After nearly fifteen months of a rare and brutal war in modern history, what has been termed the “Gaza Agreement” between the Israeli government and Hamas was announced. It is set to take effect on January 19, 2025, provided the Israeli government does not back out again. The agreement outlines three main stages: a ceasefire, prisoner exchange, the entry of humanitarian aid, opening the crossings, the gradual withdrawal of the Israeli army from Gaza, and reconstruction.
The “Gaza Agreement” is, in essence, a temporary halt to the brutal war machine waged by Israel against the people of Gaza. The war on Gaza was a one-sided assault targeting everything Palestinian, aiming to uproot life from the Strip. It polluted the air, destroyed residential buildings, demolished energy sources, deprived residents of clean water, razed lands, and crushed hospitals. This war sought to turn Palestinian areas into uninhabitable zones. For fifteen months, the war on Gaza could be described as a campaign of human extermination in every sense of the term.
During this period, the world was divided into two fronts:
• The Global Humanitarian Front:
This front included workers, students, women, intellectuals, free thinkers, dozens of progressive parties, and human rights organizations from around the world, such as the United States, France, Germany, Spain, Ireland, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania, Libya, Pakistan, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, and Lebanon.
This front raised its voice against Israel’s Nazi-like policies and expressed its stance through various means, including street protests, work stoppages at ports and in some industrial sectors, university sit-ins, protests against pro-Israel Western officials, campaigns to boycott Israeli goods and institutions that support Israel financially and morally, as well as awareness campaigns on social media and through media outlets. They also organized dozens of seminars to expose Israel’s crimes in Gaza.
The efforts of this front led to tangible results, including the issuance of arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court for Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. They also pressured the international community to issue a ceasefire resolution through the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice.
This broad humanitarian front succeeded in tearing apart the “Israeli narrative,” which had long deceived the world and blinded it to the truth about Israel and its Nazi-like ruling class across all political spectrums—left, right, and center. They stripped Israel of the international legitimacy it sought to justify its crimes against the Palestinian people and its racist policies, which had always hidden behind claims of victimhood and false self-defense. Activists in this front faced campaigns of arrest, job dismissals, and political and moral discredit.
• The Anti-Humanitarian Front:
This front danced on the skulls of tens of thousands of civilian victims killed by Israeli airstrikes without any humanitarian restraint. They relished the cries of children and refugees suffering in camps from hunger, fear, and cold. They turned a blind eye to the scenes of hundreds of thousands who had their limbs amputated, bodies mutilated, or were buried alive under the rubble. This front provided Israel with financial and military support day and night to expand the scope of killing and destruction against Palestinians and offered it political cover in international institutions.
This front was led by the United States, which positions itself as the guardian of human rights but spared no effort in supporting Israel’s Nazi policies in its one-sided war, except for shedding crocodile tears over the children of Gaza and the humanitarian tragedy there. It went beyond this by suppressing the truth and silencing voices exposing Israel’s crimes to the world. Billionaires who own media outlets, like Elon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter), and Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, censored words that described Israel as the fascist, Nazi, and racist state it truly is.
Over fifteen months of the genocidal war waged by Israel against Gaza’s residents, it became evident that the international community suffers from profound political hypocrisy and that international institutions like the UN, the Security Council, and the International Court of Justice are mere facades polishing the ugly face of global imperialism and its allies.
The ruling class in Israel, with support from Western powers led by the United States, is striving to erase the Palestinian cause and reduce it to a mere issue of humanitarian aid, reconstruction, and deals like the “Abraham Accords,” promoted by the new U.S. President Donald Trump, far from its political and rights-based roots.
Turning the page on Israel’s genocide under the banner of “Israel’s right to defend itself” and pulling the rug out from under those exploiting the national oppression of Palestinians depends on the global working-class struggle to achieve justice.
We in the Unified Workers’ Front for the Defense of the Palestinian People affirm that the ceasefire in Gaza, a primary goal for us, represents the beginning of the path to halting Israel’s massacres against Palestinians. We call on the working class and all liberation forces worldwide to:
• Continue the pressure to turn the temporary ceasefire into a permanent one.
• Provide all forms of material, moral, health, and psychological compensation to the victims of Israel’s fascist war in Gaza.
• Activate arrest warrants issued against Israeli war criminals.
• Strive to establish an independent Palestinian state as a prerequisite for achieving peace.
Samir Adil
General Secretary of the Unified Workers’ Front for the Defense of the Palestinian People
January 16, 2025