988 called for Palestinian control of the whole of the former Mandatory Palestine, but it is noticeable that, in the decades since, it has shifted towards demands for a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders, which involves a de facto acceptance of Israel’s presence.

Is there a better offer on the table? Uneasy neighbors can survive by tolerating each other’s existence. It’s how much of the world works — unlike the current situation in Israel and Palestine, which is the worst of all possible worlds.

The current ceasefire deal shows what is possible when compromise happens, and it is to be hoped that Qatar, Egypt and even the US, through Trump’s Middle East Envoy, Steve Witkoff, can find a way to get both Israel and Hamas to keep taking until the only sensible way forward — independence and autonomy for the Palestinians — is achieved.

Ironically, right now, that looks like more of a possibility for Gaza than for the West Bank, where government-backed settler violence has increased since the ceasefire began, in part as revenge for the ceasefire deal, but also because, although Ben-Gvir resigned from the government when the deal was agreed, Smotrich remains, as committed as ever to the creation of ever more illegal settlements, and the expulsion of the Palestinian people.

Whether this is viable in the long-term, however, is open to question. Unlike in the Gaza strip, the Hamas excuse for extermination cannot be invoked, because Hamas is not in charge in the West Bank, and, as the perceptive Israeli commentator Ori Goldberg noted on X today, “the escalation of lethal violence in the West Bank” is “an act of desperation” by a country that has “lost its genocidal campaign”, in which, suddenly, “no one but the settlers is talking about its resumption.”

Beyond internal Israeli politics, the International Court of Justice’s groundbreaking opinion about the illegality of Israel’s occupation will not go away, and, as Israel grapples with the pariah status it has developed through its genocidal assault on Gaza, the arrest warrants that the International Criminal Court issued in November for Netanyahu and the former defense minister Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity, relating to their actions in Gaza, can only add to the notion that Israel’s days of oppressing the Palestinians with complete impunity are numbered.

* * * * *

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s new Substack account, set up in November 2024, where he’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter, or his RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.


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30 Responses

  1. Andy Worthington says...

    When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:

    In my latest long read about Israel and Palestine, I celebrate, unreservedly, the triumph of the Palestinians over unimaginable adversity, as, via the terms of the ceasefire deal agreed on January 15, a million civilians began a “Great March of Return” from the south, where they had been exiled for up to 15 months, to their shattered homes in the north.

    This return, ending the four-month long “Generals’ Plan” for the erasure of northern Gaza, along with the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from the Netzarim Corridor, which separates the north from the south, confirms the failure of Israel’s military aims, beyond its depraved determination to kill as many civilians as possible.

    It also demonstrates how every “war” — even one I describe as a “one-sided aerial pogrom lasting 15 months” — ends either with compromise and negotiations, or with conquest and surrender. Now that the latter has failed, and Israel’s seemingly endless genocidal fury has run its course, the compromises of the ceasefire deal clearly signal the way forward.

    As Hamas officials once more begin to administer life in the Strip, I examine how the only way forward now is for Israel to drop its insistence that Hamas “can play no role” in Gaza’s post-war future, to recognize it as the administrative government it always was (and especially now that Israel’s deliberate blurring of the distinctions between combatants and civilians has been so devastatingly exposed), and to allow negotiations to proceed towards granting independence for Gaza via elections in which the Palestinian people themselves can decide who they want to represent them.

    Perhaps that sounds naively optimistic, but I hope that you have time to read my article to find out, in more detail, why I truly think that this is the only viable way forward.

  2. Israel defeated as Palestinians return to northern Gaza via a “Great March of Return” - IndieNewsNow says...

    […] my latest long read about Israel and Palestine, Israel Defeated As A Million Palestinians Return to Northern Gaza From Exile in the South, I celebrate, unreservedly, the triumph of the Palestinians over unimaginable adversity, as, via […]

  3. Andy Worthington says...

    S Brian Willson wrote:

    When I saw the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians walking toward north Gaza yesterday I was nearly in tears with awe.

  4. Andy Worthington says...

    Yes, it was a truly extraordinary sight, Brian, and its symbolism was immense – the Palestinian people, unbroken, returning to their homes despite every effort by Israel to destroy them or to prevent them from ever going back.

