By Mandy Turner
Abstract: Beware the language of “ceasefire” and “peace”. When Israel and its Western allies call for “ceasefire” what they mean is a ceasefire not of Israeli bombs, but of Palestinian demands for self-determination, dignity, and freedom. In recent weeks, the phrase “give peace a chance” has again been weaponized to deflect calls for justice and accountability. But this time something has changed. Two years of Israel’s mass atrocities against Palestinians – a genocidal apotheosis – cannot be easily hidden nor forgotten because the evidence is so devastating in scope. And it has provoked one of the largest global mass movements in recent history drawing in millions across all sectors of society. More people than ever are being mobilized by what they see as an immense injustice imposed on Palestinians by Israel with support from Western governments. This knowledge cannot be erased; this politicization cannot be pacified.
For decades, the phrase “give peace a chance” has been weaponized to deflect calls for justice in Palestine. It is a slogan, repeated by politicians and political commentators whenever Israel’s actions provoke global outrage. But beneath its pacifist veneer lies a despicable logic: that Palestinian resistance must be quieted, that demands for self-determination are too disruptive, and that the status quo – of Israel’s military occupation, colonial dispossession, and apartheid policies – should be preserved in the name of “peace.” On 14 October 2025, in an interview with US media channel CBS news, this scenario is exactly what Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu meant when he said to “give peace a chance.”
Similarly, calls for “de-escalation” come with no parallel demand for accountability. Ceasefires are brokered, but the blockade remains. Aid is pledged, but no trucks are allowed in. The cycle repeats and each time “peace” is invoked yet again as an excuse to carry on as usual. On 7 October 2025, for instance, European leaders used Trump’s “20 Point Gaza Peace Plan” as a flimsy pretext to freeze talks about sanctions on Israel.
The very language of peace has been instrumentalised – not to end Israel’s occupation but to further entrench it; not to lead to Palestinian self-determination but to deny it until an undefined future date, perhaps never. Yet this is not new. This is what happened with the Oslo Accords of 1993-1995, which came after mounting pressure caused by Israel’s violence against Palestinians during the first intifada. The same happened with the Roadmap to Peace in 2003, which came after mounting pressure caused by Israel’s violence during the second intifada. Both these plans had “phases” – a sequence of steps – just like the current Trump plan, but no one forced Israel to meet its obligations. Now, Western states want to impose yet another “peace deal” that only ensures peace for Israel, not for Palestinians.
If the historical record does not convince you, look at what is happening now.
Over the past weeks, Israel has repeatedly violated the ceasefire deal by bombing Gaza and killing at least 211 Palestinians, it has obstructed the delivery of humanitarian aid to a starving and destitute population, and has refused to free high-profile Palestinian prisoners on Hamas’s list. Israel accuses Hamas of violating the deal by attacking Israeli soldiers and failing to hand back the bodies of Israelis killed in Gaza.
The world’s media faithfully reports on each ceasefire violation as a tit-for-tat competition between two equally powerful militaries. This rhetoric and mindset of “equal warring powers” masks the fact that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance fighters are facing one of the world’s most technologically advanced militaries. It also glosses over the reality that this is a population living amidst rubble with no shelter, food, or infrastructure versus a population that is one of the wealthiest in the world. This is a stateless people denied self-determination through an illegal occupation versus the illegal occupier backed by the United States, the world’s most powerful country. This is no level playing field.
The ceasefire deal – the first phase of Trump’s 20-point “peace plan” for Gaza – is a smokescreen because Israel’s genocide against Palestinians has not ended. Genocides do not start in one day. They do not end in one day either.
Genocide is not an event it is a process. Media and politicians tend to focus on episodes of extreme violence – phases of murderous escalation – but genocide unfolds in stages that precede and accompany mass atrocities. Article 1 of the 1948 Genocide Convention describes genocide as a crime “whether committed in time of peace or in time of war” – this definition was designed to capture rapid phases of mass murder as well as longer phases of “slow violence.”
The Israeli state has erected a settler colonial apartheid system over all Palestinians from the river to the sea, which has created the conditions for escalatory phases of mass murder – like the one we have witnessed over the past two years. While this system continues, so does the potential for genocide “in time of peace or in time of war.”
