After 15 months of an escalated Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza, and vicious aggression against Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Iran, the Israeli government finally conceded to a ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian resistance, led by Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, announced on January 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar. The agreement, conducted under Qatari and Egyptian mediation, went into effect on January 19, 2025, but only after the Israeli military violated its provisions several times in the morning of January 19, killing 19 Palestinians – and over 100 in the days between the signing of the agreement and its implementation.
Palestinians in Gaza displaced from their homes during the ongoing genocide immediately began returning to their homes; notably, over 70% of Palestinians in Gaza are Palestinian refugees, denied their fundamental right to return to their original homes and lands occupied in 1947-48 during the Nakba, the Zionist colonization of Palestine. So far, several hundred aid trucks, including trucks containing fuel, have entered Gaza after months of imposed starvation and denial of aid. Civil defense, internal security and health care workers have returned to work after being the targets of bombing and assassination campaigns for 470 days.
First and foremost, this ceasefire agreement is undeniably a hard-won victory of the Palestinian people, their resistance forces, their allies in the region, particularly in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Iran, as well as all international solidarity movements who took to the streets in the millions to demand an end to the ongoing genocide. The Israeli regime, despite the tens of thousands of lives it took, was unable to achieve any of its stated military goals, and the Palestinian people have revealed the reality of its colonial project to the world.
The ceasefire provisions address the immediate cessation of military operations, the release of prisoners through a prisoner exchange, which will succeed in releasing thousands of Palestinians held inside Israeli jails, and limited reconstruction efforts in Gaza. However, even as broader issues are tackled in the second and third phases of the ceasefire agreement, we must not lose sight of the primary call for justice and liberation for the Palestinian people: the illegal blockade of Gaza and the occupation of Palestinian lands by the US-supported Israeli government must be brought to a complete and permanent end. It is, of course, clear, that the Israeli state cannot be relied upon, nor can its sponsors, to accurately implement the ceasefire agreement; the dozens of ceasefire violations committed against Lebanon serve as a primary current example as does its ongoing invasions, occupation and military attacks against Syria. It is only through enforcing meaningful accountability that even the minimal terms of this agreement can be protected.
The prisoner exchange, which began on Sunday, January 19, also revealed once again the horrific conditions to which over 10,000 Palestinian prisoners are subjected to in Israeli jails. Liberated women, speaking after their release, spoke about the hours before their liberation, when they were beaten, strip-searched, dragged by the air, and deliberately kept in frigid air-conditioning in a cold January evening; one released prisoner, Khalida Jarrar, a prominent Palestinian scholar, feminist and leftist political figure, had spent the last five months in solitary confinement, while another, Margaret al-Rai, had her hand broken by Israeli guards assaulting her. These testimonies are accompanied by those of prisoners from Gaza, who have detailed brutal physical and sexual assaults, sleep deprivation, beatings, starvation and other forms of institutionalized torture.
Ultimately, as promising as a ceasefire may seem, it cannot be viewed as a comprehensive solution even to the assault on Gaza for the past 15 months, unless justice is secured through meaningful accountability. The Zionist Israeli government, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, fascist settler officials Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, and military commanders, officers and soldiers throughout the ranks of the occupation forces, must be held liable for genocide and crimes against humanity through international courts. The US government and other allied imperialist governments must also face the consequences of their complicity in Israel’s crimes for funding and supporting the systemic abuses against the Palestinian people. Every state which has signed and ratified the Geneva Convention is duty bound to prosecute those responsible for violating the Conventions.
In this context, we also note that multiple Western countries have enacted, intensified or utilized repressive legal and criminal structures in order to penalize and criminalize activism against the genocide, itself a form of aiding and abetting genocide. Not only are Palestinian resistance organizations characterized as “terrorist,” so, too, are campaigners, journalists and organizers protesting Israeli genocide. In Britain, journalists’ homes have been raided and activists charged under the Terrorism Act; thousands of students were arrested across the United States; in the United States, Canada and Germany, the Samidoun network in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners were banned or sanctioned; thousands of people in Germany face criminal charges for saying “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and Palestinian refugees are facing particular repression, including deportation, denial of asylum and stripping of residency, in multiple European countries. We urge our legal community to join in defending the rights of people to oppose genocide and support Palestinian liberation and self-determination and in holding those accountable who have aided and abetted genocide through repressive legislation and violations of rights and liberties.
