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ceasefire
They Told the World the War Was Over—Gaza Knows Better
A ceasefire cannot mean peace when people are still being killed, buried under rubble, and denied the basic conditions for rebuilding their lives.
Sep 09, 2026
When US President Donald Trump declared in October 2025 that “the war is over,” the statement quickly became part of the international language surrounding Gaza. Headlines shifted. Political leaders began speaking about a post-war phase. The world was encouraged to look forward—to reconstruction, diplomacy, and what might come next.
But from inside Gaza, the distinction between “war” and “peace” has never been so simple. A ceasefire may reduce the intensity of bombardment. It may change the language used by politicians and diplomats. But for Palestinians who remain surrounded by destruction, displacement, deprivation, and the remains of those who were killed, the war does not simply disappear because leaders declare a new phase.
On August 4, Gaza witnessed a devastating reminder of this reality. The remains of 112 Palestinians were buried in a mass funeral in Gaza City, more than two and a half years after they were killed in an Israeli strike on the Sabra neighborhood. The victims included 37 children. Rescue workers spent weeks searching through the ruins for their remains, working with almost no equipment and identifying bodies through fragments, clothing, family testimony, and whatever personal belongings could be recovered.
For the families, the violence did not end when the bombs stopped falling on that neighborhood. It continued in the rubble. And the 112 bodies were not an isolated tragedy. Gaza's Civil Defence has estimated that around 8,000 bodies remain beneath the rubble across the strip. Recovery teams say that removing them will require heavy equipment that is still desperately lacking. Without that equipment, the dead may remain trapped for years.
A ceasefire should be the beginning of ending the violence—not an excuse to redefine its consequences as peace.
This is what it means to tell Palestinians that the war is over. For many people outside Gaza, war is measured by explosions: the number of airstrikes, the intensity of fighting, or the number of military operations reported each day. For those of us living here, war is also measured in what remains after the explosions.
It is measured in the family searching for the body of a missing relative. It is measured in children growing up among destroyed schools. It is measured in homes that no longer exist, universities reduced to ruins, hospitals struggling to function, and displaced families who cannot return to places that once defined their lives. It is measured in the enormous task of removing the dead from beneath the rubble before their families can bury them.
The language of a “post-war” Gaza therefore risks becoming another form of erasure. It suggests that the violence belongs to the past, while the consequences are treated as a humanitarian problem waiting to be solved.
But Gaza cannot simply be rebuilt like a damaged road. A society has been shattered. Families have been separated and destroyed. Communities have disappeared. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost homes. Children have lost years of education. The physical destruction is accompanied by grief that cannot be captured by reconstruction statistics. And yet, international attention has increasingly moved elsewhere.
This is perhaps the most painful part. People around the world demonstrated for Gaza. Students occupied campuses. Human rights organizations documented violations. Workers and trade unions called for solidarity. Millions of ordinary people refused to accept the destruction of an entire population as normal.
But public sympathy does not automatically produce political action. Western governments can express concern while continuing to treat Gaza as a diplomatic file rather than a human emergency. Leaders can call for peace while failing to ensure that Palestinians have the conditions necessary to live with dignity. Statements can be issued, condolences offered, and conferences held—while the consequences of the destruction remain largely the responsibility of Palestinians themselves.
This is why the words “the war is over” matter. Words shape political reality. When a government, president, or media institution describes Gaza as post-war, audiences far from the strip may assume that the emergency has passed. Attention moves elsewhere. Political pressure decreases. The suffering becomes background noise.
But the people of Gaza cannot move on simply because the world has decided to. The 112 people buried in August had already waited nearly three years for a grave. Thousands more remain beneath the rubble. Their families are still waiting. And millions of Palestinians are still trying to understand what “peace” is supposed to mean when they have nowhere safe to return to and so little ability to rebuild what was destroyed.
A ceasefire should be the beginning of ending the violence—not an excuse to redefine its consequences as peace. If the international community truly wants to speak about a post-war Gaza, it must first confront what the war has left behind. That means guaranteeing sustained humanitarian access; enabling the removal and identification of those buried beneath the rubble; supporting the rebuilding of homes, schools, hospitals, and universities; and establishing meaningful accountability for violations of international law.
Most importantly, Palestinians must not be treated merely as recipients of humanitarian assistance. They must be recognized as people with rights, agency, and a future that belongs to them. The world may want to turn the page on Gaza. We cannot. We are still living in the pages that came before.
For those of us here, the war is not an entry in a history book. It is the rubble outside our doors, the empty chair at the family table, the child who cannot return to school, and the grave that took years to become possible. So when the world is told that the war is over, listen to Gaza.
Look beneath the rubble.
Count the graves.
And ask whether peace can truly be declared while thousands of the dead are still waiting to be found.
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Iran Says Trump's New Attacks Show Americans 'Stuck in the Massive Error They’ve Made'
"We cannot accept any orders being dictated upon us," said the spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry. "If they continue with this philosophy, they will not get any different result.”
