MANY of us who have marched, protested, written and lobbied calling for a ceasefire in Gaza were naturally delighted when the ceasefire announcement came.

Israelis and Palestinians alike were delighted by the release of hostages, even if the Israeli government tried to prevent natural outpourings of joy and relief on part of the people of the Occupied Territories.

But there are growing and justified concerns about the character of this ceasefire, where it is leading and what the long-term consequences will be.

Included in those consequences are our ability to raise the cause of peace, and our right to protest on this issue. Those protests must include the right to criticise British government policy where we feel it is in the wrong.

The ceasefire itself clearly owes something to the imminent inauguration of Donald Trump as 47th President. His envoy to the region Steve Witkoff pushed hard for a ceasefire and it was almost immediately agreed.

His comments since and Trump’s actions in his first term strongly indicate that his main goal is the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In his first interview with Israeli media just days ago, Witkoff hailed the ceasefire and said normalisation is only possible if the war ends. 

For Trump, the plight of the Palestinians seems to be little more than a distraction or an irritant.

With this in mind, and acknowledging that any ceasefire, however motivated, is welcome it also highlights the inherent weakness of the “deal.”

If the Israelis have simply dialled down their military aggression so that it can be presented as a ceasefire which leads to normalisation of Arab state relations with Israel, then that will be good enough for Trump.

This appears to be the actual position on ground. While the surviving Palestinians in Gaza are being allowed to return to the rubble that was their homes and they are no longer being starved of aid, the situation in the West Bank is very different. Israeli forces have mounted a series of attacks, including one on Jenin and on a nearby refugee camp, in what one minister calls a “change in security strategy.”

This has nothing to do with security. Instead, it reeks of Israeli ministers being forced to accept a partial ceasefire in Gaza pivoting their onslaught to the West Bank simply because it was not an explicit part of the agreement.

Compared to the three Israeli hostages released, the Palestinian prisoners and the Gazans returning home in Gaza in their hundreds of thousands remain nameless in Western media. There has been little humanising of their stories, or empathy with their plight.

Instead, there has been an inordinate amount of horror and anger expressed at the ongoing existence of Hamas. This has been used to fuel opposition to the ceasefire, especially among the settlers who have been encouraged to run amok.

What did they expect? No people suffering indiscriminate bombing, assassinations and collective punishments such as the denial of food and water has ever drawn the conclusion that their oppressors are right.

Even in the early days after October 7, US military analysts were publicly critical that Netanyahu’s stated objective was the “elimination” of Hamas. 

Closer to home, even British military leaders accept that the IRA’s best recruiting sergeant was their own actions on Bloody Sunday. Well, the Palestinians have just suffered a huge onslaught, Bloody Sundays on a vast scale.

Trump’s intervention, however partial and self-serving is also a damning indictment of Biden and his entire administration, especially secretary of state Blinken.

In 2014, the US finally told Netanyahu to stop and, as now, the large-scale attacks on Palestinians stopped almost immediately.  Biden knows this, because Obama told him to eventually make the call.

Many of us argued all along that the US had the power to the stop the massacres, simply by threatening to stop military and financial aid. This has been shown to be perfectly true.

Biden finally admits that he did nothing to prevent the slaughter. In his last TV interview before leaving office, Biden relates that he initially urged caution about killing civilians.

When Netanyahu retorted that the US carpet-bombed German cities or dropped nuclear weapons on Japanese ones, Biden accepted his point, and the conversation switched to providing aid.

As Netanyahu claims all Palestinians are Hamas supporters, and the aid is used by Hamas for their own purposes, that was never going to happen either.

Richard Nixon used to be the worst US president of my lifetime. But Biden combines Nixon’s ability to lie and murder with a rank hypocrisy that his predecessor could not muster. So, Biden takes the title.

There is also the major question of the wider context of the ceasefire.

Israel, the US and their close allies may consider they have won this wider war. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other pro-Israel groups have overrun Syria while Hezbollah has been significantly pushed back in Lebanon. At the same time, there is a hardened opposition to both Israel and the US across the wider world.

In general, the European governments have disgraced themselves with their material and political support for attempted genocide and numerous war crimes. The British government is in the front rank of those who facilitated and defended these crimes.

There is now a new political offensive attempting to remove the legacy of active political opposition to Israel and support for an indefensible foreign policy.

The latest demonstration in London marking the declared end to hostilities and all those killed suffered police harassment.

Leaders of the peace and Palestine solidarity movements have been arrested and some are facing charges. Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were among those who were forced to present themselves for police questioning.

Of course, solidarity movements such as the Committee of 100 and Irish solidarity have experienced police repression before. But in both cases there were some elements of direction action campaigning involved.

But the recent demo in London was wholly peaceful, with no official direct action and yet has already suffered significant repression.

The stakes are very high in this fight, with clear implications not only for the Palestine and peace movements, but also more generally for free speech and the right to protest.

There is too a broader significance. The enormous pro-Palestinian mobilisations have created a political movement. The Muslim Vote now exists and four constituencies have independent rather than Labour MPs because of their stance on Gaza.

Given the scale of the horrors in Gaza, this could be a lasting legacy.  It should not expunged by methods of police repression.