A big part of the confusion around the ceasefire in public discourse today is that there are two contradictory ideas going around of what the ceasefire is and what it means. Israel supporters think "ceasefire" means "total victory and complete surrender by Hamas," while everyone else thinks "ceasefire" means ceasefire.
That's why you see Israel supporters celebrating the deal while Palestine supporters are much more apprehensive. Palestine supporters understand that a ceasefire and a surrender are two different things, and see Trump and Netanyahu stating that Hamas is going to have to completely disarm if "ceasefire" negotiations are going to move toward a lasting peace. They understand that the unyielding mutually exclusive positions of the Trumpanyahu administration and of Hamas are likely to come to a head in ways that result in the reignition of the Gaza holocaust.
Trump illustrated this today in comments to the press, saying of Hamas, “If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them, and it will happen quickly and perhaps violently."
The president is making it clear here that in order for the ceasefire negotiations to proceed to a lasting peace, Hamas is going to have to completely surrender and Israel is going to have to be handed total victory. They're branding it as a ceasefire deal when it's actually a total surrender deal, and Hamas has made it explicitly clear that it is not surrendering.
As Drop Site News explains, "In reality, senior Hamas, Islamic Jihad and figures from other resistance factions have repeatedly rejected disarmament throughout negotiations, including in multiple interviews with Drop Site over the past year."
So for all the applause and fuss that has been made about the ceasefire, as things stand right now it doesn't look like much has changed. From the very beginning of this genocide it has been the officially stated position of the US and Israel that the killing will not end until Hamas lays down its arms and surrenders, and that is still their position today. There's a much-needed pause in the slaughter, sure, but the Trumpanyahu team is making it explicitly clear that it is going to ramp up again under the justification of Hamas refusing to disarm.
And that's assuming negotiations even make it that far; Israel is already doing everything it can to sabotage the ceasefire by murdering Palestinians and greatly reducing the amount of aid it promised.
Unless something significant changes about all this fairly soon, even this feeble reduction in Israel's Gaza atrocities is not going to hold.
If anything, I see myself as a “witness.” I’d also be pleased, if you’d call me an “interpreter.” WIM WENDERS
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