By James E. Jennings*
ATLANTA, USA | 10 October 2025 (IDN) — While the world celebrates Peace in Gaza, people in Tel Aviv and Gaza are rubbing their eyes as if waking from a dream.
Relief is palpable among the Palestinians because their daily haunting fear of dying at any minute over the past 24 months is behind them. They at least have survived and can rejoice, even though many of their family members and friends may have been killed and their homes destroyed.
For Israelis, the happiness over securing the release of the remaining hostages is tempered by their deep social and political divisions and the fact that, despite their financial and human losses, no genuine victory has yet been achieved.
The destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure by Israel’s high-tech armed forces, along with two years of unnecessarily genocidal attacks on its civilians, will long reverberate as a landmark in modern history. Even measured against all of history, the overkill in Gaza stands out as unnecessarily bloody and inhumane.
Why has Israel, by far the strongest power in the Middle East, failed to subdue a 25-mile-long strip of beach on its periphery completely? The relatively tiny land area could easily be seized in days. In fact, Israel has conquered Gaza several times before and then given it up because of the Palestinians’ sumud or steadfastness.
Under the latest ceasefire plan, Hamas will release the hostages. At the same time, Israel pledges to withdraw in stages from most of the Gaza Strip while retaining a security corridor surrounding the territory on every side, including the Mediterranean.
“No-win” contest
Israel’s public and politicians are divided on whether to stay as occupiers or not. Their history of repeated bloody occupation and painful withdrawal from Gaza over many decades proves that they cannot handle the task in the long term. Palestinian leader Dr. Haidar Abd al-Shafei once told me while visiting his home, “Believe me, they don’t want to come back!”
The Roman Historian Tacitus recorded the brutality of one of Rome’s vicious military campaigns by quoting one of their enemies, Calgacus, a tribal chieftain of ancient Scotland, who famously said, Ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant. “They make a desert and call it peace.”
Hopefully, the prisoner exchange will take place as scheduled and the ceasefire will endure. But no amount of celebrating will undo the permanent damage to the psyches of both Israelis and Palestinians. This has been a “no-win” contest that has exhausted both sides amid rivers of blood on one side and deep civic divisions on the other.
Everybody knows that Trump and his predecessor, Biden, continued to support Israel’s evident slaughter of countless civilians, month after month, with most of the casualties being women and children.
Seeds of the next war have been sown in Gaza. Why? Because people everywhere prize freedom, justice, and dignity even above Peace.
Martin Luther King’s “Free at Last” celebration of human liberty will always trump Trump’s delusional, self-congratulatory, ultimately false, “Peace at Last!”
*James E. Jennings is President of Conscience International, a former aid worker in Gaza, and a longtime advocate for Palestinian human and political rights. [IDN-InDepthNews]
Top: AI-generated image perceived by Nastranis.