They Make a Wasteland and Call It Peace

WITH THE CEASEFIRE that went into effect on Sunday, January 18, 2025, the people of Gaza—cold, hungry, battered, homeless, but steadfast in life—experienced their first quiet night in over fifteen months. Israel’s genocide has stopped, at least for now, despite the fact that Israel failed to accomplish a single one of its declared objectives in Gaza. The scheme to expel Palestinians to Egypt, or to somehow spirit them away to the Gulf or to Canada, failed. So did the so-called “generals’ plan” to ethnically cleanse all of northern Gaza by systematically exterminating anyone who had survived the preceding months of bombardment and methodical destruction of life-support systems. So did the pledge to destroy Hamas and the armed resistance in Gaza. So did the use of force to free the Israeli prisoners held in Gaza. If Israel has prevented another attack like the one on October 7 from taking place so far—the last of its declared objectives—it has nevertheless made such attacks more likely by revealing, both in Gaza and in southern Lebanon, the utter incompetence of its undisciplined conscript army. That army excels at two things: the mass killing of civilians and the mass destruction of civilian infrastructure. Those two things represent the sum total of what Israel accomplished in the past 470 days.