Sep 01, 2026
As US President Donald Trump returns to bombing Iranian territory, Esmaeil Baghaei Hamaneh, the spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, said at a press conference on Tuesday that it's only a sign of the quagmire he's found himself in, and emphasized that the only way out will be negotiation rather than force.
"It has become clear they are now stuck in the massive error they’ve made, and it’s their usual habit to raise excessive demands," Baghaei said, noting that mediation efforts by Pakistan were continuing even as the Trump administration claims that Iran is refusing "meaningful negotiations."
When Trump launched the war in February, he predicted that Iran would be brought to its knees in a matter of weeks. Six months later, there is no sign that an end to the conflict is in sight as Trump rejects a return to the negotiating table.
Baghaei said it's clear that the US was once again falling into "a state of miscalculation." Iran, he said, had been adhering to the Memorandum of Understanding reached in June, while the US refused to abide by its terms of ending its economic blockade, unfreezing assets, and ending threats of aggression, as well as ending attacks by US ally Israel in Lebanon.
Baghaei said Iran was willing to reach another agreement to end the war. The problem, he said, was that Trump had shown himself unwilling to follow any deal that included concessions to Iran and was demanding its full capitulation.
"We cannot accept any orders being dictated upon us," Baghaei said. "If they continue with this philosophy, they will not get any different result.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian echoed Baghaei's position on Tuesday, saying that Iran would “immediately reciprocate” if Washington honored its commitments under the June interim agreement.
Failing to break Iran with military might, Trump tried to switch last month to a strategy of "economic warfare," imposing "the toughest sanctions in history" and pressuring other nations around the world to do the same in an effort to isolate Iran and fully topple its government.
Baghaei acknowledged that US sanctions were having a devastating effect on the people of Iran. According to Reuters, Iran's foreign trade is down by 35%, and inflation reached 66% in July, cranking up the pain felt by the civilian population.
But efforts to create the "greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world," as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described it, have faced resistance, with Iran's major trading partners such as China and Pakistan refusing to cut ties.
"Six months of US bombing and naval blockade have produced no US victory, so the plan now is to starve Iran into capitulation," wrote Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs and UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network adviser Sybil Fares on Monday for Al Jazeera. "The new approach is illegal, cruel, and will fail for several reasons."
"To begin with, there is the historical record. Economic sanctions do not bring down governments determined to survive them. Yes, sanctions can impoverish populations, empower the security services that control smuggling, and hand the targeted nation a rallying point built on US malice," Sachs and Fares wrote.
They added that at a time when Iran's restrictions on travel through the Strait of Hormuz have spiked oil prices and sent shocks through the global economy, there is little incentive for the world to cut off Iran's oil exports as well.
"The US proposes to deepen a stagflationary shock already being borne by Europe, Japan, and its other allies, and orders those countries to enforce sanctions that will throttle their economies," they wrote.
And due to Trump's erratic policy, disregard for the United Nations Charter in launching a war of aggression, and the demonstration that his assurances are "unreliable," Sachs and Fares noted that countries are increasingly reaching agreements that rely less on US military guarantees and dollar-based trade.
"Pride goeth before the fall, and no government today is more arrogant than the US under Trump and his enforcer, Bessent," they wrote. "Governments around the world will not follow the US blindly into disaster."
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The Gaza Peace Trump Announced, and the Rejection Netanyahu Delivered
Netanyahu’s arrogant message is unmistakable: Israel can defy Washington, and Washington will absorb the political cost.
Aug 15, 2026
President Donald Trump took to social media Thursday, July 30 to announce what he called a breakthrough: a phased agreement under the Board of Peace requiring the Palestinian Resistance to disarm and Israel to withdraw. The optics were of a president closing out a genocide he, and his predecessor, enabled for two years.
The Palestinian Resistance agreed to the plan. Israel rejected it.
Imagine if the Resistance had rejected the 15 points by reasonably conditioning disarmament on an end to Israeli occupation. We don't have to imagine Trump's reaction. He'd have condemned them by nightfall and held them responsible for killing the peace plan.
Israel gets a different standard. On Sunday, August 9, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet, “I want to clarify this: Israel rejects the 15-point document.”
Trump's Gaza legacy does not differ from his predecessor former President Joe Biden's. Both stood impotent before Netanyahu's rejection.
Rather than call out Israel for sabotaging his own plan, Trump waved away Netanyahu's rejection as mere election posturing, as if that were acceptable. Trump’s dismissal didn't go unnoticed. Three days later, Israel's Defense Minister, Israel Katz, doubled down declaring that Israel will not withdraw, not from Gaza, not from Lebanon, and not from Syria
Last May, I wrote an article: “Stop blaming Netanyahu, stupid,” where I argued, it was never one man. It's the Zionist Project itself, and the Israeli public that keeps ratifying it. A poll released last summer found 76% of Israelis believe the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza was a mistake. Half of all Israelis now say they'd support renewing Jewish settlement inside Gaza itself—a figure that climbs to 83% among the ultra-Orthodox and 67% among religious Jews. And in a finding that goes to the heart of how Israelis have rewritten their own history, 56% now believe that if the 2005 disengagement had never happened, October 7 would have been far less likely.
