With the silence of the guns, hope grows that Israel's genocide in Gaza may have come to an end. Hostages and prisoners from both sides have already been exchanged, and Israeli forces have begun to withdraw to the first ceasefire line in the enclave.

Much-needed aid supplies are once again reaching the humanitarian disaster zone, where an artificially created famine is raging, via the border crossings. Meanwhile, in Egypt, representatives of the US, European countries, Arab states, and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority have been discussing the next phases of the ceasefire.

At the same time, survivors and those who have been displaced multiple times are returning to where they once lived—to the apocalyptic ruins of their homeland. Among them is Gaza resident Fidaa Haraz. Like many others, she is now wandering around Gaza City, against a backdrop that resembles destroyed Berlin after World War II: “I’m walking in the street, but I do not know where to go, due to the extent of the destruction. I swear I don’t know where the crossroads is or where my home is. I know that my home was leveled, but where is it? Where is it? I cannot find it. What is this? What do we do with our lives? Where should we live? Where should we stay?”

At least 92 percent of Gaza's infrastructure has been destroyed or severely damaged by Israel, over 61 million tons of rubble are piling up in the coastal strip, including hospitals, schools, and mosques, heavily contaminated and turned into hazardous material by unexploded ordnance. It will take many years, probably generations, to dispose of it and rebuild. It is the miserable and long aftermath of genocide.

US President Donald Trump is being credited with ending Israel's more than two-year massacre of the Gaza population. He pressured Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas to accept his “deal.” In fact, Hamas had already agreed to similar conditions for a ceasefire over a year ago. But Israel prevented the agreement and killed Hamas leader and negotiator Ismail Haniyya, while the US under Biden and then Trump continued to supply weapons for the genocide and blocked a ceasefire in the UN Security Council with its veto.

What has changed in recent months is that, while the Palestinians could not be persuaded to “voluntarily leave” their homeland and Hamas was by no means defeated militarily, the Netanyahu government has increasingly become a burden for Trump due to its various regional escalations.

Due to the bombing of the ceasefire talks in Qatar, a close ally of the US, and pressure from his own MAGA movement, Trump felt increasingly compelled to rein in Tel Aviv.

The accusation from conservative and right-wing circles in the US, prominently articulated by Tucker Carlson or US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, is that Israel is drawing far too much attention to itself and damaging US interests (i.e., those of the American business class) with its bombing of Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, while the Trump administration has more important things to do, such as fighting for an authoritarian-fascist social order and declaring economic war on the rest of the world. They demand: “America First.”

The growing protests in Western industrialized countries, with hundreds of thousands, even millions on the streets—from Great Britain to Italy and Spain to the Netherlands and Germany, forcing their governments to make concessions— the opposition of large parts of the so-called Global South to the Gaza massacre and the associated isolation of Israel have caused costs to rise for the US as well as for Netanyahu.

However, we should not be under any illusions: the possible end of genocide, starvation, and humanitarian destruction does not mean that peace will ensue. For peace is more than the absence of constant military bombardment, marauding ground troops, and kill zones.

The great war may be coming to an end, but the violence of occupation, apartheid, and territorial expansion is not. For example, settlement projects in the West Bank continued at an accelerated pace during the Gaza war.

We should also remember what the status quo was before October 7, 2023, when the Hamas attack occurred, which Trump's peace plan not only renews but actually exacerbates. Because now it means Israeli occupation plus military-backed foreign administration for an indefinite period. Later, according to the plan, the corrupt Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which is hated by many Palestinians, will be handed control of Gaza by Trump and Co.

The occupation will therefore continue, with all its consequences. In 2023 alone, until the Hamas attack, an average of one Palestinian per day was killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the occupied territories, including many children. A total of over 200 victims in the first seven months of that year. The Western media has become accustomed to turning a blind eye to Israel's ongoing human rights violations, the many minors held in torture prisons without charge, and the violent occupation regime, which the International Court of Justice has ruled to be a violation of international law.

When journalists report on the crimes in the occupied territories, they become targets of the “

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