Since the end of the Second World War, the world has entered one of its most defining and turbulent eras. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza, coupled with tensions involving Qatar, Iran, and Yemen, have reshaped global opinion — particularly toward America’s unflinching support for Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Since October 2023, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 66,000 Palestinians, including over 20,000 children, with 168,000 wounded. At least 189 journalists, 1,722 health workers, and hundreds of humanitarian staff have been killed — nearly half of all 383 aid workers killed globally in 2024 died in Gaza. Over 436,000 homes have been destroyed, 2.1 million people displaced, and 92% of schools damaged beyond repair.
George Monbiot observes, Israel’s assault is not only genocide but also ecocide: farmland systematically bulldozed, olive groves uprooted, water sources poisoned, and waste left to contaminate the land, leaving Gaza uninhabitable.
These systematic atrocities were carried out with military and financial backing from the United States and European powers such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.
Alongside this tragic, gory, and seemingly hopeless situation, the communication revolution brought by smartphones has empowered people to challenge official narratives. The flood of images and videos of human suffering has shattered traditional state-controlled and Zionist backed filters. Haunting scenes of wounded children, destroyed hospitals, and grieving families now circulate uncensored across social media, igniting outrage in cities from New York to London, Paris to Jakarta. Under this wave of public pressure, governments such as the UK and France have been compelled to soften their stance on Gaza and, for the first time, recognise Palestinian statehood.
Trump has also offered a “peace plan” to placate the anger of American people and satisfy the Jewish lobby. The plan is in reality a political shield for Israel’s crimes.
Melvin Goodman, a former CIA analyst, writes in Counterpunch, “Donald Trump’s “peace plan” was carefully constructed to benefit Israeli interests with regard to ending the war and releasing the hostages. All matters of interest to the Palestinians were either ignored or obfuscated to create the illusion of future stability and security in a “new Gaza.” The plan is not the “comprehensive vision” that the mainstream media has concluded. In actual fact, the plan is ambiguous about every detail that could bring stability, let alone peace, to the region… The so-called peace plan states that the end of Hamas rule in Gaza would be replaced by a “technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” to be overseen by a supervisory “Board of Peace” led by Trump as Chairman. However, the leadership role will be in the hands of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has long been a villain to Arab states”.
As The Guardian noted, the so-called peace plan resembles a colonial administration that strips Palestinians of agency and reduces self-determination to a distant “aspiration.” In essence, it rewards the aggressor and punishes the victim — formalising occupation under the guise of reconstruction.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself confirmed this deception. Standing beside Trump, he declared that “Israel’s war aims have been achieved” — Hamas disarmed, Gaza demilitarised, and no Palestinian state. Later, speaking in Hebrew, he was even clearer: Israeli forces “will remain in most of the territory” and “forcibly resist” any Palestinian state.
This was not a peace declaration; it was a victory speech over ruins. Because Trump has already told Netanyahu that ”you can do what you want” in Gaza if Hamas rejects the peace plan.
It is now very clear that Israel will not stop killing innocent people because it has backing from America and other Western countries. This is not merely complicity — it is collaboration. The so-called international order, which claims to stand for justice, is instead giving full support to apartheid and annihilation.
Orly Noy, an Israeli journalist, has described Israeli society after two years of war in these words: “It feels as if everything has vanished. Not only the tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza erased without graves, without records, as if they had never existed – so many other things have been hollowed out: basic conceptions of morality, decency, compassion, humanity, hope, future. The organising logic of everyday life has vanished. Nothing makes sense, and it feels as though no one here even expects sense any more. A war whose declared aims were the return of hostages and the dismantling of Hamas has, under the cover of a vague promise of “total victory”, turned into full-scale genocide. Israeli society has embraced it – terrified and enthralled at once by a taboo finally permitted to be broken, and by the possibility of openly dreaming about the total disappearance of Palestinians…I did not believe Israel would reach the point of starving people to death. I did not believe it would, on average, erase a classroom of children every single day for two whole years. Nor did I believe the world would permit Israel to do all this – a perverse, inverted antisemitism that effectively says: the rules of humanity do not apply to this Jewish collective.”
If there is one lesson from Gaza, it is that peace cannot be built upon denial, occupation, or foreign management. No plan signed in Washington or drafted in Tel Aviv will restore the humanity that has been erased. As Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian lawyer and writer, warned, “Israel must choose between perpetual war or living in peace. This can only happen if it recognises Palestinian self-determination. At the culmination of this war, Israel might end up destroying Gaza — but it will also destroy itself.”
True peace will never come from ultimatums, colonial boards, or false ceasefires. It will only prevail when the world recognises Palestine’s right to exist — not as an aspiration, but as a state, free and sovereign.