Why I'm Skeptical About the Gaza Ceasefire
Opinion: A Pause Doesn’t Heal
The world exhaled today. After months of unrelenting devastation, Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire and prisoner exchange — a deal meant to halt the bombing, open Gaza’s borders to aid, and return hostages to their families.
It is, by any measure, a mercy. For the millions who have endured siege and starvation, even a single day of quiet can feel like a miracle. Yet I find myself unable to celebrate without restraint. Because a ceasefire is not peace. It is a pause — and pauses can just as easily be preludes to betrayal.
The United Nations has framed this deal as a “path toward Palestinian statehood,” and headlines everywhere carry words like hope and breakthrough. But the last twenty years have taught us that every so-called turning point in Gaza arrives wrapped in the same contradictions: promises without sovereignty, aid without autonomy, and peace defined by those holding the guns.
The world tends to confuse silence with progress. But the rubble of Gaza tells another story — that the absence of explosions is not the same as justice. Without accountability, without the right of Palestinians to govern and rebuild their own land, this moment risks becoming just another intermission in a decades-long tragedy.
This ceasefire, like others before it, leaves the hardest questions unanswered. Who will truly govern Gaza once the guns go quiet? What happens to the displaced families now living under tents or ruins? And will the “international stabilization force” being discussed serve as a shield for civilians — or a new form of occupation dressed in the language of peacekeeping?
We must also be wary of how humanitarian relief is used. Food, medicine, shelter — these are not favors to be dispensed in exchange for obedience. They are rights. If aid becomes conditional or politicized, it turns from salvation into control.
I understand the need for hope. I share it. But my hope is rooted in vigilance, not amnesia. Real peace requires justice, not charity. It demands that Palestinians themselves define what freedom looks like — not foreign powers, not political mediators, and certainly not military commanders.
So yes, celebrate the silence of the skies. But don’t mistake it for healing. The work ahead is not to preserve this ceasefire at any cost, but to transform it into something that can outlive it: dignity, sovereignty, and accountability.
Until then, hope must stay restless — a flame that refuses to go out, even when the world pretends the fire is over.
Yasmine is a media entrepreneur and reformist thinker bridging the worlds of faith, feminism, and global capitalism. Based in Chicago and London, she advocates for moral multipolarity in international affairs.