Israel cheats on the ceasefire and jails a nation

Israel cheats on ceasefires as it cheats on the very notion of peace. No truce holds, because Israel never intends one to hold. Even as the world headlines declare “ceasefire in Gaza,” Israeli warplanes circle overhead and soldiers continue their raids. The guns never fall silent. Ceasefires, in Israel’s doctrine, are not about peace, they are a pause to reload, a break to deceive international opinion while tightening the siege on a population already shattered beyond repair.

According to Al Jazeera and the Gaza media office, Israel has violated the truce dozens of times since early March 2025 — at least 116 Palestinians killed and nearly 500 wounded since the supposed “pause.” The total toll since October 2023 now exceeds 68,000 Palestinians killed and more than 179,000 injured. These are not numbers. They are people buried under rubble, hospitals bombed, aid convoys blocked, and children found lifeless in their mothers’ arms.

And yet, the United States remains silent, the silence of the enabler, not the neutral. Across European capitals, governments that once claimed moral leadership now speak only of “Israel’s right to defend itself.” They cannot utter the words “Palestinian right to live.” The West’s conscience is buried under military contracts and political lobbying.

Washington’s silence is not ignorance. Rather, it carries with it the power that enables the politics of silence It is protection money paid to its own politics. Israel’s global impunity is buttressed by a powerful web of influence – AIPAC and other lobbies that have turned the US Congress into an echo chamber of Zionist propaganda. Presidents come and go, but the money remains constant. And that money ensures that every Israeli violation is shielded, every massacre justified, and every dissenting voice in America crushed as “antisemitic.”

This is not Jewish power – it is political corruption wrapped in religious symbolism. To be even altogether, here is Zionism at its pinnacle. It shames the Jewish prophetic tradition of justice and truth. Israel’s wealth, much of it extracted from US taxpayers and international complicity, sustains a war economy. An apartheid sustained by the dollar, blessed by silence, and justified by fear.

When Israel violates a ceasefire, it distracts the world with emotional images of hostage releases. The narrative is carefully curated: Israeli captives are embraced by families, and cameras flash as “humanity” is restored. But hidden behind this theatre lies a cruel arithmetic. For every Israeli hostage released, Israel arrests fifteen Palestinians, according to field data reported by EU Keeps Sanctions on Israel ‘on the Table’ Despite Gaza Ceasefire

The European Union has not ruled out imposing sanctions on Israel, despite the recent ceasefire in Gaza, EU foreign policy chief Kaya Kallas said on Monday. Speaking after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Kallas emphasised that while the ceasefire had shifted the political context, the bloc would maintain pressure on Israel to ensure the truce is upheld and humanitarian conditions improve.

“The ceasefire has changed the context—that is very clear to everyone,” Kallas said. “However, unless we see real and sustainable change on the ground, including more aid reaching Gaza, the threat of sanctions will remain.”

Prior to the ceasefire deal brokered by US President Donald Trump, Brussels had discussed potential punitive measures against Israel, including the blacklisting of senior Israeli officials and restrictions on trade relations. “We are not taking these measures now, but we are not taking them off the table either, because the situation is fragile,” Kallas added.

EU officials have repeatedly urged Israel to facilitate unrestricted humanitarian access to Gaza and warned that any backsliding on ceasefire commitments could reignite instability across the region. Al Jazeera and prisoner support groups – indeed the hostage illusion, to put it mildly.

Israel currently holds over 11,100 Palestinian prisoners. That’s double the number before October 2023. Among them are 3,577 under “administrative detention”, meaning they are imprisoned without charge or trial, often on “secret evidence” that neither they nor their lawyers can access.

Administrative detention is one of Israel’s most abusive legal weapons. Under this system, detainees can be held indefinitely, their detention renewed every six months, based on vague “security” claims. The Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association calls it “a measure of political control masquerading as law.” It stands in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids mass internment without due process.

