A ceasefire. The very word elicits a breath held in hope—and then exhaled in weariness. For Gaza’s battered and besieged population, the latest whispers of a truce, first heard at a Netanyahu-Trump dinner spectacle in Washington, carry the same paradox they always have: the distant glimmer of relief, veiled in the familiar shadow of betrayal.
In theory, a ceasefire ought to mark the beginning of calm. But in the Orwellian theatre that is Israeli politics under Benjamin Netanyahu, it more often signals the start of the next deception. The prime minister of Israel has once again taken to the global stage with platitudes of peace, flanked by Donald Trump, a man whose notion of diplomacy is indistinguishable from self-promotion. Such a tableau ought to provoke not celebration but scrutiny.
The optics are meticulously arranged. Netanyahu, bloodied politically and cornered legally, stands to gain respite from the swelling protests and corruption trials at home. Trump, who never met a camera he didn’t court, is eager to reassert himself as a peace broker, this time not in the Abraham Accords mold but as savior of a region he understands only in headlines.
But strip away the slogans and the flag-draped podiums, and what remains is a cruel sleight of hand. Gaza lies in ruins, a humanitarian graveyard where children’s toys poke out from beneath the rubble. Food, water, electricity—the basics of life are rationed by siege. In such a landscape, to speak of “peace” without addressing the architecture of violence that sustains the status quo is not diplomacy. It is theater.
History offers no shortage of cautionary tales. Netanyahu’s record is one of ceasefires broken not by mistake but by design. Agreements, often brokered through intermediaries like Egypt or Qatar, have been discarded the moment their utility waned—or when domestic politics demanded another show of military might. Settlement expansion continues unabated. The blockade endures. Military incursions resume under the guise of “security.” And through it all, the Israeli state, under Netanyahu’s stewardship, has perfected the art of casting itself as both arsonist and firefighter.
Palestinians are not naïve. They do not reject peace; they reject pantomimes. What they demand is not merely a cessation of bombing, but a recognition of their rights – to land, to liberty, to self-determination. A ceasefire that fails to lift the blockade, that does not provide an international monitoring mechanism, that does not hold Israel accountable for violations, is not peace. It is a pause between wars.
Yet even this charade is overshadowed by Netanyahu’s deeper project: the fragmentation of Palestinian nationhood itself. One of the more surreal proposals now emanating from his government—or at least from the orbit of its supporters—is the notion of “emirates” within the West Bank. The “Emirate of Hebron,” allegedly pitched by a clan leader eager for Israeli recognition in return for compliance, is a throwback to the colonial playbook of divide and rule.
This is not a novel invention. In the 1970s and 1980s, Israel’s “village leagues” program similarly sought to bypass the Palestine Liberation Organization by propping up pliant local figures. It failed, resoundingly, because it misread the core of Palestinian identity: its collective resistance to occupation, its refusal to barter dignity for subsistence.
To float the “emirates” idea now, when Palestinian unity is at its most defiant and its nationalist sentiment at a historic high, is either a miscalculation or a deliberate provocation. Either way, it exposes the bankruptcy of Netanyahu’s strategy. Having failed to defeat Hamas militarily after nearly two years of scorched-earth bombardment in Gaza, Israel now turns to war by other means: cooptation, fragmentation, and artificial leadership fabrication.
The story repeats in grotesque variations. In Gaza, a criminal gang headed by Yasser Abu Shabab—a man with neither legitimacy nor popular support—is allegedly receiving Israeli backing. His thugs, accused of hijacking aid and sowing chaos, are hardly a replacement for governance. But Netanyahu’s government is not seeking governance. It is seeking control—preferably through collaborators and deally without concessions.
This, too, is part of a longer arc. From the coopting of Jordanian-loyal figures in the early days of the occupation to the calculated empowerment of Islamist rivals to the secular PLO in the 1980s—including the indirect enabling of Hamas—Israel’s objective has remained consistent: undermine Palestinian unity, delegitimize national leadership, and fracture the claim to statehood.
Netanyahu’s current approach is merely the most shameless iteration of this legacy. His coalition partners—Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir—have made no secret of their desire to erase the Palestinian national identity altogether. Smotrich, in his now-infamous Paris speech, dismissed Palestine as an “invention.” Their actions, from undermining the Palestinian Authority to attacking UNRWA, reflect a scorched-earth mentality—not just on the battlefield, but in the realm of history and narrative.
Even the Palestinian Authority, often criticized for its ineffectuality and complicity in “security coordination,” is too nationalist for Netanyahu’s tastes. The prospect that its reentry into Gaza might revive talk of statehood is anathema to the Israeli right. Thus, the PA is sidelined, even as its very weaknesses are exploited to justify that marginalization.
Meanwhile, the so-called international community continues its well-rehearsed role as observer and enabler. The United States, as ever, cloaks Israeli impunity in the language of “shared values.” Europe, wary of domestic backlash and burdened by diplomatic inertia, vacillates between platitudes and paralysis. The Arab world, some of whom were recently courted into normalization deals, issues statements as if detached from the fire they helped stoke.
It is left to Gaza’s civilians—not politicians, not generals—to pay the price. They bury their dead in silence, ration food in darkness, and teach their children hope in ruins.
What, then, should be expected from this latest “ceasefire”? If it is indeed signed, it may momentarily halt the bombs. It may allow a few aid trucks to roll in. It may briefly shift the headlines. But unless it confronts the root causes—occupation, blockade, disenfranchisement—it will serve only to reset the countdown to the next conflagration.
The people of Gaza deserve more than another negotiated illusion. They deserve accountability. They deserve freedom. They deserve, at the very least, an end to the insult of being spoken for by puppets and punished in the name of security.
Netanyahu may win another news cycle. Trump may boast of another “deal.” But history will not be fooled. And the Palestinian people, fractured by borders but united in struggle, are not waiting for salvation from above. They are demanding it from the ground up.
Until that demand is answered not with tanks, but with justice, no ceasefire will hold. And no lie, however eloquently sold, will conceal the truth: that the road to peace does not pass through Hebron “emirates” or criminal gangs, but through the recognition of Palestine as a nation, wounded, yes, but unbroken.