My Thoughts On The Ceasefire
It’s important to remember that all of Israel's actions serve only its settler-colonial agenda
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The Cambridge Dictionary’s definition of ‘ceasefire’ is “An agreement, usually between two armies to stop fighting in order to allow discussions about peace”. Reading this definition brought to mind a scene from the 1996 sci-fi film Independence Day.
In the scene, a captured alien, having devastated the Area 51 lab where it was held, attacks Dr Okun (played by Brent Spiner), the facility’s lead scientist. Using its encounter suit’s tentacles to grip his throat, the alien commandeers Dr Okun’s vocal cords to communicate with President Whitmore (played by Bill Pullman). By this point, the invading aliens have already decimated most major cities worldwide and killed millions. Despite the aliens’ overwhelming technological superiority, the President attempts negotiations with them, however futile this might seem.
“Can there be peace between our people?” the President asks. The alien’s response is unequivocal: “Peace? No peace.” When the President follows up with, “What do you want us to do?” the alien’s answer is chillingly simple: “Die.”
This scene is central to the story. It crystallises the aliens’ intentions and exposes the futility of seeking peaceful coexistence. They are after Earth’s resources. We, humans, are merely an obstacle, an inconvenience to be removed for the invading force to take what they want.
Independence Day serves as a thinly veiled allegory for humanity’s all-too-real experience of colonialism and settler-colonialism. The film presents us with moral clarity. We know precisely who the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ are. We are incensed by the aliens’ breathtaking entitlement, their cold amorality, their utter indifference to human life. But above all, the film celebrates resistance, humanity’s hopeless, defiant last stand in the face of a far-superior force determined to exterminate it.
As Earth’s makeshift forces prepare to launch their desperate counter-attack, President Whitmore’s rousing speech crystallises the stakes. Humanity faces an enemy bent on its extermination.
“Perhaps it’s fate that today … we will once again fight for our freedom. Not from tyranny, persecution or oppression. But from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live, to exist.”
In the film, our enemy is unambiguous; an invading force intent on seizing what is ours, leaving us with only two choices—to die or to fight back, however hopeless the odds. This stark ‘good guys vs bad guys’ narrative has historically been used by colonisers and settler-colonisers, who portrayed themselves as virtuous, civilised bearers of progress, ‘reluctantly’ forced to fight against hordes of ‘uncivilised’, ‘primitive’, ‘vicious’ indigenous peoples. In the reality of colonialism and settler-colonialism, the ‘good guys, bad guys’ moral equation does hold true—but in reverse!
Now imagine if the film’s script went further, and introduced a small group of powerful external players capable of shifting the power balance between invaders and victims. But instead of supporting those under attack, these influential players chose to arm and support the invaders. We need not imagine this scenario. This is precisely what we are witnessing as Western powers arm and support Israel while Palestinians face extinction.
How would the world react if Israel’s actions in Palestine were viewed with the same clarity as the alien invasion in our film? Our leaders, I believe, know exactly who the ‘bad guys’ are, and they support them because they are cut from the same cloth. Driven by the same primitive, entitled mindset that birthed colonialism, our leaders consciously and cynically choose to support Israel. Take Keir Starmer’s recent statement on the ceasefire (The National, 17th January 2025). His pro-Israel, colonial bias shone through as he devalued not only Israel’s Palestinian victims, but even British aid workers and medical staff targeted and killed by Israel. (According to The National Starmer’s office did not respond to a request for comment). Without the US, the biggest settler-colonial bully in the global neighbourhood, there would be no Israeli genocide. Both the US and the UK brazenly ignore international law, and by so doing are legally complicit in Israel’s genocidal settler-colonialism.
The settler-colonial state of Israel emerged from the Zionist movement’s determination to colonise Palestine, dispossess its people, and claim the land and resources for a Jewish state. When Israel failed to remove all Palestinians in 1948, the completion of this settler-colonial project became its sole driving force. The Nakba was not an endpoint but a beginning. Israel’s ongoing attack on Gaza and its people is another step on Israel and its allies’ path to complete the settler-colonial project in Palestine.
Like the film’s aliens, Israel’s ultimate goal remains unchanged—but unlike them, Israel must maintain the pretence of ‘negotiating’ ceasefires and prisoner exchanges to secure continued support from its allies, or rather, collaborators. In the film, the aliens’ technological superiority allows them to be transparent about their intentions. In our reality, Israel operates through a more complex strategy of deception, while pursuing its unchanging settler-colonial objective.
The New Arab reports today that Israel killed nineteen Palestinians in Gaza after ceasefire deadline, and that Netanyahu warns the truce is temporary.
