In the wake of a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, a panel of Palestinian writers gathered at EartH Hackney to celebrate the launch of a landmark anthology.
Gaza: The Story of a Genocide is a collection of personal testimony, poetry, art, and frontline reportage that bears witness to the vast and ongoing destruction and genocide inflicted on the Palestinian people. Three of its contributors, Tareq Baconi, Yara Eid, and Ahmed Alnaouq joined the panel hosted by Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani.
Novara Media is a London-based independent media organisation. The event celebrated the book’s launch whilst commemorating a strange moment as we passed the two-year mark of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and watched anxiously as the most recent ceasefire plan came into effect.
While discussing the book, the panel soon turned to an inevitable discussion of the implications of the newly announced ceasefire on the future of the Palestinian struggle for resistance and liberation.
“Don’t be deceived, they will not stop,” Ahmed Alnaouq, Palestinian journalist and co-founder of We Are Not Numbers said when asked if he thinks things will get worse before they get better.
“I do not think that tomorrow Palestine will be free, I think the Israelis are not satisfied with the way the genocide is over now. They will not just surrender. They will not rest until all the Palestinians are gone; they don’t want to see any of us alive. They don’t want to see any of the Palestinians in Gaza alive.”
Ahmed lost twenty-one of his immediate family members in a single minute in an Israeli blast on the evening of October 22, 2023.
This ceasefire, which was brokered by the US and accompanied by President Trump’s “20-step peace plan”, was announced on October 10, but has since been violated by Israel 80 times, killing nearly 100 Palestinians in Gaza and wounding 230.
The ceasefire plan was immediately and unsurprisingly, met with harsh critique and scepticism from many within the pro-Palestine movement as being more than hollow in its promise of “peace” and severely lacking in Palestinian input and equity.
“Everything we’re seeing, the ceasefire, the momentum of countries recognising the state of Palestine, and Abbas (Palestinian Authority president making a public appearance) with Trump, is all an effort to put the genie back in the bottle. It’s an effort to go back to October 6, 2023,” argued Tareq Baconi, panel member, senior analyst for Israel/Palestine at the International Crisis Group and author of Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance, an extra chapter of which features in the anthology.
This point, that efforts are being made to go back to the status quo before this genocidal onslaught began, is worth dissecting. All too often, it is insinuated that this conflict began on October 7, 2023, and that before this, there was an acceptable status quo.
However, by October 6, Palestinians were already 75 years deep into living under the extremely harsh and violent conditions imposed by the Israeli occupation.
“Any ‘peace plan’ that does not address the harsh reality of the poor conditions for survival faced by Palestinians before the genocide will not be one that lasts.”
For example, just before this conflict began in October 2023, Palestinian children were facing the deadliest year on record for child deaths at the hands of Israeli forces in the West Bank.
Gaza had already been under a strict 16 year-long blockade that, since 2007, restricted daily life in the enclave by impacting everything from access to essential goods to fundamental freedoms.
It is not surprising that the sentiment of the evening was that any “peace plan” that does not address the harsh reality of the poor conditions for survival faced by Palestinians before the genocide will not be one that lasts.
I spoke with an expert on Middle Eastern politics and economics, Nour Lejmi, about the ceasefire and its critiques. She was quick to recall the quote by Kwame Ture, a Trinidadian-American activist who famously said, “There’s a difference between peace and liberation. You can have injustice and have peace, so peace isn’t the answer; liberation is the answer. That’s the white man’s word; Peace, Liberation is our word.”
“Liberation is the true goal for oppressed people, whereas peace is merely a state of stability for the more privileged,” she elaborated.
“A ceasefire on both sides would include the reconstruction of Palestine. It is evident that what we see before us is not a ceasefire but rather the consolidation of power under the guise of peace. Beyond obvious arguments relating to Israel’s crimes against humanity, if Israel ought to claim itself a democracy, then all people must be free, including the people of Palestine.”
The third panellist at the Novara event, Yara Eid was similarly outspoken in her criticism of the ceasefire and “peace plan”, not because she or the others want anything but the ceasing of harm to their fellow Palestinians and family members in Gaza but because they know all too well that a US brokered deal is not one that has Palestinian interest in mind and that Israel is far from compliant (to say the least) in many instances, such as their constant violation of international law, and poor track record of upholding ceasefire agreements.
“The goal is not just a permanent ceasefire. The end goal is a free Palestine.”
Yara Eid
Examples of this include Israel’s violation of the November 2024 ceasefire with Hezbollah, the violation and later the abandonment of the March 2025 Gaza ceasefire and more than 80 current violations of the newest ceasefire.
“I don’t believe that Israel respects anyone, or international law, or people, or even an entity that’s interested in humanity. It’s a psychopathic regime; it’s a killing machine that’s only interested in killing. Not only ethnic cleansing, but it’s a bloodthirsty regime. That’s why I don’t know if it’s a ceasefire,” Yara said.
Yara herself is a survivor of the 2014 Black Friday massacre in which Israel violated another humanitarian ceasefire, bombing Rafah where she was staying at the time with her grandmother.
Yara was just 14 at the time. Since the genocide began, Yara has lost more than ninety family members alongside her best friend and colleague, Ibraheem Lafi.
“The goal is not just a permanent ceasefire. The end goal is a free Palestine,” Yara urged. “And as long as we have people like (the panel and audience) with us, we will free Palestine, they will be defeated, we will choose love, and we’ll teach the world how Palestinians love.”
Yara echoes this sentiment in her contribution to the book Gaza: The Story of a Genocide that the evening at EartH sought to celebrate. She writes, “For me, love is central to our survival as Palestinians. It is expressed when we stand together united in the face of oppression and when we refuse to give up.
This only deepens through our struggle for justice and by continuing to speak of our homeland, so the world never forgets our story.”
Gaza: The Story of a Genocide is a moving collection of powerful testimonies that empowers the reader to feel a sense of the immeasurable resilience, bravery and undying commitment of Palestinians to both their liberation and their love for life.
The book is available to purchase from Verso Books, where all royalties are donated directly to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, who provide essential services including education, healthcare, and aid to Palestine refugees in Gaza and the West Bank and to those displaced across Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.
The recorded event is also available to watch on Novara Media’s YouTube channel:
Featured image by Constance Crewswell.