"The ceasefire did what it was meant to do - make Gaza invisible"

This is the headline from an opinion article from Al Jazeera dated 01/02/26 from Eman Abu Zayed. She pens a thoughtful piece about how the focus of people has been diverted despite the ongoing attacks by the far right wing government in control of Israel. She recounts the toll of attacks, deprivation and weather.

Also highlighted is the refusal to allow people to leave for medical needs and the death toll from that. But obviously most distressing is that this was foreseeable given the stated views of the radical right in Israeli government and elsewhere to eliminate all Palestinians from Gaza so that Israelis can move in and establish the squatter communities as in the West Bank.

It was predicted that this supposed "ceasefire" would just be killing at a lower pace and the prediction has been proven. It was predicted that the radical right government of Israel would not hold to the agreed upon "line in the sand" and they have breached it with regularity once again proving the prediction.

But the rabid right wing of Israeli government says it is doing all of this for two reasons. The first is because there is one dead hostage whose remains haven't been "turned over" to Israel. Stop and think of this absurdity for a moment. Given the massive destruction, multiple groups holding various hostages and the passage of time is it rational to think there is some intact, verifiable corpse somewhere? First of all we don't know how the hostage died. Blown to bits along with the captors by IDF bombing? Killed by the group holding the hostage? Died from ill health? Any of those are possible. So apparently the radical right wing in Israeli government wants us to believe that somehow the body/body parts were "preserved" and carried around from place to place.

So how does that work exactly given the inescapable rot that will happen to a corpse? Does someone think that they took the body to a funeral parlor for embalming? Really? So what then? A bag of decomposing tissue with a stench that would knock down anybody within the same room? Those are the choices if we are to believe the demands of the far right radicals in Israeli government. But if they are so sure this "possession of the hostage remains" exist then they must know where that location is if they are so certain. Otherwise it is a claim without proof.

The second reason Netanyahu and the other radical right nutjobs give is the claim that "Hamas is refusing to turn in their weapons". Turn in their weapons to who? The IDF? So the nutjobs in control in Israel want the world to believe that people should just walk towards an IDF outpost with their weapons in hand and a white flag and that they won't be shot long before they get within shouting distance? Turn in weapons to who? There is no international force in Gaza to receive these weapons because the radical right nutjobs in control in Israel will not allow that part of this "ceasefire" to go into effect. Disarm to who? If they simply laid their weapons on the ground in a pile and walked away is there anything in the recent history of the conduct of the Israeli government in the West Bank, Lebanon or Syria that should give anybody any assurance the attacks will stop?

Simply put the "ceasefire" was a scam from the beginning dressed up as some "promising future" for the Palestinians in Gaza. Nobody is going to force the radical right wing in control of Israel to stop and they will continue to kill, engage in restricting humanitarian aid, conduct ethnic cleansing and the world at large will not take major steps beyond mostly words. That was the prediction by many about this supposed "ceasefire" and the prediction has been proven to be true.

The international force should have been a first step. Just like in 1948, 1967 and 1972. When the UN gave in, under heavy US demands, to having Israel "provide security and administer" area outside the pre-1967 borders it was a recipe for disaster. It was predicted to be and it has proven to be.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/1/2/the-ceasefire-did-what-it-was-meant-to-do-make-gaza-invisible