Scholars such as Mohamed Adhikari, Adrian Gallagher, Penny Green, Mahmood Mamdani, Sheri Rosenberg, Raz Segal, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Martin Shaw, and Elisa von Joeden-Forgey have outlined how we can identify genocide as a process with visible signposts. Dividing people into “us” and “them” groups. Discrimination by denying some groups rights and protection, including access to legal justice and killing with impunity. Dehumanization by promoting hatred and portraying the targeted group as dangerous or subhuman. Dispossession through the seizure of property by state agencies or state-supported militia groups. Persecution by mass incarceration, torture, and forced displacement. Deliberately endangering life by imposing blockades and withholding access to water, food, and medical services. The annihilation of entire families through the destruction of family life and group reproduction. These processes constitute genocide, as defined in the Genocide Convention, when they are “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Israel’s policies, practices, rhetoric, and actions against Palestinians are textbook examples of all these signpost processes. And not just since October 2023, but since May 1948. Palestinians have been cataloguing these signposts for nearly 80 years. They have been continually ringing the alarm bells on their own annihilation. There is ample documentation.
Identifying genocide as a process underpins the desire and intention to create prevention strategies to stop a situation reaching intensified periods of mass murder.
Yet Israel’s settler colonial apartheid system – which exhibits all the signposts of genocide as a process – remains in place and is still enjoying the support of powerful Western states, even after two years of committing mass atrocities.
But something has changed this time. Unlike previous occasions where a colonial peace was reimposed over Palestinians, a critical mass of people around the world have been sickened and angered at what they have witnessed over the past two years.
Two Years of Israel’s Mass Atrocities in Gaza
This is two years during which Israel has pulverized Gaza and its people – killing, maiming, detaining and “disappearing,” torturing, and dehumanizing Palestinians. The infrastructure of the Gaza Strip lies in ruins – reduced to bombed-out buildings, mountains of rubble made even more dangerous due to unexploded munitions, toxic soil, raw sewage, and mass graves. Israel’s devastation of Gaza is not just unprecedented in volume – it is unmatched in intensity, speed, and human consequence.
This is two years during which Israel killed over 66,000 Palestinians and injured nearly 169,000, according to UN estimates. Every single one of them was someone’s daughter, son, partner, sister, brother, mother, or father. In early September 2025, former Israeli Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, confirmed that over 200,000 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed or injured – this is more than 10 percent of Gaza’s population. I reference Halevi’s words only because his government constantly disputes the figures provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health and the UN. Israel’s own military intelligence data, leaked to the media in August 2025, confirms that over 83 percent of Palestinians killed in Gaza were civilians: roughly five out of every six people murdered by Israel.
This is two years during which Israel killed more than 20,000 children in Gaza. This is one child killed every hour and is about 2 percent of Gaza’s child population. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described Gaza as “a graveyard for children.” A new devastating acronym was invented: “WCNSF” meaning “wounded child, no surviving family.”
This is two years during which we have seen images of dismembered and fragmented Palestinian bodies being pulled from the rubble and crying children covered in blood and dust, eyes like saucers and shaking with fear. We have seen hospitals bombed and doctors shot and arrested. Palestinian men stripped to their underwear forced to parade in bombed out streets then transferred to torture camps inside Israel. Terrified people of all ages fleeing under bombardment, repeatedly forced to move at short notice under Israeli military orders. Fuel shortages forced Palestinians to move what little belongings they managed to save on carts – some pulled by donkeys, others pulled by hand.
This is two years during which Israel has deliberately destroyed Gaza’s water wells and desalination plants and is imposing starvation as a weapon of war. An Amnesty International report in August 2025 carried devastating testimonies from displaced civilians and medical staff treating severely malnourished infants and babies starving to death. On 22 August 2025, the UN officially confirmed famine in Gaza, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stating: “Just when it seems there are no words left to describe the living hell in Gaza, a new one has been added: ‘famine.’”
