Op-ed: Gaza Has Not Broken

As the ceasefire plan takes hold, the world faces a set of truths that can no longer be deferred. The war did not merely ravage a narrow strip of land; it transformed global public opinion, exposed the limits of impunity, and reset the political conversation about Palestine and Israel.

A durable peace must build on this new reality rather than attempt to rewind it.

The Israeli aggression in Gaza, widely condemned as genocidal by jurists, scholars, and civil society, shocked the world. Even figures far from the Palestinian cause acknowledged the scale of the backlash. As Donald Trump put it directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, “Israel cannot fight the world.”

That line captured a broader shift: the Israeli propagandist narrative that long framed Palestinians primarily through the lens of security collapsed in the face of mass civilian death, starvation, and the visible leveling of entire neighborhoods.

World capitals filled with pro-Palestine protests. Week after week, hundreds of thousands marched in Rabat, London, Paris, Washington, Rome, Manila, Cape Town, New York and beyond, demanding an immediate ceasefire and an end to the assault. These were not fringe gatherings but broad coalitions— students and unions, faith groups and artists —asserting that international law cannot be optional for some and obligatory for others.

The scale and persistence of these marches are now part of the political landscape that any future diplomacy must reckon with.

Gaza was pulverized, but Gaza did not break. Satellite assessments by the UN’s UNOSAT show unprecedented destruction to the built environment—well over half of all structures damaged or destroyed.

Yet the attempt to crush the people’s will failed. Despite mass internal displacement and the collapse of infrastructure, Palestinians endured, organized mutual aid, and defended their right to remain; schemes to push Gazans out of the Strip met resistance from Egypt, Arab publics, and much of the international community. The objective of erasing resistance likewise failed; military force could not eliminate an idea rooted in dispossession and denied political rights.

The October 7th, 2023 attack, called Al-Aqsa Flood by its organizers, shook a region that had been drifting toward a superficial ´normal.´ For years, the Abraham Accords had pushed the Palestinian issue to the margins; the October 7th returned it to the center of Arab, Muslim, and global politics. Regardless of views on the armed groups’ tactics, the war demonstrated that attempting to “manage” the conflict while deepening the occupation does not produce stability.

The ceasefire must therefore be more than a pause. It is time to found a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, exercising full sovereignty and living in peace alongside Israel. No formula short of political equality, territorial viability, and real freedom of movement will deliver security for both people. This is not a maximalist demand; it is the bare minimum consistent with international law and the countless UN resolutions that have accumulated in the vacuum left by diplomacy without enforcement.

Reconstruction is a security imperative as well as a humanitarian necessity. States that supplied arms during the campaign, most prominently the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, together with Arab partners should finance a multi-year rebuilding program. An effective mechanism would create a Gaza Reconstruction Trust Fund with treaty-level commitments, independent auditing, and disbursement rules that prioritize housing, water, power, health, and education while contracting Palestinian firms and workers to restore livelihoods. Disbursements should be conditioned on verifiable measures such as the permanent opening of crossings and compliance with international humanitarian law by all parties.

None of this diminishes Israeli trauma or security concerns; it recognizes that security without justice is temporary theater. The lesson of this war is stark: overwhelming force can devastate territory, but it cannot manufacture legitimacy. Palestinians will not disappear, and Israelis cannot be asked to live forever behind walls and air-raid sirens. The only sustainable future is one in which both peoples have equal rights, recognized borders, and international guarantees they can trust.

The ceasefire is a beginning, not a conclusion. The world has already shown it will not accept perpetual dispossession disguised as conflict management. Gaza has not broken, and that resilience should now be met with a political settlement that finally matches the clarity of the streets, the verdict of international law, and the basic moral insight that every life counts the same.