Withdrawal, in other words, has been recast in the Israeli imagination as the original sin, not occupation, and not Israel’s pre-October 7 starvation siege.
In rejecting Trump’s plan, Netanyahu is pandering to his voting base. He is giving the Israeli Jewish majority exactly what they've told pollsters they want. He's competing against political challengers who reject any withdrawal from Gaza. Trump excuses this as political “posturing,” as if it's temporary, when in fact, it is creating a status quo to be normalized after the election.
As usual, Israel responded to Trump’s plan in two days of intensive strikes across Gaza, murdering 26 Palestinians and wounding 76. The single ugliest strike hit medicine warehouses attached to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, one of the last facilities in central Gaza still able to treat large numbers of patients. Two of four storage buildings were destroyed and two more badly damaged. The target was a “dangerous storage” of intravenous fluid, dialysis supplies, intensive-care medication, in a place where half the dialysis machines didn't work and kidney patients were dying because treatment sessions keep getting cut.
These weren't abstractions. In Gaza City's al-Sousi Tower, a strike killed Abdullah Abu Taif, 33; his pregnant wife, Abeer Anan, 29; their 5-year-old son, Azzam; and where medics recovered the remains of an unborn child from the rubble. Near Khan Younis, a strike murdered Mahmoud al-Hams, 38; his wife, Fatima, 37; and their young daughter. An elderly couple, Kamal and Huda Abu Muailiq, were killed in their home near Deir el-Balah the same night.
This’s how Israel translates Trump’s “breakthrough” on the ground.
It is how Netanyahu sends a message to American presidents, as he did nearly a year ago when he openly defied Trump’s calls to stop bombing Gaza. Palestinian children’s blood becomes the currency of political pressure. With every refusal to heed Washington, Netanyahu demonstrates that he can ignore an American president’s demands without consequence, while the credibility and authority of the US president are diminished in the process. Netanyahu’s arrogant message is unmistakable: Israel can defy Washington, and Washington will absorb the political cost.
In October 2025, Israel secured the release of Israeli captives under a deal conditioned on ending the war. It got what it wanted immediately and did not deliver on its side. Since the ceasefire of October 10, 2025, Israel has violated it more than 4,000 times, murdering 1,300 Palestinians—more than all the Israelis, soldiers and civilians, killed on October 7. This is while food aid deliveries was two-thirds less than what the agreement promised. The territory Israel was supposed to withdraw from has instead expanded from 53% to 70%. Any withdrawal Israel may now negotiate, if any at all, will start from that expanded line of occupation, not the yellow line agreed at the ceasefire.
A president who announces a peace deal to the world has no agency of his own. He is too weak to bring himself to hold Netanyahu to account for rejecting his own plan; a political eunuch, unable to rein in a potentate whose country survives on US political and financial largesse.
Trump's Gaza legacy does not differ from his predecessor former President Joe Biden's. Both stood impotent before Netanyahu's rejection. Two subservient leaders who had shown over again that Israel does not answer to Washington, Washington answers to Israel. They leave behind a legacy of enabling an Israeli genocide and two consecutive Israel-first administrations.
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What Kind of Ceasefire Is This? UNICEF Says 300 Children Killed in Gaza Over 300 Days
"A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children," said one United Nations official.
Aug 06, 2026
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
That was one United Nations spokesperson's assessment of the ongoing US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza on Thursday, which marked the 300th day since a ceasefire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas—a period during which at least 300 Palestinian children have been killed, the UN reported.
"A ceasefire that leaves an average of one child dead each and every day is failing children," said Edouard Beigbeder, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). "With hundreds more children injured, many severely, children in Gaza are still waiting for the end to the violence they were promised."
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNICEF, noted that in the first three days of August, at least four children were killed across Gaza, and surviving children have been left with "painfully simple" and urgent questions for Israeli officials who had agreed last October to cease hostilities, reopen border crossings, and ensure 600 aid trucks entered Gaza per day to get much-needed food and essentials to Palestinians who had been facing a near-total blockade.
Wateridge said Palestinian children need to know: "When will the killings stop? When will food and medicine reach me at the level needed? When will hospitals reopen? And when will clean water flow again?"
300 children gone in 300 days.
300 days of the ceasefire in #Gaza has seen at least 300 children killed.
"The world calls it a ceasefire, but families in Gaza are still burying their children."
- @UNICEF's Louise Wateridge pic.twitter.com/1rmJz3YExW
— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) August 6, 2026
Reports of the mass casualties of children come as Israel and President Donald Trump's Board of Peace raise doubts about whether Israel will accept a deal stipulating the disarmament of Hamas and Israel's withdrawal from the exclave.
UN officials on Thursday expressed hope that the next steps of the peace plan can move forward to save children and other civilians across Gaza.
"Children have heard promises before. This time, agreements must translate into action," said Beigbeder.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Thursday that continued airstrikes have damaged civilian infrastructure, including healthcare facilities and medical supplies.
