The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza has surpassed 74,000, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. While this figure represents the official death toll as confirmed by local authorities, the true number could be much higher when missing people and indirect deaths are taken into account, such as from disease, exposure, denial of medical treatment and the destruction of civic infrastructure. And since the so-called ceasefire brokered by Trump last October, nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks.
“The [ceasefire] plan ended up just buying more time for the genocide,” says Muhammad Shehada, a writer and analyst from Gaza speaking to Democracy Now! in Copenhagen. “Instead of suspending attacks on Gaza, Israel has been bombing Gaza every day.”
“The idea of the plan was to divide the reconstruction, rehabilitation, Israeli withdrawal, decommissioning of Hamas and Palestinian statehood into three phases,” says Shehada. “So far, only one item of the 20 items on the Trump plan has been fulfilled, and that is the release of every single Israeli hostage in Gaza.”
