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

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Now that the relentless carpet-bombing has stopped, and the child-killing snipers and armed quadcopters have withdrawn, along with the ever-present drones, the surviving Palestinians — no longer fearing death at every single moment of their lives — are beginning to reclaim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

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Gaza Hostage Exchanges: The 90 Freed Palestinian Women and Children Ignored by the Western Media

Palestinian women prisoners, mostly held without charge or trial, and therefore hostages themselves, being released in exchange for three Israeli hostages on January 19, 2025.

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On Sunday (January 19), as the ceasefire in Gaza began, so too did the first phase of the key peace-making element of the deal — the return, over six weeks, of 33 of the remaining 100 or so Israeli hostages seized by Hamas and other militants after they broke out of the “open-air prison” that the Gaza Strip became in 2007, when Israel, having withdrawn its forces and dismantled its settlements in Gaza itself, essentially sealed it shut, imposing a relentless blockade by land, sea and air, and rationing everything, and everyone permitted to enter or leave.

In exchange, Israel has agreed to release thousands of Palestinians held in its gruesome and ever-expanding network of prisons, solely for Palestinians, that it has established over the last 67 years of its illegal occupation of Palestinian land in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, known, collectively, as the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

251 hostages were seized and taken back to the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, a key aspect of the attacks whose purpose was largely obscured as Israel, and its compliant vassal states in the west, focused almost exclusively on the 1,139 people killed (mostly Israelis but also including 71 foreign nationals), and invented atrocities to justify the genocidal frenzy that followed; in particular, the notorious “40 beheaded babies” story that was pure fiction, as only 36 children were killed on October 7, only two of them were babies, and neither of them were beheaded.

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Dare We Hope That the Gaza Ceasefire Deal Will End the Horror of Israel’s Extermination of the Palestinian People?

An image I created when the ceasefire deal was first announced on January 15.

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Is it really true? After 470 days of the most grotesque, publicly-celebrated, western-backed atrocities that any of us have ever seen, dare we hope that a durable ceasefire has been agreed that will bring to an end the soul-draining horrors of Israel’s relentless efforts to exterminate the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip?

On Wednesday (January 15), the Prime Minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, announced the agreement of a ceasefire deal, agreed to by Israel and Hamas, in negotiations involving Qatar, Egypt and the US. President Biden and the President-Elect, Donald Trump, both claimed responsibility for securing the success of the deal, although it was noticeable that the terms of the deal were almost identical to those agreed to by Hamas over eight months ago, on May 6, 2024, which Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, then refused to accept.

This suggests that, despite their protestations, neither Biden nor the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who also rushed to take credit for the deal, had actually done much at all in the intervening eight months, except to be publicly humiliated by Netanyahu, while continuing to send an extraordinary amount of deadly weapons to Israel, indicating that they were prepared to accept humiliation because they continued to unconditionally support Israel’s apparently never-ending hunger for Palestinians’ blood.

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Plumbing the Depths of Human Depravity: 450 Days of Extermination in Gaza

Recent apocalyptic images of the ongoing destruction of northern Gaza, as posted on X on December 27 by the Palestinian journalist Motasem A. Dalloul.

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For 450 days, the State of Israel has been engaged in a sustained policy of vengeance and extermination against the trapped civilian population of the Gaza Strip, a “Holy War” driven by a vile supremacist settler colonial mentality masquerading as the fulfilment of an invented religious entitlement to the Palestinians’ land, involving a giddy and unfettered hatred of the Palestinians as sub-human, and specific revenge for the assault on Israel, on October 7, 2023, in which armed militants who had broken out of the “open-air prison” in which they had been confined for 16 years, went on a killing spree that left 1,068 Israelis and 71 foreign nationals dead, and also kidnapped 251 others.

At the barest minimum, over the last 450 days, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians — mostly civilians — have been killed, or will die, as a result of relentless bombing raids, in which block after block of residential housing, containing almost a quarter of a million homes, has been completely destroyed or damaged, mostly without warning, using bombs of such devastating ferocity that those killed have been torn apart, decapitated, crushed, hurled through the air like broken dolls, or buried alive.