A ceasefire amid 77 years of genocide
We must remind ourselves that this is not a simple truce between equals but a pause in Israel’s ongoing occupation and genocide against the Palestinian people: an occupying power dispossessing a nation fighting for survival. The statistics themselves paint a clear and harrowing picture of the past 15 months: according to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 46,000 Palestinians were killed while tens of thousands more were injured. The Gaza Government Media Office declared that around 34 hospitals and 80 health centers across Gaza have been rendered nonfunctional. Over a million Palestinians remain internally displaced, enduring inhumane conditions amidst bombings and blockades.
Neither the struggle for the liberation of Palestine nor the genocide against the Palestinian people began only on October 7, 2023. That was just one moment in a decades-long struggle for freedom and liberation. This can be traced back over 77 years ago to the Nakba, when Israel’s settler-colonial project began systematically displacing Palestinians from their homes. Since then, the Israeli government has continued to violate international humanitarian law through collective punishment, apartheid policies, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and genocide.
It must be emphasized that the right to resist is enshrined in international humanitarian law, and the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation is not terrorism but a fight for their very existence.
The role of the United States in the occupation
The United States, ironically one of the mediators in the ceasefire, has been complicit in this occupation. Israel has been the largest recipient of US military aid since World War II, receiving billions annually to sustain their military operations. The military and financial support directly undermines the peace efforts the US claims to champion, but this is nothing new. By providing Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover, the US has breached their own Arms Export Control Act, Leahy Law, and other international agreements on peace. The US-Israel’s violent pursuit of their geopolitical interests has been an enabling factor behind this occupation, and both governments must be held liable for their crimes.
Towards justice, accountability, self-determination and national liberation
While the ceasefire is indeed a step in the right direction, thanks to the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza, it is a fragile and temporary measure. Genuine peace cannot be realized without justice, without accountability for the perpetrators and without the liberation of Palestine and full self-determination of the Palestinian people. World governments must go beyond lip service and address the roots of this anti-colonial struggle. Some of the most immediate and urgent needs include:
- Ending the occupation and blockades: The Israeli government must immediately lift the illegal blockades on Gaza and end their military occupation of Palestine. This includes the immediate implementation of the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion, underlining the illegality of the occupation of Palestine. Here we equally demand that the Israeli state must withdraw all of its occupation forces from Lebanon and Syria, and immediately cease its attacks and threats of war on Yemen, Iran and other nations. This includes the full imposition of a two-way arms embargo on Israel by all countries.
- Accountability under international law: Israel, and all of its allied nations, must be held accountable for war crimes and violations of peace conventions. International justice mechanisms must ensure impartial investigations with meaningful and real consequences for those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially the crime of genocide. We urge the legal community to join in efforts to prosecute those responsible for genocide in the International Criminal Court and in courts around the world, through local legislation and universal jurisdiction.
- Liberation of all political prisoners and accountability for torture: All Palestinian political prisoners must be freed from Israeli jails, as well as prisoners for Palestine in French, U.S. and other international jails, and those responsible for ordering their torture, abuse and inhuman treatment must be held accountable.
- Reparations for victims and survivors: Reparations, reconstructions, and rehabilitation efforts must be funded by the Israeli government and their allies.
- Respect for Palestinian self-determination: The Palestinian people must be immediately enabled by all means to exercise their inalienable rights to self-determination, including their right to resist, their independence, sovereignty and statehood in the land of Palestine, practice full sovereignty in an internationally recognized state of Palestine, and we emphasize their right to determine their own government, political representation and future. This further includes ending the criminalization and unjust proscription of Palestinian, Lebanese and Yemeni political parties and liberation movements.
- An end to civil, political and criminal state repression against the Palestine movement: Sanctions, criminalization, violations of labor rights and targeting of organizations and activists working to end genocide in Palestine have dramatically escalated in Western countries during the escalated genocide in Gaza. These tactics aim to provide support for the Israeli regime and its ongoing genocide; we call for an immediate end of these forms of repression and upon the legal community to act in defense of those persecuted.
Palestine as a symbol of anti-imperialist struggles
The Palestinian people’s struggle is emblematic of movements against imperialism. Their fight for liberation resonates with oppressed peoples across the globe. That is why it should be unsurprising why the international community does not hesitate to continuously show their support to free Palestine from Zionism and imperialism. The International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) reaffirms our solidarity with the Palestinian people and calls on all legal professionals, activists, and peace-loving individuals to join the global struggle for just peace, liberation, and self-determination.
The IADL demands the international community to take concrete steps to dismantle systems of oppression and wars of aggression. Peace may be fragile, but justice is its strongest foundation. Let us work collectively to ensure that the ceasefire becomes a first step, not the last, in a journey towards the Palestinian people’s liberation.