Last week, we were relieved to hear the announcements of a ceasefire agreement to end what has been two years of Israel’s genocidal military assault on Gaza.
Over the last two years, we have been witness to one of the most catastrophic attacks on Palestinian life since the Nakba of 1948. 67,913 people have been confirmed killed by Israel in Gaza, and over 170,000 people have been injured. Israel has killed or injured more than 10 percent of Gaza’s population and decimated infrastructures essential for life, all while blocking essential aid, medicine, food and water into Gaza – producing man-made famine. In the West Bank, Palestinians have been subject to one of the gravest escalations in violence at the hands of the Israeli occupation, with 994 Palestinians killed since October 2023.
The most recent attempt by the Global Sumud Flotilla to break Israel’s siege on Gaza, seeking to provide essential aid to Palestinians in Gaza, became another in a lineage of international solidarity and resistance efforts illegally intercepted by the Israeli military. What we have witnessed is one of the most barbaric attacks on life in recent history, with little to no response from the UK government. On the contrary, we’ve seen active participation from the government in Israel’s assault, continuing to provide arms to Israel over the two year period – reaching record high figures in 2025 – alongside unabated diplomatic support.
Like many, we welcome this ceasefire tentatively, as the previous ceasefire between January and March 2025 resulted in only momentary reprieve for Palestinians in Gaza. In the days since last week’s ceasefire announcement, we’ve seen Israel continue its assault on Gaza, as Israeli forces have killed at least nine Palestinians attempting to return to their homes in Gaza City. Israel has also continued strikes in southern Lebanon – adding to the over 4000 lives claimed in Lebanon since October 2023.
The ceasefire agreement, and accompanying Trump-Netanyahu 20 point plan, lays out a deeply colonial approach to the future of Gaza. The proposals call for Gaza to be led and overseen entirely by foreign actors – actively sidelining Palestinian agency, autonomy and right to self-determination once again. It is important to state that Palestinians should not have had to negotiate an end to their own genocide – this process and outcome is indicative of the extent to which Palestinians have been dehumanised by Israel, the USA and Western actors.
The deal itself is unjust – prioritising the release of Israeli hostages, and the ‘safety’ and ‘security’ of Israel, as a precondition to the end of Palestinian suffering. Though there are Palestinian prisoners being rightfully freed as part of the ceasefire agreement, thousands more remain incarcerated in Israel, all while the deal’s proposals would work to weaken Gaza’s ability to self-govern and lay the groundwork for further theft of Palestinian Land.
Analysis by the IMEU Policy Project outlines the fundamental failures of the Trump-Netanyahu plan.
“Trump’s plan is not a framework for a just and lasting Palestinian–Israeli peace. Instead, it is a blueprint for Israel’s perpetual military occupation of Palestinian land in Gaza, and for the ongoing denial of Palestinian self-determination for the foreseeable future as Gaza would be governed by outsiders rather than by Palestinians.”
As a movement for health justice, we know that what is needed in Gaza is what the Palestinian people have been demanding for decades – an end to occupation, an end to apartheid, an end to the siege, and the right of return for all Palestinian refugees. In the wake of this ceasefire agreement, many prominent health workers – including our trustee Dr James Smith – have signed the Gaza Health Solidarity Declaration, a pledge to stand with Palestinian health workers.
As they articulate, true health solidarity towards ending the genocide and supporting Palestinians to rebuild and recover in the wake of a ceasefire, demands that we work to:
- Apply pressure to our governments to isolate the Israeli colonial regime, and end all institutional and corporate complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people.
- Centre Palestinian organisations, which have long provided healthcare services to their communities as the main implementation partners of health programs throughout Palestine, including the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Alongside this, refraining from establishing health systems and institutions that are parallel to, and undermine, Palestinian national institutions.
- Promote Palestinian leadership over foreign-led health programs – and provide flexible, long-term, programmatic funding, as well as technical support to Palestinian institutions and communities in line with their defined priorities.
We urge the health community to stay active in its solidarity with Palestinians, and to continue working to erode and dismantle all ties of complicity, particularly through strategic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns such as Health Workers for a Free Palestine’s No Palantir in the NHS. We continue to demand the UK government ends its complicity with Israel’s crimes, imposes a two way military embargo, and imposes sanctions in order to apply pressure to: end the siege on Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank, and respect Palestinians refugees’ inalienable right of return. In the wake of this genocide, we demand nothing less than full accountability and justice, the only true foundation for a real and lasting peace.