There are 400 Palestinian children behind Israeli bars, some actually not even in their teens. They’re as young as twelve. Around 40 women are detained, many subjected to psychological and sexual humiliation. About 2,600 detainees are labelled “unlawful combatants,” a legal loophole that strips them of Geneva protections and allows Israel to hold them indefinitely.

In April 2024, Palestinian human rights monitors reported over 21,000 detainees, far beyond the carrying capacity of Israel’s prisons. Many are held in tent camps hastily built in the Negev Desert, without adequate food, medical care, or sanitation. Prisoners describe being beaten, stripped, and forced to chant pro-Israel slogans. Torture is not incidental, rather it is institutional.

Israel defends its detentions as “preventive security measures – another way of saying it is the Law that isn’t Law. But under international law, they are war crimes. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights explicitly prohibits arbitrary detention. Article 78 of the Fourth Geneva Convention allows internment of civilians only as a last resort, under judicial review. Israel ignores these provisions with impunity, citing its own military orders that supersede the Geneva Conventions. This, in itself, is a legal monstrosity by any democratic standard.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has repeatedly condemned Israel’s use of administrative detention as “a practice of collective punishment.” Yet, there are no sanctions, no tribunals, no accountability. The International Criminal Court remains hesitant, fearing Western backlash. The result: impunity elevated to the level of diplomacy.

Israel is the only country in the world that systematically tries children in military courts. The usual thoughtless charge: throwing stones at soldiers. What’s worse, it is an “offence” that can carry a sentence of up to 20 years. In other words, children who face 20 years in prison have lost their childhood, education, and capacity to cope socially in ways that are typical.

Since 1967, over one million Palestinians have been imprisoned at some point — one in every four men in the occupied territories. For many families, prison has become a rite of passage, not because they are criminals, but because they live under occupation. This is how Israel maintains control: through the fear of disappearance, the constant threat of the knock at night, the knowledge that anyone, a student, a poet, a farmer can be caged without cause.

Human rights groups such as B’Tselem and Defence for Children International-Palestine have documented cases of minors beaten, blindfolded, and interrogated without parents or lawyers. One 14-year-old from Hebron recounted being forced to sign a confession in Hebrew, a language he could not read. Another, from Jenin, said soldiers threatened to kill his family if he didn’t cooperate. This is the machinery of a state that calls itself democratic.

Mass imprisonment is not an accident. It is policy and Israel’s chosen system of control. When you cannot erase a people, you incarcerate them. When you cannot defeat their spirit, you criminalize their existence. Prisons have replaced the open-air camps of the Nakba. The architecture of control has evolved — walls, watchtowers, drones, algorithms, and detention orders that strip human beings of the right to hope.

The Gaza Strip, under blockade since 2007, is itself the largest prison in the world. There are two million people locked behind fences, deprived of electricity, water, and movement. Israel may release a few hostages to appease its citizens, but the entire Palestinian nation remains hostage to its colonial logic.

The question now is no longer about proof. The world knows. The evidence is overwhelming, broadcast daily through the rubble of Gaza and the wails from Israeli prisons. Yet, no nation dares to act. The Arab world is divided; Europe is compromised; the United States is owned. Even the United Nations, the supposed guardian of peace, issues “concerned statements” and retreats into bureaucratic silence.

So, who will bell the cat? Who will tell Israel that its democracy is a façade, its morality bankrupt, its law a weapon of occupation? Everyone knows, but wont dare to speak up. Because Israel rules the USA and the USA is the world’s bully.

Israel’s legitimacy must now be measured not by its elections, but by its crimes. It has forfeited global trust. It can no longer claim the moral inheritance of the Holocaust while perpetrating another in Gaza. Those who remain silent are no less guilty. History will remember their cowardice alongside Israel’s cruelty.

For every child behind bars, every family wiped out by bombs, every farmer denied his land — the world owes more than sympathy. It owes action, accountability, and justice. Until that day comes, Palestinians will resist, because resistance is all that remains when the world conspires against freedom.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.