This is two years during which Israel has damaged 78 percent of the buildings in Gaza with more than half of them completely destroyed. These were homes, places of worship and education, medical centers, and community buildings. Previously full of life and dreams; all now wrecked. Most of Gaza’s trees have been destroyed, greenhouses decimated; 98.5 percent of cropland is inaccessible or damaged – the soil poisoned and toxic. Under bombardment, Gaza’s waste disposal system has collapsed, leaving rubbish to rot in the streets, encouraging rats and diseases. It will take billions of dollars and as long as four decades to clear the 54 million tons of concrete debris created by Israel’s destruction. This is an immense volume, enough to blanket entire cities or reshape landscapes. Palestinian ecologist Mazin Qumsiyeh and many others have called for Israel’s deliberate destruction of Gaza’s environment – an “ecocide” – to be recognized as a fifth crime in the Rome Statute, joining genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.
Gaza is in ruins.
Two Years of Israel’s Mass Atrocities in the West Bank
Over the same two years, Palestinians in the West Bank have experienced the most extreme period of Israel’s military violence since the second intifada: an acceleration of killings, arrests, detention without trial, bombing, displacement, and siege-like conditions. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has accused Israel of implementing in the West Bank the same tactics and combat strategies it has developed in Gaza, calling it the “Gaza Doctrine” – although these are strategies Israel uses against Palestinians wherever they live.
This is two years during which 1,001 Palestinians have been killed – this is in addition to those killed in Gaza – mostly by Israeli soldiers but some by its violent messianic settlers. By September 2025, the UN had recorded 3,045 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians – with 306 casualties and 2,422 incidents damaging property. This year alone, from January to end of September 2025, Israel launched 7,500 military raids in villages and towns across the West Bank. That’s roughly 28 raids every single day. One of the more petty examples of Israel’s destructive rampage around the West Bank is the removal (and, presumably, destruction) of the “Horse of Jenin” – a 16 feet (5 meters) art sculpture that stood at the entrance to Jenin refugee camp. Built in 2003 out of the debris left after Israel’s military assault on the refugee camp in April 2002, during which it killed 52 Palestinians, the horse had come to symbolize life and survival.
This is two years during which Israel has been bombing Palestinian cities and refugee camps, creating further scenes of wrecked buildings and bloodstained streets. Israeli forces have bulldozed critical infrastructure and roads, and destroyed homes; 42,000 Palestinians have been displaced by Israel’s military violence with 32,000 still unable to return to their homes. Israel has drastically restricted the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank through conditions of siege, closing checkpoints, and sealing entrances of cities and villages with iron gates and concrete barriers. Repeatedly. It is extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, to travel from one Palestinian village or town to another. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers move around unencumbered.
This is two years during which Israel has accelerated its attacks on Palestinian education and healthcare. There are at least 84 Palestinian schools facing demolition orders, in an education system already creaking at the seams. In February 2025, Médecins Sans Frontières reported on nearly 700 attacks on Palestinian healthcare in the first year after October 2023 – against doctors, nurses and paramedics; on ambulances, hospitals, and clinics. On 30 January 2024, Israeli undercover forces dressed as women and medics stormed the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin and killed three Palestinian men it claimed were fighters. Would it make any difference to point out that this is a war crime because hospitals are protected under international humanitarian law? Probably not, because Israel appears to be above the law, shielded by its powerful friends in Western governments. And in the context of what Israel has done to hospitals in Gaza the attack in Jenin pales in comparison.
This is two years during which Israel has filled its jails with Palestinians by accelerating its mass incarceration practices. Between October 2023 and September 2025, Israel made over 19,000 arrests in the West Bank. For every one Palestinian freed in the ceasefire deals, Israel has arrested 15 more. Dissatisfied with merely detaining the living, Israel also detains the dead. Between 7 October 2023 and 13 January 2025, the UN documented that Israel was withholding the bodies of 147 out of 152 Palestinians it had killed – in the West Bank alone. When Palestinians from Gaza are included, the number of bodies Israel is holding is well over 400, although the exact figure is unknown. Palestinian bodies that Israel has returned since the ceasefire show signs of torture and execution.
