The war in Gaza continues, only the name changes.
Each new headline confirms the obvious: Gaza is not experiencing a ceasefire, but rather a managed pause in the violence. On Tuesday of this week, Israel again bombed the Strip, claiming that Hamas had violated the truce. This familiar sequence—accusation, retaliation, silence—encapsulates the nature of this phase: an intermittent war that has become routine, where the occupation is managed like a weather forecast.
The language of "cessation of hostilities" serves a political function: it disguises the continuation of genocide with diplomatic technicalities. Israel kills and blames the enemy for forcing it to do so; Western governments lament "the escalation" without naming the aggressor; many media outlets repeat the narrative of "truce violation," as if there were a symmetry between colonizer and colonized.
In Gaza, life continues under fire. Since the ceasefire was announced, the attacks have not stopped: dozens of people killed, thousands without access to food or medicine, and a territory where every movement could be the last. Hunger and suffocation are used as tools of control, while the international community talks about reconstruction and transition.
This transition, however, does not seek to end the war, but rather to institutionalize it. Under the guise of regional stability, a new architecture of domination is being designed. Inconvenient political actors are eliminated, Arab and Israeli alliances are reconfigured, and governance is promised in exchange for submission. The Palestinian Authority is presented as the moderate face of this new order, invited to reform itself under the tutelage of international technocrats. In reality, it is being offered a role in managing its captivity.
The governments of the region that a year ago denounced the massacre (though without taking any significant action to stop it) are now contributing to its perpetration. Like the West, they will finance the "reconstruction"—in which many will enrich themselves—without demanding accountability. They prefer to speak of "governance" rather than justice. Complicity is disguised as pragmatism.
The ceasefire narrative is the perfect instrument for this alibi: it transforms every crime into an exception and every exception into routine. Ethnic cleansing ceases to be an extraordinary event and becomes a model of governance. Israel destroys, imposes the conditions of the truce, accuses others of breaking it, and then destroys again. The cycle repeats until the world perceives it as normal.
But beneath the rubble, a society still exists that refuses to surrender. The mothers who continue searching for their children among the ruins, the doctors who operate without light, the young people who document every crime, but also those who choose to marry and celebrate other events… All of them uphold a politics of existence. They do not wait for the international community because they know that the language of "peace" has become a trap, even if it offers momentary relief.
True reconstruction will not begin with conferences or funds, but with justice. As long as those responsible remain unpunished, any "transition" will be a continuation of the crime by other means. Europe should understand this: there is no possible neutrality when a genocide is carried out in broad daylight and called a "truce."
Gaza is not experiencing a post-war period, nor will it in a few months. It is experiencing the sophistication of war. The vocabulary and the managers have changed, but the violence remains. The task is to prevent this sophistication from becoming the norm. Because every time we accept a new bombing as a mere "response," we also participate in the final act of genocide: making it seem reasonable.