UNICEF warned that children are continue to face acute malnutrition almost a year after Israel agreed to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, as well as suffering from disease and a lack of sanitation.
An attack on a medical storage facility next to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah last week destroyed supplies that had been delivered by the UN, said the World Health Organization.
The UN is working to help "exhausted and hungry mothers" arriving at health centers with their malnourished children, and are fighting to save newborns born prematurely or with health issues, with extremely limited resources.
“There’s not enough incubators and in some cases [health workers are] saying they see two or even three babies sharing a single machine,” said Wateridge. “In Gaza, children only days old are already fighting to stay alive, born into partially functioning hospitals lacking equipment and medicine. This is what the world has chosen to tolerate. The killing must stop, aid has to enter at scale and children must be protected.”
According to OCHA, at least 1,209 people have been killed and 3,943 have been injured since the ceasefire deal was reached last October.
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Gaza Holds Mass Funeral for 112 Palestinians Slaughtered by Israel in 2023
"O nation, why are children getting killed in Gaza? Why are women getting killed in Gaza?" asked a Civil Defense spokesperson at the service. "Why are massacres committed against innocents in Gaza?"
Aug 04, 2026
Palestinians on Tuesday held a mass funeral in the Gaza Strip for more than 100 people killed in a 2023 Israeli attack as the local Ministry of Health's confirmed death toll for Israel's genocidal assault climbed to at least 73,377.
Since Israel launched its war on Gaza after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, experts have warned the true toll could be much higher, with an unknown number of remains trapped beneath the ruins of the besieged territory.
Tuesday's funeral in Gaza City was for 112 people, including 40 children, who were among the over 300 killed in a November 22, 2023 Israeli attack on the Sabra neighborhood, in which "warplanes flattened a residential block," according to The Associated Press.
For the funeral, the bodies were wrapped in Palestinian flags, with photos of the dead attached.
As CBS News detailed:
One mourner showered flower petals over the covered bodies of the Hassayna and Abu Sharia clan as women and children watched from atop partly demolished buildings around the earthen square. A banner with the faces of dozens of children served as the backdrop of a speech from the spokesperson of Gaza's Civil Defense.
"O nation, why are children getting killed in Gaza? Why are women getting killed in Gaza?" asked Mahmoud Basal at the service. "Why are massacres committed against innocents in Gaza?"
The words "Stop the genocide in Gaza," in both Arabic and English, had been scrawled on the podium he spoke from.
Mourners also held signs with messages in both languages. One said in English, "Children of Gaza have the right to live."
Gaza's Civil Defense said that while these remains were found in wrecked buildings in the area, as part of a search operation launched nearly two weeks ago that involved 136 hours of "arduous" work, at least 157 others are still missing.
Given the limited equipment in Gaza, despite months of a supposed ceasefire, "the crews were digging with their hands through masses of reinforced concrete," said Mohammed Abu Dan, who supervised the operation, according to Reuters.
"Many bodies disintegrated and evaporated because of the intensity of the explosion," he explained.
After the funeral prayers, one relative, Taysir al-Hassayna, told the AP, "The only crime of these martyrs was that they remained steadfast and resilient in their homes, believing that these homes would protect them."
For those who haven't been found, al-Hassayna added, it's "as if their bodies had evaporated without a trace."
Al Jazeera reported that surviving relatives used the funeral "to renew accusations that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza and demanded international investigations into the attack and the hundreds of bodies still believed to be buried under rubble across the territory."
The International Criminal Court in November 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, citing alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, and Israel faces a genocide case led by South Africa at the International Court of Justice.
The latter tribunal has directed Israel to "take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations" of violations of the Genocide Convention, but a report published Monday details how Israeli soldiers and civilian contractors are systematically removing potential proof from Gaza.
Specifically, the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that at least 10 million tons of rubble "have been removed, crushed, or moved from their original sites within the areas under Israel's unlawful military control, which encompass about 66% of the Gaza Strip."
Meanwhile, as Common Dreams reported earlier Tuesday, US President Donald Trump's Board of Peace for Gaza appears to be going back on the disarmament deal it reached last week with Hamas, potentially jeopardizing the entire process—a development that didn't surprise Tariq Kenney-Shawa, the associate director of editorial for the Institute for Middle East Understanding.
"The Board of Peace is just the administrative and fundraising arm of Israel's occupation of Gaza," he said. "It exists to facilitate Gaza's ethnic cleansing and concentration camps in a way that is palatable and profitable for the international community."
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'This Is Not a Ceasefire,' Doctors Without Borders Says of Gaza, 'It Is a Continuation of the Genocide'
"A ceasefire should ensure that hostilities are paused, weapons are silenced, and that people are safe from strikes across the strip."
Jul 28, 2026
Nearly 10 months into a "ceasefire" in the Gaza Strip, as Israel on Tuesday killed at least one Palestinian man with an airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp, Doctors Without Borders declared that "the wounds of war are not only unhealed—they are still being inflicted."
"This is not a ceasefire," said the medical charity, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), in a statement. "It is a continuation of the genocide, calibrated to be violent enough to keep Palestinians suffering every day, yet silent enough to avoid stirring international outrage."
