Nations must now deliver on the promise of a free Palestine

Though the belligerent Benjamin Netanyahu continues to rattle with his war rhetoric, it was a piece of good news for the Gazans as well as sensitive people around the world that a temporary ceasefire of four days has begun to hold from Friday.

On the first day, 39 Palestinian prisoners and 13 Israeli captives were released under the truce agreement mediated by the Qatari government.

Hamas also released an additional 10 Thai nationals and one Philippine citizen outside the framework of that deal. Also, humanitarian aid trucks started to arrive in northern Gaza.

As is expected, the Israeli army will start pounding Gaza again with aerial attacks which have already fully or partially destroyed half of the buildings in Gaza killing about 14000 people of which around 40% are children.

While the US administration is still to call for a permanent ceasefire in this war that erupted with the October 7 Hamas attack, more and more European countries are raising their voice for creating an independent Palestinian state aiming to establish peace in the Middle East.

Just recently, Spain and Belgium have stressed on the need of recognizing the state of Palestine.

Soon after the Hamas’ October 7 attack, the apartheid regime Israel’s response has been in the wrong direction. Comparing Hamas with ISIS, the war monger Netanyahu wanted to eliminate Hamas destroying Gaza as the US had done by destroying Iraqi cities of Mosul and Raqqa for eliminating ISIS.

Israel could not gather international support, let alone the Arab and other Muslim nations, to accept this narrative of Netanyahu.
Fifty days after the war, what are the achievements of Netanyahu? He is blamed for genocide; ethnic cleansing and violating international humanitarian laws as Israeli military went for indiscriminate bombing of Gaza’s civilian targets including hospitals, refugee centres, schools, mosques, churches and what not.

On Israel’s avowed war goal of eliminating Hamas from Gaza, it has achieved little or nothing. So the military experts around the world say.

We expect more criticisms from nations around the world will change the US stance on the Gaza war and Israel will be forced to accept a permanent ceasefire. Once that is achieved, the international community must start the work of creating an independent Palestine.