‘Celebrate the ceasefire, but don’t forget that Gaza survived on its own’
On November 7, 2023, children stood before cameras at al-Shifa Hospital and spoke in English, not their mother tongue, but in the language of those they thought might save them.
“We want to live, we want peace, we want to judge the killers of children,” one boy said. “We want medicine, food and education. We want to live as other children live.”
Even then, barely a month into the genocide, they had no clean drinking water, no food and no medicine. They begged in the colonisers’ language because they thought it might make their humanity legible.
I wonder how many of those children are dead now, how many never made it to this moment of “peace”, and whether they died still believing the world might answer their call.
Now, almost two years later, President Trump posts that he is “very proud” of the signing of the first phase of his “peace plan”.
Gaza Media Office says 5,000 public operations carried out in 24 hours
According to a statement by the office, the missions conducted over the past day to improve the life of Palestinians in Gaza included:
- About 1,200 medical and health missions, treating the wounded and sick, and monitoring the injured and chronically ill.
- More than 850 rescue and relief missions carried out by the Gaza Civil Defence, police, and municipal teams, recovering bodies, removing rubble and securing destroyed areas.
- More than 900 service missions to restore water and sewage lines, remove rubble and waste, and open streets in various residential neighbourhoods.
- Approximately 700 humanitarian missions for distribution of food parcels.
- More than 650 community missions in shelters and field schools to organise psychosocial support operations for children and vulnerable groups.
- More than 700 logistical, organisational and media missions related to the delivery of aid, the documentation of field activities and the provision of accurate data to local and international bodies.