Israeli forces have killed more than 73,300 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded over 174,009 since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel—with global experts warning the true toll is likely far higher. Local authorities have documented at least 1,200 deaths and 3,900 injuries since the ceasefire was agreed to over nine months ago.
Experts with the United Nations and others around the world have denounced the Israeli assault and blockade as a genocide, and South Africa is leading a related case at the International Court of Justice. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, over the mass slaughter.
Nearly all of Gaza's roughly 2 million survivors have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. MSF said that "the destruction of homes has not stopped with the announcement of the ceasefire. Sudden and arbitrary orders for people to flee their homes and shelters continue to be used as a tool of psychological warfare by Israeli forces."
Rajaa Jendiya, who was widowed in the "flour massacres," is living in a tent at a school-turned-displacement camp with her children. She told Middle East Eye that she often takes them to the hospital because of illnesses.
"Inside and around the school, you often see sewage water overflowing, while rubbish accumulates, attracting flies and insects," Jendiya said. "These conditions become even worse with the heat, and many times my children have developed skin diseases."
In such makeshift shelters across Gaza, "scabies, respiratory infections, rat bites, and other diseases are rife," according to MSF.
Accessing healthcare has also become difficult in the coastal strip, as Israel has killed and detained Palestinian medical providers, and bombed civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, including in the months since the ceasefire deal was reached.
As MSF detailed Tuesday:
On July 16, an Israeli strike near an MSF clinic in Al-Mawasi sent four injured people to our teams. The following day, two apartment buildings housing our staff in Gaza City were struck without warning, trapping families inside as explosions shattered windows. In one building, rubble and bodies crashed into the lower-floor apartment of an MSF staff member.
The same day, MSF teams in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, treated 12 people—seven of whom were children—who were injured after Israeli forces struck a funeral in Al-Nuseirat. In total, this strike killed eight people and injured 20. Among those killed was the 21-year-old son of an MSF staff member. Our colleague got the news while working in another emergency room.
"These were not isolated incidents," the organization stressed, "but merely a snapshot of 48 hours in Gaza."
Israel has also limited the flow of food and medicine into the war-torn territory. Calling out the country for using humanitarian assistance "as an instrument of oppression," MSF emphasized that "the Israeli state has an obligation under international law to ensure Palestinians in Gaza have access to aid, regardless of political negotiations, military agreements, or conduct of hostilities."
Since October, when the Israel Defense Forces controlled about half of Gaza, the "yellow line" indicating IDF occupation has kept shifting, to push Palestinians into "an ever-shrinking area," MSF explained. "Today, almost 2 million Palestinians are confined to approximately 30% of the strip."
After speaking with residents in Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, Rafah, and Gaza City's Zeitoun, Tuffah, and Shejaia neighborhoods, Reuters reported Tuesday that "Israeli forces have advanced the yellow block markers during the past 10 days, triggering new waves of displacement in areas already devastated by months of conflict."
While loading bags and mattresses onto a truck in Zeitoun, Assem Dawla told the news agency: "The whole war is displacement, displacement. You can't stay anywhere without [Israel] telling you, 'Get out of here, we want to come in.'"
Staying near the yellow line comes with risks. MSF said that "just this week, one mother told our teams that her 14-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, was shot five times by Israeli snipers near the yellow line while he was playing near his home."
"A ceasefire should ensure that hostilities are paused, weapons are silenced, and that people are safe from strikes across the strip," the group asserted. "Using it as a weapon of war and reinforcing the confinement to a fraction of Gaza cannot be justified."
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Despite Trump-Iran Deal, Netanyahu Says Israel Will Not Leave Lebanon 'As Long as I Am Prime Minister'
"Words are not enough to restrain the Israelis," one journalist said. "There have to be real consequences."
Jun 24, 2026
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Wednesday that he will not end the military occupation of Lebanon even if it tanks US President Donald Trump's peace deal with Iran.
"As long as I am prime minister, we will maintain the security zone in southern Lebanon," he said, referring to Israel's occupation, which has cleared about one-fifth of the country of its inhabitants.
About 1.2 million residents have been displaced by Israeli attacks and forced evacuation orders since March as part of a military campaign that's killed about 4,200 people, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
As Trump seeks an end to his war with Iran, the Iranian delegation has stressed that it must be peace "on all fronts," including Lebanon, which was outlined in the memorandum of understanding that has served as the basis for ongoing negotiations.
Behind the scenes, Trump has reportedly fumed that by ramping up attacks on Lebanon, Israel is trying to sabotage the deal and drag the US back into war.
But while he and Vice President JD Vance have offered some uncommonly blunt criticism of Israel over the past week, they've not yet gone beyond words. And Israel's leaders seem to believe they won't.
Echoing the prime minister, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that the Israel Defense Forces were "not withdrawing" from Lebanon "even if there is an American demand to do so."
But he also stated that despite a US-mediated ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, "as of this moment... there is no American demand for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon," which he described as "a political achievement."
