Gaza ceasefire: This is not a 'new dawn'. The war is not over

"It took three thousand years to get to this point," proclaimed US President Donald Trump during his speech this week at the Israeli Knesset. All this on a "new beautiful day".  

In case viewers and listeners did not get the message, Trump added: "This is not only the end of a war. This is the end of the age of terror and death and the beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God."

A slew of exhausted clichés commingled with concentrated flattery adorned every speech. There was the old favourite, a "new dawn" for the Middle East, a phrase used by nearly every US president in recent history.   

Thankfully, nobody asked Trump for an explanation as to why he thinks a 100-year plus conflict had lasted 3000 years - the ancient hatreds cliché taken to the maximum extent.

Trump proclaimed: "Everyone is happy." If only Palestinians had simply forgotten what happiness is.  

Perhaps they were meant to be joyous because Trump’s riviera plan that envisaged a Palestinian-free Gaza of casinos and five-star hotels has been abandoned - for now.

The survivors of genocide are to be relieved that they are not to be ethnically cleansed. 

Global gaslighting

This pandemic of global gaslighting has been on an epochal level. Instead of leaders referencing the need to build on the hugely welcome but delicate and fragile ceasefire in Gaza that paused a genocide, Palestinians are treated to a fanfare of distorted gobbledygook that is a triumph of fantasy over reality.  

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Leaders squabbled over the credits for a non-existent peace deal that the victims of genocide had no say in. 

The role - or lack of it - for the British government and Prime Minister Keir Starmer evolved into the latest Punch and Judy tantrum between the Labour Party and the Conservatives, trying to score domestic political points in a situation of genocide. 

Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative party, argued that the British government had had no role at all, and was just a bystander.

Starmer countered that it had had an active and influential behind the scenes role. Even if the UK government had had a sizeable role in this, frankly it should be embarrassed at much of what emerged.

In the real world, who cares?

What to make of the "Board of Peace"? At first you might imagine it would be a joint committee of Israelis and Palestinian political figures determining some collective future. No, it will be Trump and Tony Blair, that historic Middle East disaster architect.

Trump was a sponsor of the genocide in Gaza. As with his predecessor, he ensured Israel had all the weapons it needed. How tasteless to address the Knesset and joke that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had asked for weapons, "some I’d never heard of".

Those weapons killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom are women and children. Blair has yet to issue any serious criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza, an echo of his failed years as the Middle East Quartet envoy. 

Things could only get worse.

What was this summit in Sharm El Sheikh? It was more like a Trump majlis, where he invited global figures of his own choosing to come and pay homage, making them wait two hours for the privilege. One by one each was summoned to shake hands with the great peace-maker extraordinaire and to show their fealty.

The cast list was bizarre. The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was a last-minute afterthought to join, when he and Palestinians should have been centre stage. 

Someone has yet to offer a valid reason as to why Viktor Orban was there. Had Hungary had some significant input into this great deal? At least he is a head of government, but equally baffling was what Gianni Infantino, the head of FIFA, has to do with the future reconstruction and governance of Gaza.

Every leader dutifully praised Trump, some to embarrassing excess. It is not to say he does not deserve some praise. 

Trump finally put real pressure on Netanyahu to sign up to a deal he had so studiously avoided, and to submit to an international approach to getting a ceasefire. Trump cajoled regional leaders into action as well. All of this President Biden could have done a year ago and more, but did not. 

But imagine what the Palestinian people made of this fanfare? Many of those leaders had been an active party to the genocide and starvation of Gaza. Others had refused to condemn it. 

Absurd hyperbole

Away from fantasy land to the north of Gaza, far from the rebuilding beginning that Trump was boasting about, Palestinians were digging their loved ones out of the rubble.

It is not a peace deal nor comprehensive. It is a ceasefire proposal with certain points about future stages

Hundreds of thousands were making another painful walk north to see if their homes were still standing and their families still alive.

Mothers and fathers were still scraping around for morsels of food and sips of dirty water to give to their emaciated children. 

All this absurd hyperbole is not funny. It is extremely alarming. Trump declared that the "war is over". It is not. This must be understood.

A ceasefire is not the end of a war.  

None of the underlying conditions have been dealt with. Israel maintains its unlawful occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Its soldiers have continued to kill Palestinians in both, thankfully at far reduced rates. 

It is not a peace deal nor comprehensive. It is a ceasefire proposal with certain points about future stages. It is so vague that the devil is in the lack of details. Peace would require agreement on borders, Jerusalem, sovereignty, refugees, amongst a host of other issues. Negotiations require the acceptance of a Palestinian partner. 

Confusing a ceasefire with the endpoint and a permanent peace is exactly what was the case on 6 October 2023. Whilst there was largely peace for Israel and Israelis, life under military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was utter hell and worsening. 

Genuine accountability

The summit also gave the appearance of enormous momentum and unity, that nothing could halt the inexorable march towards a utopian Middle East-wide peace.

Yet in the real world, the ceasefire nearly broke down because Hamas could not locate the remaining dead hostages under the 61 million tonnes of rubble. 

Every leader proclaimed how wonderful the deal was but then gave their own version of what that deal entailed. The deal did not endorse a two-state solution, but leader after leader spoke as if it had. 

The history of Gaza this century highlights how quickly global leaders can turn on and off their flickering attention to this annihilated enclave.

After every ceasefire deal in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2019, 2021 and January 2025, leaders made similar comments about addressing root causes. The reality was nothing changed. Gaza was kept under lock and key. Israel then violated each and every single ceasefire deal. 

Leaders need to jettison the overblown rhetoric and get their teams knee-deep in the dirty details. It requires hard persistent graft that will get no headlines. 

The Trump-Netanyahu 20 point-plan needs to be completely revised, and fleshed out. Above all, it needs to reconfigure this to give Palestinians the central role in their own future. 

It needs to situate Gaza as a key component of a viable independent Palestinian state by including the West Bank, with guarantees of a full and final end to the Israeli occupation and regime of apartheid.

And it needs to address the issue of genuine accountability, so that this genocide never happens again. 

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