This is two years during which Israel has repeatedly asserted it will not allow a Palestinian state to exist. Israel insists on continuing to control and crush Palestinian lives so it can grab Palestinian land and settle its own population – the hallmark of settler colonialism. Israel has de facto annexed the West Bank, even if the United States has said it will not allow Israel to formally annex it.
Through all its actions, in the Gaza Strip and West Bank alike, Israel is trying to destroy an entire nation. Drawing on the decades of evidence accumulated and presented by Palestinian experts and human rights groups, UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese calls this phase of Israeli aggression “genocide as colonial erasure.” Israel is waging a war of obliteration not only on the Gaza Strip but against all Palestinians living under its control.
Two Years of Full Support for Mass Atrocities from Washington DC, Berlin, and London
Some powerful Western states not only allowed Israel to pulverise Gaza and rampage around the West Bank over the past two years but have actively aided and abetted the destruction. This is why ending Israel’s genocide of Palestinians also means confronting these powerful Western governments, particularly the United States, Germany, and the UK.
This is two years during which the United States has provided a staggering US $21 billion in military aid to Israel and has spent a further US $10-14 billion in US military operations in the region. The American military-industrial complex is lining its pockets from Israel’s genocide. Cumulatively, the United States has given Israel over US $130 billion in bilateral assistance since 1948 and provides 66 percent of Israel’s imports of major arms and military equipment. That’s a lot of dollars and bombs.
This is two years during which the United States has vetoed six UN Security Council resolutions and has repeatedly voted against resolutions in the UN General Assembly calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The US Permanent Mission personnel were among the very few people left in the UN General Assembly auditorium to hear Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s UN speech on 26 September 2025, after a mass walk-out left the hall nearly empty.
This is two years during which the UN vetoes and weapons aid kept flowing despite a change in administration from Democrat to Republican in January 2025. Which political party is in the White House does not appear to make a huge difference; the United States has backed Israel throughout, no matter what it does. I long ago stopped reading reports on purported US “frustration” with Israel: Biden’s so-called “red line” if Israel invaded Rafah in May 2024, or Trump’s October 2025 purported threats to Netanyahu. It’s all theater.
Germany has acted similarly. It is the second biggest exporter of arms to Israel and has played a particularly negative role in the EU, paralyzing it from taking any action.
This is two years during which Germany granted licences for military exports to Israel worth Euros 485 million (US $563.3 million) between October 2023 and May 2025. This was despite an opinion poll that showed 73 percent of Germans want tighter controls on arms exports to Israel. The Berlin government announced a “partial suspension” in August 2025, but questions in the German parliament revealed export licences are still being approved, albeit reduced.
This is two years during which Germany has repeatedly reminded the world of its “special responsibility” to Israel. In October 2024, Chancellor Olaf Scholz confirmed Germany’s commitment to Israel as a fundamental part of its national interest (“staatsräson” or “reason of state”). The German political elite seem to believe that dealing with their own history of committing genocide means supporting another one.
This is two years during which Germany has blocked the EU from suspending its free trade agreement with Israel or banning produce entering the EU from Israeli settlements, despite growing support for such measures by other EU member states. All of this has continued despite a change in government in May 2025 from the Social Democratic Party to the Christian Democratic Union. In Germany, as in the United States, which political party in government does not appear to make a huge difference. On 7 October 2025, foreign minister Johann Wadephul announced he is “the clearest defender of Israel in Brussels.”
The United Kingdom has acted similarly. Not content with just helping to wipe Palestine off the map during its League of Nations colonial mandate rule, the UK is still a supporter and facilitator of Israeli apartheid and genocide now.
This is two years during which UK arms exports to Israel increased, paltry though they are compared to the United States and Germany. In the first nine months of 2025, military equipment worth £1 million (USD $1.34 million) was exported to Israel from the UK: more than double the amount of the previous three years. In June 2025, arms exports to Israel were the highest since records began in January 2022. This was the same month in which an opinion poll showed that 57 percent of the British public supported a full arms embargo on Israel and 53 percent supported expelling Israel from the UN.