That's not likely to sit well with the Iranians, who, in response to a wave of Israeli attacks this weekend, announced that they were once again closing off the Strait of Hormuz, threatening more of the economic pandemonium that Trump wants to quell by ending the war.
“For us, a ceasefire in Lebanon is as important as a ceasefire in Iran and, further, an end to the war in Lebanon is as important as an end to the war in Iran,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran's parliamentary speaker and lead negotiator, on Wednesday.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has attempted to thread the needle by claiming on Wednesday that "the Israelis have been clear they don't have any quarrels with the Lebanese people, nor do they have any claims on the territory of Lebanon."
But this was undercut somewhat by Katz's statement on Wednesday that the 200,000 civilians whom Israel ordered to leave southern Lebanon "will not return" to their homes because of the risk they allegedly pose to Israeli soldiers.
"Soldiers in, residents out," Katz said. "The infrastructure is destroyed, the houses are dangerous and ruined. We are not withdrawing."
Critics have pointed out that Trump does have ample amounts of leverage to coerce the Israelis to get with the program, including threatening to cut off US weapons shipments, and that his failure to do this may destroy any chance at peace with Iran.
"The Israelis are going to continue testing what they can get away with," said Rania Khalek, a journalist for BreakThrough News, on social media. "Iran was very clear that a deal with the US is dependent on a ceasefire in Lebanon."
"How embarrassing for Trump that the Israelis don’t care about his orders. They are trying to preserve their ability to kill all their neighbors," she added. "Words are not enough to restrain the Israelis. There have to be real consequences."
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Iran Challenges the US Doctrine of Low-Intensity Warfare
In the US-Israeli war on Iran and the negotiations to end it, we are witnessing a serious effort by an attacked country to stand up to the bullies, redress the imbalance of power, and uphold international law.
Jun 23, 2026
The 60-day extension of the ceasefire between the United States and Iran may lead to lasting peace or it may be over within a week, doomed by the dysfunctional alliance between the US and Israel. If it holds, it could mark the beginning of a transition away from the doctrine of “low-intensity conflict” that has shaped US foreign policy for decades.
Talks between the US, Iran, Pakistan, and Qatar began in Switzerland on June 21. But Iran was firm that it holds the United States responsible for Israel’s violations of the US-Iran memorandum and cannot move forward with other parts of the agreement until the US fulfills its part in Article 1, which requires an actual Israeli ceasefire and withdrawal from Lebanon.
If the memorandum agreed between Iran and the United States fails, the world will be left with vastly reduced oil and gas supplies and a regional war between Iran, Israel, and the United States from Lebanon to the Persian Gulf.
This entire crisis is one more devastating result of the world community’s failure to tame Israel’s war crimes and genocide or end its illegal occupation of Palestine and attacks and invasions in neighboring countries—all of which the United States continues to enable and support through its military and diplomatic alliance and arming of the Israeli military.
This moment could become a critical turning point in reining in US aggression and Israeli regional expansion.
President Donald Trump seems to understand the rapidly deteriorating position of the US and Israel, and to recognize that his own political future now depends on extricating the US from the war on Iran that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cooked up. Voices of peace from around the world support the tentative ceasefire extension and oppose efforts to sabotage it by politicians in Washington and Tel Aviv.
But to understand the roots of this crisis in US foreign policy, we have to look back. Since the 1980s, aggressive US foreign policy has dragged the Middle East and much of the world into a state that US military planners call “low-intensity conflict” or “LIC.”
Under this doctrine, the United States, and now its protégé Israel, claim the freedom of action to use military force in flagrant and widespread violation of international law, while deterring the rest of the world from mustering the political will to enforce the law or hold them accountable.
The US doctrine of low-intensity conflict was a deliberate policy choice by the Reagan administration in the 1980s, after the US defeat in Vietnam. After President George Bush II and Vice President Dick Cheney’s catastrophic full-scale US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Presidents Barack Obama, Trump, and Joe Biden reverted to low-intensity warfare, but globally expanded its scope.
This US choice to expand low-intensity warfare followed the example and the techniques of the British Empire in its final phase in the 1950s. From the Suez crisis to guerrilla war against communist revolutionaries in Malaya and Mau Mau torture camps in Kenya, the deliberate and deadly violence of Britain’s imperial policies was hidden from its own people and the world behind a tapestry of lies.
In 1989, Michael Klare and Peter Kornbluh edited a book titled Low-Intensity Warfare: How the USA Fights Wars Without Declaring Them.
They wrote that the official description of low-intensity warfare was deliberately broad and ambiguous, embracing drug interdiction in Bolivia; the occupation of Beirut; the invasion of Grenada; the airstrikes on Libya in 1986; as well as covert “special operations,” “special activities,” and “unconventional warfare.”
They concluded that low-intensity conflict was in fact “a strategic reorientation of the US military establishment, and renewed commitment to employ force in a global crusade against Third World revolutionary movements and governments.”
Today’s nominal but false ceasefires in Gaza, Lebanon, and the Persian Gulf fit squarely within that doctrine. They allow the US and Israel to continue illegal uses of force while appearing to respond to international demands for negotiations and diplomacy.
