by Yahav Zohar – October 29th, 2025 – 

Are you still following the news from Gaza? Are you still protesting? Because despite what we’ve been told, nothing is over. Just last night (Tuesday 28 Oct.) the Israeli army killed 104 Gazans, 46 of them children.

The Israeli military still directly occupies half of the Gaza strip, and in the other half, a narrow strip along the coast, 2 million Gazans still live under Hamas rule and Israeli siege. The ceasefire agreement promised 600 trucks a day would be let into the strip, but the actual number has averaged less than 100. Enough to supply Hamas and those connected to it, but food is still scarce, and the vulnerable are still dying of malnutrition. The weather is getting colder, soon the rains will start, and the vast majority of surviving Gazans are in tents.

Around them, the Israeli army continues on its mission of destroying every remaining structure above and below ground, turning what were cities into apocalyptic moonscapes. Yesterday, in the place that was once the city of  Rafah, they apparently uncovered tunnels where Hamas fighters were hiding, cut off from command. One of them managed to kill an Israeli soldier and another fired off an anti tank rocket before they were all killed. In ‘response’ the Israeli army went on a bombing spree. 

Netanyahu announced he was ordering  the ‘powerful’  Israeli attack, actually used it as his daily excuse to get away from his trial for corruption, but allowed lower level military officials to make the later announcement that the bombing was done, for now, and the ‘ceasefire’ is back in place. 

What is this ‘ceasefire’? It is a mechanism that has allowed Hamas to take back power and execute its enemies, Israel to maintain the siege and bombing, and the rest of the world to forget that any of this is happening, that the people of Gaza are still dying.

The unholy alliance between the Israeli government and Hamas is as strong as ever. Continued war is their reason for being, and in Netanyahu’s case, part of his election campaign.  His base, he seems to believe, doesn’t want the war to end, doesn’t want to see Gaza rebuilt.  

There have been no protests of the bombings, but there are Israeli protestors every day at Kisufim crossing, trying to stop aid trucks from entering Gaza. Nobody in Gaza should get food or medicine, they say, until every hostage body has returned. This, it seems, will take a long time, either because Hamas is stalling, or more likely because they truly don’t know where the bodies are buried. In the Arab press there are several versions of this cartoon: pushing aside masses of Gazan skeletons to find the remains of a single Israeli hostage.

There is every indication that neither the Israeli government nor the Israeli public will allow the military to leave the strip, the siege to be lifted and Gaza to be rebuilt. The huge energy of international protests, Netanyahu’s isolation at the UN summit and the overwhelming recognition of a Palestinian state was enough to make Israel pretend to end the ‘war’, pretend to commit to Gaza’s rebuilding and Hamas to pretend to agree to disarm and leave government, but not enough to actually end the cycle.

The appearance of a ceasefire has taken off the pressure, and now they can get back to the business of destruction. Within Israel there is very little political opposition to this. Those running against Netanyahu in the upcoming election completely support the siege and bombing; they just wish it was their honest and selfless selves managing the bombing instead of the corrupt Netanyahu.

And so we continue with the absurd ritual of prosecuting a man charged with genocide for receiving cigars and champagne. Israel, as a political and legal system, as a society, continues to refuse to see the horror of what it is doing in Gaza and the West Bank, continues to pretend that this is a war against Hamas, and that every bombing, every food and medicine truck blocked, is a ‘retaliation’.

To truly end this war will require more outside pressure. It will also require Israel to feel it is paying an international price again. Gazans need all of those around the world who marched against the genocide to keep marching, to block streets, to make it known to their governments that this cannot be allowed to continue. 

Yahav Zohar is a Senior Partner and tour guide with the Green Olive Collective.