Gaza lies in ruins, its surviving people thrown once again into a precarious existence as refugees on their own land. According to the official numbers, tens of thousands of people were murdered by Israel, including newborn babies and children. I suspect the real numbers are much higher. While we can count the dead, how do we measure the trauma inflicted on millions? How do we quantify the depth of suffering, the lifelong psychological wounds, the generational trauma that will ripple through decades to come, if anyone survives Israel’s genocide. The colonised West Bank is already dominated by Israeli colonies (‘settlements’). Palestinian villages, towns and cities are steadily vanishing as Israel tightens its grip on both the land and its natural resources. The Palestinians citizens of Israel are also in grave danger. Israel will not stop until it has achieved its goal of an exclusively Jewish state.
The ‘ceasefire’
I do not trust a word out of Israeli politicians’ mouths. I know that everything Israel does is in the service of its settler-colonial agenda. The timing of this so-called ceasefire is calculated. Israel’s military force is faltering—soldiers are suffering from fatigue and psychological breakdowns, and they need a break. The terminology of ‘ceasefire’ enables Israel to maintain its seventy-six-year pretence of being an innocent, peace-loving country fighting a ‘no choice’ war against an antisemitic mortal enemy.
The Israeli military has completed its first phase in Gaza: flattening the entire territory and its infrastructure, making it uninhabitable—a cruel repetition of Israel’s actions in 1948. Israel has been killing indiscriminately because any reduction in Palestinian numbers advances their goal. Palestinians are not human beings to Israel. They are just an obstacle. The chilling phrase I grew up hearing regularly, “A good Arab [Palestinian] is a dead Arab”, reveals Israel’s true mindset. Do not imagine a chasm between ‘good, innocent Israelis’ and their ‘evil government’ that operates against the wishes of the people. Israeli society stands almost entirely unified behind its settler-colonial aims. The objections to Netanyahu stem not from opposition to killing Palestinians, but from frustration that he hasn’t killed more. Israeli society has grown impatient with successive governments’ failure to complete the settler-colonial project and secure an exclusively Jewish state cleansed of all Palestinians. Panicked about his political survival and the prospect of prison, Netanyahu delivered Gaza.
This ceasefire does not signal a policy reversal or a change of direction. It is a continuation and intensification of the same strategy Israel has always used. Israel is discovering that mass killing is a monumental undertaking. They need this ‘ceasefire’ to brainstorm solutions to the presence of ‘too many’ Palestinians still alive in Gaza.
As global attention focuses on the Gaza ‘ceasefire’, the colonisation of the West Bank accelerates with the US’ blessing. Unable to employ the same tactics there as in Gaza, Israel seeks alternative methods to remove the West Bank Palestinians, as well as the Palestinians citizens of Israel, who make 20% of Israeli society.
Al Jazeera reports that the refugees in Gaza, the survivors of Israel’s first phase, are happy about the ceasefire and are returning to inspect their destroyed homes. I want to be happy for them. But the part of me that knows Israel, knows that it will not give up its settler-colonial ambition to empty and posses Gaza, and all of historic Palestine. I dread what comes next. As it did before many times, Israel will probably claim that Palestinians broke the ceasefire, and will use this as an excuse to proceed with the carnage. I hope I am wrong.
The realm of international relations stands as one of the most primitive arenas in human ‘civilisation’. Unless someone stands up to them, bullies at all levels of human society continue their harmful acts unchecked, leaving a devastating legacy. As long as this persists, we cannot claim to be an ‘advanced’ species. We remain primitive savages—chimpanzees running around with atomic bombs in their back pockets.
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Avigail offers a timely reminder about the connivance and duplicity of the West in allowing Isreal the same latitude to slaughter and steal that served the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, France et al in their colonial pomp. I detect a sea change in both awareness and increasing intolerance of many previously neutral people towards Isreal and the blood-soaked truth of its existence. It’s time to make these criminals pay by ensuring every penny you spend is checked against whether it benefits directly, or indirectly, these vile criminal scum
I hope, like Avigail Arbanel, that I am wrong, but I fully share her pessimism about the fate of the Palestinian populations subjected to the goodwill of an unhealthy entity and the whims of an American administration that is only concerned about its own fate. As you say so well, any respite is good to take, but it is clear that the solution to this tragedy lies in the hands of the USA, which itself is subject to enormous pressure from AIPAC and its evangelical and Christian Zionist substitutes. I am not even talking about the wriggling European chihuahuas who no longer know what boots to lick and who have renounced all the moral principles that the so-called Judeo-Christian civilization claims to have... The USA must get out of this bipartisan dictatorship and find a third way, in line with its interests, with a universal and humanist dimension. Thank you Avigail, once again for your valuable testimonies….