But the US involvement in low-intensity conflict today is not limited to the Middle East. It also encompasses the proxy war on Russia centered in Ukraine; the savage, deadly siege of Cuba; US and Western piracy on the high seas; the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and his wife; and economic and financial coercive measures or “sanctions” that impact about 40 countries.
Today’s low-intensity warfare also includes deploying US special operations forces in up to 140 countries. Since 2001, US special operations forces claim to have suffered 40% of all US military casualties, including many of the 8,492 American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Concentrating such a large share of US war casualties in such a small force—about 70,000 men and women at any one time—helps to give most American families the illusion of living in peace, even as the United States projects military force across the world and kills thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of people abroad.
The doctrine of low-intensity warfare depends on a fundamental assumption: that the countries targeted by the United States and its allies will remain too weak, too isolated, or too divided to effectively resist. But that assumption is increasingly being tested.
Iran has made great strides in developing effective military defenses and demonstrating to shocked US and Israeli officials that it can now defend itself. But the deadly results of false ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon stand as concrete evidence that Israel and the United States still favor low-intensity warfare over real peace.
Even as Trump presents himself as a peacemaker, he remains committed to funding an enormous war machine that can ratchet the intensity of military and covert operations up and down in different parts of the world as it adjusts to new forms of resistance and responds to fluctuating international diplomatic pressures.
But the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza opened the eyes of a new generation of people all over the world to the reality of US imperialism. The official lies that undergird low-intensity warfare are wearing dangerously thin. People are no longer swallowing the false narratives of US and Western politicians and establishment media.
US political, military, and business leaders face a crisis of credibility and legitimacy that only grows as they take off the gloves and ratchet up the intensity of these campaigns, from escalating the war on Russia and the brutal blockade of Cuba to murdering innocent fishermen and ferry passengers in the Caribbean and Pacific and threatening traditional allies like Canada and Denmark.
In the US-Israeli war on Iran and the negotiations to end it, we are witnessing a serious effort by an attacked country to stand up to the bullies, redress the imbalance of power, and uphold international law.
Whatever one thinks of the Iranian government, Iran’s pursuit of a durable peace based on sovereignty, security, and international law deserves the support of governments and people around the world, including Americans.
This moment could become a critical turning point in reining in US aggression and Israeli regional expansion. It could even give humanity a chance to end this cycle of endless war and begin working together to address the existential crises threatening the world in the 21st century.
As the people of the United States commemorate the 250th anniversary of its founding, and the violence of the US empire comes home to attack us and our neighbors in our own homes and streets, we should find common cause with, and learn from, our neighbors around the world who have been resisting US imperial violence for generations.
It is ultimately up to us to take our future in our own hands and begin the essential transition from empire to democracy.
That is why CODEPINK is calling for a Summer of Peace and Love, a time to reject fear, militarism and empire, and to organize our communities around the simple but radical demand that our country stop making war on the world and start investing in life.
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Insulted by Trump's Threats, Iranian Negotiators Walk Out of Peace Talks
"Don’t they think that if their threats had worked, they wouldn’t have ended up in today’s desperate situation?" said Iran's chief negotiator.
Jun 21, 2026
US President Donald Trump’s threats to destroy Iran and send US forces to occupy the country on Sunday appear to have derailed peace negotiations in Switzerland, with the Iranian delegation reportedly walking out and demanding an apology.
Following Iran’s announcement that it was closing the Strait of Hormuz again after Israel intensified its assault on Lebanon, Trump went on a tirade Sunday in which he threatened to assassinate negotiators and said Iran “won’t have a country” if access to the critical waterway was shut off, while also threatening to “take over” Iran with a full US invasion.
But after Trump’s threats—which broke the first clause of the memorandum of understanding—Iran’s negotiators filed a complaint with the Pakistani and Qatari mediators and stormed out of the mountain resort where talks were being held, according to several outlets.
While Trump clearly sought to project strength, Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said his team “do not take American threats seriously.”
In previous months, as Trump sought to squeeze concessions from the Iranians, he issued escalatory threats to wipe out their “whole civilization” and “blow up” the whole country. However, he did not act on those threats, even as Iran refused to budge from its negotiating posture.
"Don’t they think that if their threats had worked, they wouldn’t have ended up in today’s desperate situation?" Ghalibaf said.
Ghalibaf said the US had “better be more careful with their statements,” adding that “our armed forces are ready to respond in a different way." He said, “No matter what they say, we are the ones who act.
While the Iranian delegation left the venue, talks are reportedly continuing via mediators. However, according to the Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen, the delegation said it will not return until Trump apologizes for his threats and Israel fully withdraws from Lebanon.
According to senior Israeli officials cited by Channel 12, Israel is reportedly considering “limited withdrawals” from Lebanon, including in areas within its so-called “buffer zone.” Despite Iranian claims, the officials said the US has not requested Israel’s withdrawal from the country.
Previous peace talks have been derailed by Trump’s threats to commit indiscriminate war crimes in Iran. But this past week has seen perhaps the most violent swing yet in his approach toward Iran.