    It’s a colossal defeat for Israel, as is entirely appropriate after the bottomless depravity of its actions over the last 15 months, and the longer the ceasefire lasts, and the more we see of the destruction of Gaza, the more unimaginable it is that Israel’s genocidal aggression can be allowed to resume. It would be like the US returning to Hiroshima to finish the job in August 1945, or the allies doing the same with Dresden.

    Some things are so unspeakable that when the red mist lifts – and it is deplorable how, in Israel itself, and via Biden’s support, it was sustained for so long – there can be no going back. I think we’ve reached that point with Gaza, although the way ahead is still fraught with extraordinary challenges – not least the need to begin clearing Gaza of the rubble of its destruction, and the imminent implementation of the Israeli ban on UNWRA, which was approved by the Knesset in October. https://www.unrwa.org

  5. Andy Worthington says...

    Prativa B. Thomas wrote:

    An excellent piece! Loved reading.👍Thank you.

  6. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks so much for the supportive words, Prativa. I am thankful for your interest in my writing, and I’m glad that this particular piece had such resonance for you.

  7. Andy Worthington says...

    Hanann Abu Brase wrote:

    Thanks Andy 👍🏼✌🏼

  8. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks for your interest in my writing, Hanann. Very good to hear from you.

  9. Andy Worthington says...

    Lizzy Arizona wrote:

    We must keep advocating for an immediate end to U.S. Israel occupation free gaza from the illegal blockade send patients to hospitals in EU or 🇦🇪 UAE pronto. The Palestinians need so much love and support.

  10. Andy Worthington says...

    According to reports, the Rafah Crossing is about to reopen, Lizzy, allowing aid in. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/rafah-crossing-to-open-soon-in-presence-of-european-observers-egypt/3464505

  11. Andy Worthington says...

    But unfortunately, Lizzy, Israeli media are reporting that, although Palestinians can leave for Egypt, it’s a one-way trip, and no one will be allowed back – a prohibition that, it seems, also applies to the 100,000 or so who left before the Crossing was shut and destroyed in May. https://x.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1884231237063278916

  12. Andy Worthington says...

    Mary MacGregor Green wrote:

    I fear for them … you know who has restored the $ for the bombs etc to Israel …

  13. Andy Worthington says...

    In his typically blunt manner, Trump said that he sent the bombs because Israel had bought them, Mary, which I took as a confirmation on his part of something transactional rather than ideological. While we should be all be concerned about the raging Israel supporters he’s appointed to his administration, Trump himself is an unreliable source for much of his own policies, and we really need to keep a close eye on what his Middle East Envoy, Steve Witkoff, is up to.

  14. Andy Worthington says...

    Here’s a UN news release about a briefing to ambassadors in New York today by UNWRA’s Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini warning that the imminent imposition of an Israeli law banning the agency from operating in Israel (which Israel illegally defines as including the Occupied Palestinian Territory) will “jeopardize the lives of millions of Palestinians and risks undermining the fragile ceasefire in Gaza.” https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/01/1159516

  15. Andy Worthington says...

    And here’s a sad follow-up, as the US, alone – replicating its position under Biden – has supported Israel’s decision to ban UNRWA at the UN Security Council, with US representative Dorothy Shea shamefully declaring that UNRWA “exaggerating the effects of the laws and suggesting that they will force the entire humanitarian response to halt is irresponsible and dangerous”, adding, “What is needed is a nuanced discussion about how we can ensure that there is no interruption in the delivery of humanitarian aid and essential services”, whilst also claiming that UNRWA is not “the only option for providing humanitarian assistance in Gaza”, and accusing it of “terrorist ties.”

    Even the UK broke ranks with the US, with its deputy envoy to the UN, James Kariuki, calling on Israel to allow UNRWA to continue its “life-saving operations” and “essential services.”

    https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-stands-alone-with-pro-unrwa-ban-stance-at-un-security-council/3464946

  16. Andy Worthington says...

    Cathy Teesdale wrote:

    The Palestinians are so incredibly brave and resilient, & the Zionists & their supporters & enablers so utterly depraved, racist & inhumane 💔

  17. Andy Worthington says...

    There could hardly be a starker contrast between two groups of people, could there, Cathy?

  18. Andy Worthington says...

    Al Glatkowski wrote:

    Thank you for sharing this Andy💔&❤️‍🩹

  19. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks so much, Al. Until two weeks ago there was just darkness, but this ceasefire has shone a light through it, and I don’t think that illumination can be extinguished again, whatever Netanyahu would like, whatever Smotrich and Ben-Gvir want, whatever happens in the West Bank, whatever Trump’s most rabid appointees want, and however much Trump believes that, because he thinks something, it can be made to happen.

