A ceasefire of ceaseless killings
- Independent Ink
- Nov 11
- 5 min read
Has Israel really stopped bombing Gaza and killing Palestinians, even for a day, since that so-called ceasefire?
By Faraz Ahmad
A ceasefire of ceaseless killings
Has Israel really stopped bombing Gaza and killing Palestinians, even for a day, since that so-called ceasefire?
By Faraz Ahmad
US President Donald Trump, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in tow, announced from the White House on September 29, 2025, a ceasefire of the Israeli war on the Palestinians in Gaza just a week before the completion of two years of Zionist genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, beginning October 8, 2023.
But has Israel really stopped bombing Gaza and killing Palestinians, even for a day, since that so-called ceasefire?
Earlier this week, in a major assault on Gaza, it killed 104 civilians, among them 46 children and 24 women, reported the French news agency AFP. The next day, it again resorted to bombing civilians, claiming that it had targeted an arms dump, killing one civilian, the agency added, but Netanyahu claims he is implementing the ceasefire. [1]
As of now, on November 11, the killings have continued, a large number of them, predictably, children.
Never mind that the United Nations’ rights chief Volker Turk, described so many dead as appalling and urged all sides not to let peace “slip from our grasp”, echoing calls from Britain, Germany and the European Union for the parties to recommit to the ceasefire, said the agency report.
Since October 8 [2025], when Trump announced at Sharm Al Sheikh along with his allies that both Israel and Hamas have signed the agreement on cessation of hostilities, Trump has chided Netanyahu only once, not on Israeli persistent disobedience of the ceasefire in Gaza, but its formal declaration to annex the West Bank, the last refuge of Palestinians as well. Trump had threatened Hamas (read Palestinians) with the worst action if they disobeyed the terms of the agreement. But not a word of what action is proposed if and when Israel wilfully and deliberately thumbs its nose at the world, appealing to end the Gaza genocide.
And this disobedience also includes refusal to allow the required number of aid trucks to quench the hunger and thirst of the displaced, starving Palestinians.
Ever since the Israeli state was created on Palestinian land by cleansing it of Palestinian presence, with European patronage, it has carried on its violence. Yet, the world shies away from calling it a rogue terrorist state, that has for decades violated an endless list of UN resolutions on illegal occupation of Palestinian territories among other things. Israel has been arming extremist settlers who are becoming a law onto themselves in Israel and could become a security threat in future [2], [3] who are tolerated by the allies of Israel. In the eyes of the European allies of Israel, Hamas, which , in a certain sense, expresses the Palestinian aspiration of freeing themselves from the bondage and siege of the Zionist apartheid regime, is a terrorist outfit. [4]
Yet, these same “terrorists” looked after their ‘hostages’ captured from inside Israel on October 7, 2023. For two years, they kept them in safe custody, caring for all their basic needs while the Gazans faced starvation and annihilation from the Zionist Israeli Defence Force (IDF) as it pounded and bombed virtually the entire Gaza Strip, butchering indiscriminately men, women and children. Yes, some hostages also died in captivity. Not from Hamas bullets but from IDF bombing and firing.
Compare this with the Zionist regime whose ministers go up to the jail to incite third degree torture, rape and sodomisation of Palestinian prisoners, men, women and children face public humiliation in every which way [5]. And why not? When the likes of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have often justified the starvation of Palestinian children, also stating that they need no schools, for they are no children. They should be starved to death because they are not humans.
Bombing to dust their hospitals and killing and capturing doctors and paramedics is part of the war, for they are just animals, in the Netanyahu regime’s perception, proclaimed from public platforms. Compare this with the bodies of Palestinians returned by Israel. News reports mentioned the signs of horrible mutilation of many of those bodies, clearly showing signs of extreme torture leading to their agonising deaths.
The Israeli regime often lies and inflates information for propaganda purposes, and it may have done so around claims of sexual violence against women and beheading of children by motorcycle riders in Israel on October 7, 2023. While some of these claims may be true, some analysts have posed questions on the veracity of these ‘claims’ which are still to be proved with evidence.
The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Deputy Director Andrew Sabeton, who visited the Gaza Strip following this sham of a ‘ceasefire’ (marked more by breach than observation by the IDF), remarked, “The sheer extent of the devastation looked like the set of a dystopian film,” adding that “a quarter of the Gaza population is starving. This includes 11,500 pregnant women for whom starvation is particularly catastrophic for both mother and newborn.”
On 22 October 1985, 40 years ago, the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, was forced by other Commonwealth leaders to issue an ultimatum to South Africa, giving it six months to start dismantling apartheid or else face a programme of voluntary sanctions. Throughout the first five days of the Commonwealth summit at Nassau, Thatcher had resisted the proposal of imposing economic sanctions on the then White-ruled South Africa, which practised apartheid on the native African population. But, eventually, this Iron Lady had to succumb and submit to the demand for imposing sanctions on the apartheid regime of South Africa by an overwhelming majority of the Commonwealth leaders.
This could throw some light and drill some self-respect into the minds of Trump’s Arab/Muslim allies, to put similar pressure on him under whose seal and signature the cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas was signed at Sharm Al Sheikh in Egypt. It could also be a beacon of light to those nations like the UK, France, Canada and Australia that had recognised a Palestinian state in the United Nations General Assembly less than a month ago, on how to proceed on the future course if they were seriously objecting to the israeli apartheid and annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza.
References added by Editor, Mainstream:
Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI). Gender-Based Violence as a Weapon of War during the October 7 Hamas Attacks | Position Paper https://www.phr.org.il/en/gender-based-violence-eng/
United Nations Security Council. 9572nd Meeting (PM) SC/15621
11 March 2024 — Reasonable Grounds to Believe Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Occurred in Israel During 7 October Attacks, Senior UN Official Tells Security Council https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15621.doc.htm
How two debunked accounts of sexual violence on Oct. 7 fueled a global dispute over Israel-Hamas war by Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press and Julia Frankel, Associated Press (May 22, 2024 2:32 PM EDT) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-2-debunked-accounts-of-sexual-violence-on-oct-7-fueled-a-global-dispute-over-israel-hamas-war
Amnesty International 13 March 2025 —UN report on Israel’s gender-based violence and genocidal acts against women’s health facilities must spur action to protect Palestinians https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/03/un-report-on-israels-gender-based-violence-and-genocidal-acts-against-womens-health-facilities-must-spur-action-to-protect-palestinians/
Israel is on notice for using sexual violence against Palestinians. It’s all too common as a war tactic https://theconversation.com/israel-is-on-notice-for-using-sexual-violence-against-palestinians-its-all-too-common-as-a-war-tactic-262951
Courtesy Mainstream Weekly. The opinions expressed in the above article do not necessarily reflect the views of Mainstream Weekly or independentink.in
Footnotes and references were added by Mainstream editors.
[2] Extremist Israeli settlers are non-state armed actors https://www.brookings.edu/articles/extremist-israeli-settlers-are-nonstate-armed-actors/
[3] Settler Violence = State Violence https://www.btselem.org/topic/settler_violence
[4] A Muslim fundamentalist organisation shored up and cultivated by the Israeli security establishment to undercut the secular PLO https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
Faraz Ahmad is a seasoned journalist based in Delhi.