Where earlier this week, Trump acknowledged Iran's right to enrich uranium and maintain a nuclear energy program like that of other nations, his outburst Sunday appeared to have been prompted by a statement by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who said the US would be "forced to accept" its right to enrichment.
And while Trump has raged against Israel’s actions in Lebanon while privately claiming that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to sabotage peace, he has not taken concrete action to force Israel to comply with the memorandum’s terms.
"The mixed messages coming out of the White House," remarked Jeet Heer, a writer at The Nation, "are going to make it much harder to end the war, and could in fact spark further conflict."
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'You Won't Have a Country': Trump Threatens Full Ground Invasion and Destruction of Iran Amid Hormuz Closure
One expert said Israel's continued assault on Lebanon, which led Iran to announce its closure of the strait, posed an "existential threat" to the ceasefire.
Jun 21, 2026
Rather than force Israel to halt its occupation in Lebanon in accordance with the memorandum of understanding, President Donald Trump on Sunday responded to Iran's announcement that it was closing the Strait of Hormuz with a new litany of psychotic threats—claiming that if the waterway were closed, he would blow up the country, launch a full ground invasion to take it over, and assassinate Iranian negotiators.
According to Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst, Trump told the Iranian negotiators overnight that if they close the strait, which Iran claimed to have shuttered once again on Saturday, “you won’t have a country,” adding that they “won’t even make it back to their f***ing country,” in what appeared to be a threat to assassinate the negotiators, as happened during the initial phase of the war.
Responding to statements by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who said Iran would not give up its “right to enrich uranium” and that the US “will be forced to accept it,” Trump reportedly said Pezeshkian had better “watch his mouth” and “shape up,” or the US “will take over the rest of the country.”
It’s yet another sharp reversal from Trump, who—after months of claiming Iran must agree to “zero enrichment”—suddenly acknowledged this week that it was “common sense” for the nation to be allowed to have a nuclear energy program as other countries do.
Trump’s renewed threats against Iran, which mirror his genocidal threats earlier in the war to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization” and “blow up” the entire country, also appear to violate the first clause of the memorandum of understanding, which calls on signatories to “refrain from the threat or use of force against each other.”
The threat to fully occupy Iran, which Trump made publicly for the first time on Sunday, stands in sharp contrast to his comments that continuing the war for much longer would cause “economic catastrophe” and that even limited ground operations, such as one he had proposed to seize Iran’s uranium, would be too big an effort to be worth it.
The war with Iran is already deeply unpopular among the American public, even without US boots on the ground. Polls have shown that even a majority of Republicans would be opposed to Trump escalating the war by deploying ground troops, and military officials have shelved planned operations to occupy certain strategic locations, including Kharg Island, fearing a large number of American casualties.
Nevertheless, Trump also told Yingst that the US could become the “guardian angel” of the Strait of Hormuz, collecting tolls and taking oil from countries using the waterway for exports. He did not make clear how the US would gain control of the strait under such a scenario.
Iran announced that it would close the strait again on Saturday after Israel deepened its occupation and escalated its bombing of southern Lebanon, despite the MOU’s ceasefire agreement covering all fronts.
Iranian negotiators have described an end to Israel’s Lebanon occupation, which has killed more than 4,000 people and forced more than 1.2 million Lebanese civilians from their homes in the south, as a red line for negotiating peace.
Behind the scenes, Trump has acknowledged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is using Lebanon to sabotage the ceasefire and drag the US back into a full-scale war.
In the phone call with Yingst, Trump once again said he was “disappointed Israel can’t put Hezbollah away,” adding that Israel “can’t do anything without knocking buildings down.” He also said he was close to allowing Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa—the former leader of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate—to take over the operation against Hezbollah.
While this is yet another instance of Trump using harsher rhetoric toward Israel—which Vice President JD Vance has also done in recent days—there is no indication yet that he is willing to take the next step of forcing Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire agreement by imposing material consequences, such as suspending military aid.
Even as Israel’s attacks continued unabated and threatened to derail the deal entirely, Vance did not indicate that he thought the US needed to exert more pressure.
“I think Trump and the US have done more to stop the conflict in Lebanon than any government anywhere in the world,” he said at a press conference in Switzerland on Sunday.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, described Israel’s continued escalations as “an existential threat” to the peace process between the US and Iran.
He told ABC News on Saturday that Iran’s threat to close the strait just before a meeting in Geneva this weekend was meant to be “part of a background of how serious they are” about ensuring that the US understands the stakes if Israel refuses to withdraw.
“Israel would prefer for this war to continue until you have a complete defeat of the Iranians, which, of course, is not in the cards,” Parsi said. “The Israelis sold this war to Trump as a quick, easy fix to the region’s problems that would take no more than four days, and they were dead wrong.”
“Now, Trump is recognizing that US interests necessitate that he pull out of this war and strikes this deal, but the Israelis are trying to sabotage it because they are afraid they’re going to be left out, that the balance in the region is going to shift against their interests,” he added. “They’re willing to essentially jeopardize their relationship with the United States over this.”
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