Survivors, meanwhile, have been picked off by snipers, or by armed drones and quadcopters, or have died — and will continue to die — because of a “complete siege” imposed two days after the October 7 attacks, cutting off supplies of food and water, of fuel and of vital medical equipment and supplies. This, accompanied by the almost unimaginably cynical destruction of most of Gaza’s hospitals and health centres, has sentenced to death as yet untold numbers of the elderly, pregnant women, babies and children, those with existing medical conditions, and those with diseases created by the siege, as well as the complete destruction of Gaza’s water and sewage systems.

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A Welcome Ceasefire in Lebanon, But No End to Gaza’s Genocidal Agony

Lebanese people return to their homes after the declaration of a ceasefire, holding up images of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israel two months ago.

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While I was overjoyed, on Wednesday, to see displaced Lebanese people returning to their homes — or the ruins of them — in southern Lebanon as a fragile ceasefire began, following ten weeks of brutal attacks by Israel, my heart sank with the realization that it would make no difference whatsoever to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, where, predictably, the non-stop atrocities of the last 14 months have continued.

Political maneuvering — particularly on the part of the Biden administration — brought about the ceasefire in Lebanon, harking back to earlier, pre-genocidal days, when it was acknowledged by all sides, however begrudgingly, that military conflicts almost always, eventually, have to come to an end through negotiation. For Gaza, however, no such option seems to exist anymore.

After a brief break in hostilities last November, when Israeli and foreign hostages taken to Gaza after the October 7 attacks in southern Israel were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s brutal, lawless prisons for Palestinians, attempts ever since to broker another, more permanent ceasefire have persistently failed. Even though Hamas has regularly agreed to the terms, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has deliberately scuppered any deal, although the twisted western media and its politicians have relentlessly spun this as either being Hamas’ fault, or, if they’ve been feeling slightly less deceptive, a failure on both sides.

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Gaza: The Normalization of Genocide Through the Complete Complicity of the West and Its Colonization by Israel

Campaigners on the March for Palestine in London on February 2, 2024. (Photo: Andy Worthington).

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For a year and three weeks, all decent people around the world have been shocked and disturbed, to an extent unprecedented in our lifetimes, by the intensity of the genocidal fury unleashed by the State of Israel on the 2.3 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, the Chicago-sized “reservation”, into which they were squeezed in 1948, as the nascent Israeli state, in a blood-soaked orgy of extraordinary violence, seized most of what had, for centuries, been Palestinian land.

For a year and three weeks, we have had to watch, powerlessly, as Israel has revisited the messianic genocidal intent that it first unleashed in an unfettered manner 76 years ago, when it erased Palestinian cities, towns and villages, murdering 15,000 civilians and expelling 750,000 others, based on an absurd historical and pseudo-religious claim to the land, dating back 2,000 years. Contextualizing this absurdity, some commentators have pointed out that Israel’s actions are the equivalent to the Italians laying claim to England because it was conquered by their ancestors — the Romans — 2,000 years ago.

This violent supremacism has underpinned the actions of the State of Israel ever since. Throughout the long years from 1948, Israel has refused to ever seriously consider that it should share this contested land with those who called it home. Those expelled — to refugee camps in neighbouring countries — were forbidden the right to return (despite that being a demand agreed upon by the United Nations from the very beginning), those in Israel had to struggle for years to even establish their right to exist as second-class citizens, while those in Gaza and the West Bank have been persistently targeted for marginalization, division, isolation and persistent depredation. Israel claims, risibly, to be “the only democracy in the Middle East”, whereas the objective reality is that it is a violent European settler colonial project enforcing a repulsive system of apartheid.

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With Yahya Sinwar’s Death, Israel’s Genocidal Aims Are Exposed More Than Ever Before

Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader, who was killed by Israeli forces today, October 17, 2024.

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With the death of Yahya Sinwar, Israel’s mendacity and its genocidal intent stand exposed like never before.

Sinwar, the 62-year old leader of Hamas, who never abandoned his homeland, had been portrayed by Israel as hiding deep underground, surrounded by hostages, but in the end that was just another lie, to add to the mountains of lies that Israel has pumped out over the last year. In the end, Sinwar was killed in a chance military encounter in Rafah, not hiding out at all, but engaged in combat with the enemy — in military uniform, and with an AK-47.

His death was the opposite of the humiliation meted out by the US to Saddam Hussein or Moammar Gaddafi, when they were finally seized after the illegal invasions of Iraq and Libya. Nothing could be more inspiring for a resistance movement than for their leader to be killed in active combat, having refused to hide, or to be cowed by the enemy.

