This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actor

Text originally published December 15, 2025.

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First, it was Israel’s right to defend itself. Then it was a war, even though, by Israel’s own military intelligence database, 83 percent of the casualties were civilians. The 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, living under an Israeli air, land and sea blockade, have no army, air force, no mechanized units, no tanks, no navy, no missiles, no heavy artillery, no fleets of killer drones, no sophisticated tracking systems to map all movements, or an ally like the United States, which has given Israel at least $21.7 billion in military aid since Oct. 7, 2023.

Now, it is a “ceasefire.” Except of course, as usual, Israel only abided by the first of the 20 stipulations. It freed around 2,000 Palestinian captives held in Israeli prisons — 1700 of whom were detained after Oct. 7 — as well as around 300 bodies of Palestinians, in exchange for the return of the 20 remaining Israeli captives.

Israel has violated every other condition. It has tossed the agreement — brokered by the Trump administration without Palestinian participation — into the bonfire with all the other agreements and peace accords concerning Palestinians. Israel’s extensive and blatant flouting of international agreements and international law — Israel and its allies refuse to abide by three sets of legally binding orders by the International Cout of Justice (ICJ) and two ICJ advisory opinions, as well as the Genocide Convention and international humanitarian law — presage a world where the law is whatever the most militarily advanced countries say it is.

The sham peace plan — “President Donald J. Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” — in an act of stunning betrayal of the Palestinian people, was endorsed by most of the U.N. Security Council in November, with China and Russia abstaining. Member states washed their hands of Gaza and turned their backs on the genocide.

The adoption of resolution 2803 (2025), as the Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein writes, “was simultaneously a revelation of moral insolvency and a declaration of war against Gaza. By proclaiming international law null and void, the Security Council proclaimed itself null and void. Vis-à-vis Gaza, the Council transmuted into a criminal conspiracy.”

The next phase is supposed to see Hamas surrender its weapons and Israel withdraw from Gaza. But these two steps will never happen. Hamas — along with other Palestinian factions — reject the Security Council resolution. They say they will disarm only when the occupation ends and a Palestinian state is created. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that if Hamas does not disarm, it will be done “the hard way.”

The “Board of Peace,” headed by Trump, will ostensibly govern Gaza along with armed mercenaries from the Israel-allied International Stabilization Force, although no country seems anxious to commit their troops. Trump promises a Gaza Riviera that will function as a “special economic zone” — a territory operating outside of state law governed entirely by private investors, such as the Peter Thiel-backed charter city in Honduras. This will be achieved through the “voluntary” relocation of Palestinians — with those fortunate enough to own land offered digital tokens in exchange. Trump declares that the U.S. “will take over the Gaza Strip” and “own it.” It is a return to the rule of viceroys — though apparently not the odious Tony Blair. Palestinians, in one of the most laughable points in the plan, will be “deradicalized” by their new colonial masters.

But these fantasies will never come to fruition. Israel knows what it wants to do in Gaza and it knows no nation will intercede. Palestinians will struggle to survive in primitive and dehumanizing conditions. They will, as they have so many times in the past, be betrayed.

Israel has committed 738 violations of the ceasefire agreement between Oct. 10 and Dec. 12, including 358 land and air bombardments, the killing of at least 383 Palestinians and the injuring of 1,002 others, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza and the Palestinian Health Ministry. That’s an average of six Palestinians killed daily in Gaza — down from an average of 250 a day before the “ceasefire.” Israel said it killed a senior Hamas commander, Raed Saad, on Saturday, in a missile strike on a car on Gaza’s coastal road. Three others were also apparently killed in the strike.

December saw an average of 140 aid trucks allowed into Gaza each day — instead of the promised 600 — to keep Palestinians on the edge of famine and ensure widespread malnutrition. In October, some 9,300 children in Gaza under five were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, according to UNICEF. Israel has