    The delusion he has that the Palestinians can be “removed” to Egypt and Jordan is a particular case in point. Nothing is going to make that happen. The Palestinians are staying on their land, and they have shown resilience that their enemy cannot even begin to imagine – because, of course, it’s their land, and the colonizers know nothing of that.

  20. Andy Worthington says...

    A helpful analysis of Hamas’ survival, and its popularity – or lack of it – in Gaza, via Al Jazeera. Recognizing that its fighters have survived in more significant numbers than Israel claims — 6,000 to 7,000, according to Hamas itself, as opposed to the 20,000+ claimed by Israel — Maram Humaid and Justin Salhani accurately and appropriately describe it as having as essential presence in Gaza, not least because of its successful involvement in the ceasefire negotiations.

    They do, however, question the extent to which Hamas can claim to properly represent the people of Gaza, when its popularity, in polling, is no more than about 35 percent, and many are critical of its actions. As they note, “Some criticisms have attacked Hamas’s failure to predict Israel’s lengthy and brutal response to the attack. Others have claimed Hamas dragged them into a war the people of Gaza, nearly all of whom have lost family, friends and their homes, did not ask to be a part of.”

    Wael Darwish, 45, from northern Nuseirat, may have spoken for many when he said, “This was a catastrophe, not a victory. We’ve suffered the greatest disaster in history. If there’s any minor triumph, it’s because of the people’s resilience, not Hamas.”

    Hugh Lovatt of the ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations) told Al Jazeera that “Hamas is trying to show Israel that it failed to destroy it but also that the movement will have a veto over Gaza’s future going forward because neither Israel, the PA [Palestinian Authority], or the international community will be able to impose a post-conflict governance or security arrangement.”

    As the representatives of the people of Gaza in the ongoing ceasefire negotiations, it should also be apparent that “removing” them is an impossibility, and that any attempt to do so will endanger the ceasefire’s continuation through its second and third phases. All the parties presumably know this – including the US envoy – so it must be hoped that solutions for Gaza’s post-war governance recognize Hamas’ existence, but also recognize that other Palestinian representatives within Gaza need to be allowed to establish a voice and a presence.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/29/analysis-hamas-has-been-hit-hard-by-israel-but-is-not-out-in-gaza

  21. Andy Worthington says...

    Russell B Fuller shared a WSWS article, “Trump adopts ethnic cleansing as US policy in Gaza”, in which Andre Damon wrote:

    On Saturday, US President Donald Trump called for Israel to “clean” Gaza of its Arab inhabitants, in an open call for ethnic cleansing. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.

    “Over the centuries, that’s many, many conflicts, that site,” Trump said, implying that peace in the Middle East would be achieved by the removal or destruction of the Palestinian population.

    Trump’s statement is an open and public embrace on the part of the American state of the actual policy of the Netanyahu government, which is the systematic extermination and removal of the Palestinian population from Gaza, as part of the effort to annex all of the Palestinian territories and construct a “greater Israel” to dominate the Middle East.

    While the Biden administration funded, armed and politically defended Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has killed at least 70,000 people, his administration upheld the fiction that it was seeking a “two-state solution” and a homeland for the Palestinian people.

    In a sense, Trump has only openly stated the essential content of the Biden administration’s genocidal policy in Gaza. But words have meaning. An American president has publicly adopted ethnic cleansing as state policy.

    The forcible transfer of a population is a war crime and a crime against humanity, and Trump’s active and conscious facilitation of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza makes him a war criminal.

    His call for Israel to “clean” Gaza of its Arab population was not an offhand phrase. In fact, it was only the latest, and most explicit, of multiple calls by White House officials for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

    More here: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/01/27/bsjq-j27.html

  22. Andy Worthington says...

    Trump’s musings are a non-starter, though, Russell. The Palestinians aren’t going anywhere, as there are, quite genuinely, no conceivable circumstances in which either Egypt or Jordan is going to accept a massive repeat of the 1948 Nakba, by accepting refugees who will never be allowed to return home. Both countries have populations that are quite resolutely pro-Palestinian, and their leaders know that it would be genuinely perilous to upset them.

