The intractable search for peace in Gaza

An Israeli attack on Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza on May 22, 2026, as posted on X by Drop Site News.

My new article on my website, The Intractable Search for Peace in Gaza, is my detailed analysis of the current situation in the Gaza Strip, after Nickolay Mladenov, a former UN official and the “High Representative of Gaza” in Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace”, insisted that no reconstruction will take place in Gaza without the complete disarmament of Hamas, even though Hamas never agreed to that, and even though the humanitarian situation in Gaza, as controlled by Israel, remains dire.

The leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian factions only agreed to the ceasefire last October on the basis that a particular requirement of the first phase of the deal — the regular delivery of adequate humanitarian aid to support the surviving population — would be confirmed before discussion would begin on a second phase, including disarmament.

The delivery of aid has, however, been woefully and deliberately inadequate, and the demand for Hamas’ disarmament has also run up against a refusal by the Israelis to allow the entry into Gaza of the members of the Palestinian technocratic committee appointed under the “Board of Peace” to undertake the day-to-day running of Gaza, to whom Hamas were prepared to hand over most of their weapons.

Instead, the Palestinians are being sidelined, and are then being blamed for not fulfilling obligations that they never agreed to, as their hopes for Palestinian sovereignty are ignored, and Mladenov’s actions appear only to take account of Israel’s interests.

Despite his protestations to the contrary, he seems to be entrenching a jaw-droppingly unacceptable warping of the history of the last 31 months in which Hamas are perceived as the only aggressor, and Israel’s responsibility for an ongoing genocide is cynically swept aside.

As I describe it, “All of this is particularly sickening because it erases Israel’s culpability for the genocide, and portrays the only threat in Gaza as being Hamas, continuing the false narrative that the only terrorists in the region are Hamas — rather than Israel — and that the only party to blame for all the death and destruction of the last 31 months are, yet again, Hamas.”

My article draws extensively on interviews by Drop Site News with senior Hamas officials, and also on an article in Haaretz by Tania Hery, the head of an Israeli NGO supporting the Palestinians, pointing out the complicity of the west in the ongoing humanitarian disaster.

As I ask in my closing paragraph, “Will the west stand up and insist that, before anything else, Israel must fulfil its humanitarian requirements to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, or will they blindly follow Nickolay Mladenov in insisting that this basic obligation to keep the population of Gaza alive — before all the necessary discussions about disarmament and a just transition of power in Gaza, from which the Palestinians themselves must not be excluded — cannot take place until Hamas is completely disarmed, as though it is still, perpetually, eternally, October 7, 2023, and the genocide of the last 31 months continues to be largely irrelevant, or is even somehow magicked away?”

I hope you have time to read my article in its entirety here.

Other new posts to read

I’ve been posting a number of Notes over the last few days, which have been well received, so please feel free to check them out if you haven’t seen them. Many of them deal with the recent kidnapping and abuse of flotilla activists, seized in international waters and illegally brought to Israel.

US drops sanctions against Francesca Albanese, but commits to try to reinstate them

The brazenness of Israel’s brutal treatment of 430 kidnapped flotilla activists

“We were not human to them”: Irish president’s sister recounts abuse of Gaza flotilla activists

The startling severity of Gaza flotilla activists’ rape allegations

My photo marking 8,900 days of Guantánamo’s existence

And please see here for photos of campaigners around the world marking this shameful milestone in Guantánamo’s history.

Please support my work if you can

If you can, please support me as a reader-funded independent journalist and activist, who is entirely dependent on your generosity to enable me to continue my work, which is now in its 21st year. This is the 84th article I’ve written about Israel’s genocide in Gaza over the last 31 months, and feel free to check out the whole archive here.

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