This is two years during which the UK has used its military bases in Cyprus – Akrotiri and Dhekelia – for spy missions. The United States has a longstanding presence in these bases, particularly RAF Akrotiri, for air operations, signals, and intelligence. In October 2025, investigative journalists at Declassified UK captured footage of a US spy plane bound for Gaza taking off from Akrotiri. Between December 2023, and August 2025, at least 600 RAF spy planes from Akrotiri flew over Gaza to aid Israeli intelligence – this is roughly one every single day.
This is two years during which the UK has given unwavering support to Israel. And, like the United States and Germany, this support has outlasted a change in government from Conservatives to Labour in July 2024. On 19 October 2023, Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak told Netanyahu “We will stand with you in solidarity … and we also want you to win.” In September 2025, Labour prime minister Keir Starmer welcomed Israeli president Isaac Herzog to Downing Street during a state visit. Once again, which political party in government does not appear to make a huge difference.
The political elites – of all mainstream parties – in the United States, Germany, and the UK bear huge responsibility for Israel’s mass atrocities against Palestinians over the past two years. They supplied the weapons, the diplomatic cover, and the political support: they are the architects of impunity.
This Time It’s Different. But We Need to Keep Up the Pressure
Visions of peace with justice for Palestinians seems utopian in the current context. Gaza has been destroyed. Israel has de facto annexed the West Bank. The future looks bleak for seven million Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. If the next phases of the Trump “peace plan” are implemented, Palestinians in Gaza will be governed by a colonial “Board of Peace” staffed with Western elites, which will oversee a committee of Palestinian elites handpicked by the United States and Israel. We do not yet know the fate of Palestinians in the West Bank, but no doubt plans are being discussed in the corridors of power in Western capitals.
The word “peace” – yet again – is used as a velvet curtain that hides the machinery of domination. It has opened up an escape route for Israel and its Western supporters. It is being used by Israel to reframe its openly declared aim of denying Palestinians the right to live in freedom and with dignity as a necessary counterterrorism strategy. It is being used by Western states to resurrect its one-sided strategies to fund Palestinians to keep quiet and make mealy-mouthed proclamations about supporting the “two-state solution.” That way they can dress up their indifference to Israel’s abuse of Palestinian rights as “making peace” and whitewash their actions as a normal conflict resolution practice. The mythical “peace process” is again resurrected as the “magic pill,” as Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu calls it, that makes Israel’s war crimes invisible to Western leaders.
When Israel and its Western allies call for peace, what they mean is Palestinian compliance: a ceasefire not of Israeli bombs, but of Palestinian demands for self-determination, dignity, and freedom.
Yet this ceasefire and “peace plan” must not stop or delay measures to force Israel to end its illegal occupation and apartheid system over Palestinians. All states have an obligation to do everything in their power to do this, as recommended by the 19 July 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 19 September. More than one year has passed since that historic opinion, but most states have still done nothing.
Two years of Israel’s mass atrocities against Palestinians – a genocidal apotheosis of a violent settler colonial system – cannot be easily hidden nor forgotten. This time the evidence is so devastating in scope that we are witnessing an avalanche of initiatives to support Palestinian rights. There are too many examples to document here, but Israel faces a tsunami of divestment and boycott measures, provoked by intense civil society activism from Palestinians and their supporters. Direct action groups and trade unions are defying repression and government bans. There is also some momentum for state-level sanctions, although this is a longer, more difficult, battle given Western states’ complicity and support.
Some states are utilizing international legal forums such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court to hold Israel and its allies accountable – with a few cases ongoing. Inside many Western states, groups are using domestic law to punish and prevent government support for Israel.
The battle has intensified inside UN institutions between the majority of states that insist on Palestinians’ right to self-determination against the small minority of powerful states that insist on Israel’s right to exist as a state imposing colonial apartheid rule. Some states are acting together through initiatives such as the Hague Group.
In the past, support for Palestine has generally experienced a surge during and immediately after periods of intense Israeli military violence. But nothing compared to what we are seeing now. Support for Palestinian rights has become one of the largest global mass movements in recent history drawing in millions across all sectors of society, built on decades of activism. More people than ever are being mobilized by what they see as an immense injustice imposed on Palestinians by Israel with support from Western governments. This knowledge cannot be erased; this politicization cannot be pacified.