  23. Andy Worthington says...

    David Barrows wrote:

    I’m not so sure this genocide is over. I highly suspect that Netanyahu is seeking any excuse to end the ceasefire. He knows that the corrupt U.S. government will have his back, especially Trump.

  24. Andy Worthington says...

    So long as Hamas is holding living Israeli hostages, and only releasing them slowly, David, there is no way that Netanyahu can resume the genocide. Public opinion in Israel regarding the importance of the hostages’ return, which Netanyahu cynically suppressed for 14 months, will not be placated by a return to war while living hostages still remain in Gaza.

    I also wouldn’t underestimate quite how much military exhaustion there is in Israel, as its genocidal frenzy, maintained so deliberately for 15 months, is very noticeably collapsing, in part because of the ICC arrest warrants and the work of The Hind Rajab Foundation, but also because of how deflating it must be to see so much of their genocidal work undone as northern Gaza is reoccupied and they were obliged to withdraw from the Netzarim Corridor.

    And also, I must add, the destruction in Gaza is so shatteringly immense that, although Trump and his deranged appointees may not care, other supporters throughout the west will be aware that, as I have said, resuming military action in such a devastated landscape would be equivalent to the US returning to Hiroshima and Nagasaki later in August 1945 on the basis of there being “unfinished business.”

  25. Andy Worthington says...

    Russell B Fuller wrote:

    I don’t think it’s over, not by a long shot, not with that maniac in charge.

  26. Andy Worthington says...

    It’s definitely not over, Russell, not while Israel exists in its present form and has so much Republican support. But I am remembering that Trump is first and foremost a self-serving narcissist, and not the 100% committed Zionist that Biden was, and I do think that, for coherent policy decisions – not Trump’s scatter-shot urges for soundbites and his lack of interest in (or even incomprehension about) whether or not he is spouting contradictory messages – we all need to be keeping a close eye on his Middle East Envoy, Steve Witkoff, whose priority is to free the Israeli hostages alive, which means keeping the ceasefire going into its second phase.

    The West Bank is something else, especially as Trump took $100m off Miriam Adelson, who is a rabid West Bank settler enthusiast, but for Gaza I’d be surprised if anything is allowed to upset the Israeli hostage releases, which, as I understand it, are scheduled to take place over the next two months.

  27. Andy Worthington says...

    Karina Friedemann wrote:

    Andy, any updates on how they are faring? My friend in Gaza’s phone must have died. Are there relief organizations waiting to feed everyone? What’s going on?

  28. Andy Worthington says...

    As far as I can tell, Karina, substantial aid deliveries, required in the ceasefire deal, are still arriving every day, and the additional reassuring news is that, although Israel’s cynical ban on UNRWA operating on Israeli land took effect today, the UN has confirmed that UNRWA is continuing to operate on Palestinian land – both in Gaza and in the West Bank.

    On Wednesday, as Al Jazeera reported, “Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition by human rights group Adalah to contest the ban. However, the court noted that the legislation ‘prohibits UNRWA activity only on the sovereign territory of the State of Israel’ but ‘does not prohibit such activity in the areas of Judea-Samaria [occupied West Bank] and the Gaza Strip.'”

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/30/israels-ban-on-unrwa-comes-into-effect-despite-backlash

  29. Andy Worthington says...

    Richard Greve wrote:

    I read that the Israeli thieves have taken 45% of the eastern part of the strip from north to south. They are genociders and thieves. Where tf is the total shunning of this nation that thinks it is the master race?

    They must be stopped. Israel must be dismantled and made Palestine again. A Jewish Supremacist state is dangerous and evil. There will never be peace with this fascist state in the Middle East.

  30. Andy Worthington says...

    I agree with your assessment, Richard, but I think that the best we can hope for is that the horrors exposed by the end of hostilities reverberate through western governments and the rich Arab nations to such an extent that this marks a significant turning point for the Palestinians’ cause.

    For obvious reasons, I exclude the US from the above, because, whether under Biden or Trump, the US has nothing but contempt for all international norms, but I suspect that the reverberations from the ICC arrest warrants and the increasing number of genocide assessments are slowly percolating through most western governments.

    Most of all, I hope that Israel itself begins to implode and collapse, economically, through PTSD amongst its soldiers, and through their increasing pariah status, most noticeable through the efforts of organizations like the Hind Rajab Foundation to prevent IDF soldiers from taking foreign vacations by pursuing them through the courts.

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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