Genocide Blog 63 – The Great March of Return to North Gaza
29.01.2025
It was a moment of happiness when Saturday’s “Zourne Artistik”, planned from last year, in support of the Palestinian people and against Israel’s genocide coincided with the ceasefire coming into force in Gaza, and with the second exchange of prisoners taking place. And this happiness only grew and then joined into world-wide celebrations within 24 hours of the musical and artistic event described accurately by poet Yusuf Kadel as “magnifique” held at the Cafe du Vieux Conseil in Port Louis, when the Palestinians living in Gaza began their “great march” of return to Northern Gaza in a mood that was festive and celebratory. The aerial filming by drones – a fairly new phenomenon for such events – showed the epoch-making scenes of 300,000 Palestinians each day for two or three days, women, men, children, babies some carrying nothing at all and others carrying a minimum of basics, including a parrot or a cat walking northwards along the Gaza coastal road. The scenes were both magestical and epic, and also intimate and moving. People laughed, sang, danced, and cried with joy as they headed the 30-40 kilometre walk. Some family members, who had not left their neighbourhoods in the north, like in Gaza City and in Jabalia, and whose houses had miraculously been spared by the American 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, could be seen preparing for the return of the other half of their family walking from the South where they had been “herded”, by painting the walls of their houses in lemon yellow, pale turquoise and baby blue paint.
If you are an occupied people, and the colonizer fails to win its war against you, it means you have won, and you know it. The children of Gaza were the first to know and to celebrate. On 17 January, as soon as the ceasefire agreement had been signed and before it was even put to the test, we wrote in Blog 62, “A ceasefire agreement has been reached between Israel and Hamas. This one phrase means that Israel’s war aim of finishing off Hamas has not been won. And the children of Gaza, in their wisdom, know it. They celebrate, singing and dancing, in the bombed out ruins of the cities they live in. The children know it. They know that their survival means Israel failed. And Israel’s failure means they taste victory. We share their celebrations. Though with trepidation for the near future.”
Since then, for 10 days now, the bombs have stopped falling. Even the over-head military drones have gone silent. Perhaps people hear bird-song now? The tearing of Gaza into two halves by the Israeli occupation of the Netzarim Corridor across the middle of Gaza began to “heal” when the Israeli armed forces, as part of the agreement, withdrew from this part of Gaza.
Israel has not forced the Palestinian people out of Gaza altogether, and into the Sinai Desert in Egypt, as originally planned. This plan failed. Israel then tried to force the Palestinian people out of Northern Gaza into the South. This plan has now also failed. The Hamas armed resistance, in full attire and in control of Gaza, alongside the civil authorities, handed over the second round of prisoners, and these were real prisoners-of-war, Israeli women soldiers in their full military regalia and looking in very good health. Other prisoners will be released on Saturday.
The future of Palestine will, from now on, depend, in the short run, on how much support the USA empire under Trump goes on giving Israel. The signs are contradictory. Trump clearly forced Netanyahu into the ceasefire. Biden did not. Trump does not want to fight a war Biden got him into. So, he imposed a ceasefire on Netanyahu. But, now what? He is surrounded by fanatical pro-Zionists, including Christian Zionists, and financed by billionaire Zionists. So, he does what they advise. Trump has lifted the banning of export of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, one of pathetic, symbolic limits that President Biden imposed on Israel. And he has cancelled the sanctions on violent Israeli settlers, the second symbolic “limit” Biden put on Netanyahu’s Israel. Trump seems not to care much about Israel or Palestine, compared with Biden and Blinken, who reigned as if Israel was precious to them, or even as if the USA and Israel were part of the same thing. Trump, being in the business of demolition and construction, sees Gaza as real estate potential. He calls Gaza a “phenomenal location” – just as an IRS villa might be described in the real estate supplement that L’Express publishes. And Trump, in this context, presumably seeing all the rubble, proposed that “we clean out that whole thing”, referring to Gaza, and move its people to somewhere they can live in peace, adding he had already asked Jordan and Egypt to do the necessary to allow this in their countries! He proposes ethnic cleansing, en passant like that, because he only sees this, or pretends only to see this, from a real estate point-or-view, as a logical or even profitable venture. His son-in-law and ex-advisor, Jared Kushner, previously called the pied-dans-l’eau sites as “waterfront property [that] could be very valuable”.
So, Israel is in a bad way. It has lost the war against Hamas. It has slaughtered well over 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Hamas remains intact. And Israel has lost the war. Israel has lost its reputation. The ICJ has found it to be committing a “plausible” genocide. The ICC has issued warrants for the arrest of Israel’s civil leader Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Gallant. Israel’s atrocity propaganda against Hamas designed to cover-up their army being overrun on 7 October – whether fabrications about decapitated babies of which there was not one, the lie about a pregnant woman being “éventré”, or inventions of rape by Hamas resistance fighters – has been shown to be pure fabrication. And Israel risks speeding up the fall of its commanditaire, the USA.
This defeat and impending fall may make Israel more dangerous.
Israel is working to annex the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It will work to draw the USA into a joint attack on Iran. Israel is a nuclear state, although the USA has to maintain a fig leaf to cover the illegality of its funding Israel by denying this. The USA definitely is a nuclear state. Iran has just entered a military pact with Russia last week. Russia is a nuclear state.
All this to say, that we live in times of immense danger.
And the Palestinian people unfortunately have even worse times, in the short run, ahead of them. So, while celebrating a ceasefire and the victory of a round, as well as celebrating the tenacity of the people of Lebanon and of Yemen, we must not lower our guard. But, we must know that all the solidarity work we have done, all over the world, together with the Palestinians’ resistance, means that Israel will no longer be able to act with impunity forever.
Israel’s days of occupation are numbered. Its days of imposing Apartheid are also numbered. The two-state solution has been ruined by Israel. So, ahead lies the birth of a Palestinian State for all who live there and want to continue living there as equals.
But, the Palestinian people are not there yet. There is perhaps worse to come than what has been hell on earth already. For a start, there will be the struggle for water, food, shelter, health care. And working to keep the ceasefire going until peace can be brought.
And Trump is not predictable. He is in charge of a falling empire, and falling empires lash out with violence.
Lindsey Collen, for LALIT