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The First Anniversary of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza: Depths of Moral Depravity Unmatched in Modern History

“Stop!” A face-painted protestor on the March for Palestine in London on October 5, 2024 (Photo: Andy Worthington).

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Today is the first anniversary of a day that changed the world, when militants from the paramilitary wing of Hamas, the political and administrative organization responsible for the 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, 141 square miles of land sealed off from the outside world since 2007 by the State of Israel, broke out of their open-air prison, and, with militants from other organizations, embarked on a brutal killing spree in southern Israel.

The attacks left 1,195 people dead — of whom 739 were Israeli civilians, and 79 were civilians of other countries — although no one knows how many of the dead were killed by Israel itself, via the notorious Hannibal Directive, which advocates killing their own people to prevent them from being captured. 251 hostages were also seized and taken back to Gaza, where many have since died — some, undoubtedly, killed by Israel itself — because of their government’s refusal, since last November, to negotiate a ceasefire and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

The October 7 attacks were horrendous, but Israel’s response — launching a relentless all-out assault on the Gaza Strip, which has lasted for a whole year, and is still, malevolently, ongoing — has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, a death toll so disproportionate, borne of destruction so remorselessly vindictive, that it has plunged us into depths of moral depravity that most of us have never witnessed.

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A Million Palestinians Face Death by Starvation After Eight Months of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

Palestinians seeking food in Deir el-Balah in the Gaza Strip in December 2023. Israel’s “complete siege” on Gaza has meant widespread shortages of food throughout the last eight months, but repeated blocking of humanitarian aid deliveries by Israel has meant that it is now estimated that a million Palestinians face death by starvation by mid-July. (Photo: Majdi Fathi).

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Eight months of unmitigated horror in Gaza demonstrates the absolute moral degradation of Israel, and the unparalleled moral failure of the west.

It’s eight months since Hamas and other militants broke out of the “open-air prison” of the Gaza Strip, where they, and the entire Palestinian population of 2.3 million people, had been subjected to a land, sea and air blockade for 16 years, and embarked on a brief but deadly killing spree in southern Israel, killing 1,068 Israelis (695 civilians and 373 members of the military and the police), as well as 71 foreign nationals, and kidnapping around 235 others, around half of whom were Israeli.

In response, as happened on numerous previous occasions when Israel was attacked by Palestinian military forces resisting the occupation of their land, Israel began carpet bombing the Gaza Strip, destroying key infrastructure, levelling apartment blocks with disproportionately heavy-duty bombs provided mainly by the US and Germany, and killing vast numbers of civilians.

In 2014, when Israel undertook the most savage of its many previous attacks on the Gaza Strip, a seven-week campaign killed over 2,300 Palestinians, wounded nearly 11,000 (including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were permanently disabled), and led to the destruction of 7,000 homes, with an additional 89,000 damaged, before a ceasefire was finally reached.

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As Israel Shuns a Ceasefire and Continues Its “Forever Genocide” in Rafah and Across Gaza, An End Must Be in Sight

Protestors in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, on October 26, 2023 (Photo: Zain Jaafar/AFP).

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For over seven months, the Israeli military, largely using weapons provided by the United States and Germany, has been bombing the Gaza Strip with an intensity unmatched in modern history. In March, the NGO Humanity & Inclusion assessed that, on average, 500 bombs a day had been dropped on Gaza, meaning that, as of today, the total number of bombs dropped exceeds 100,000.

Hundreds of these bombs have been US-supplied 2,000lb bombs, which, last week, Frank Gardner, the BBC’s Security Correspondent, citing the UN, described as having “a lethal fragmentation radius of 350 metres”, which “can penetrate concrete more than three metres thick”, and which “leave a crater over 15 metres wide, making it completely unsuitable for use in a place heavily populated by civilians.” As Gardner added, “Even for those people several streets away, the effects can be horrific”, with the UN stating that “the pressure from the explosion can rupture lungs, burst sinus cavities and tear off lies hundreds of metres from the blast site.”

The Gaza Strip, which is home to 2.3 million people — largely the descendants of refugees from the brutal and bloody ethnic cleansing that accompanied the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 — covers just 140 square miles (or 365 square kilometres) of land along the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea — roughly half the size of New York City, and a quarter of the size of London.

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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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