In mid-January of 2025, a ceasefire was agreed to in the Gaza strip. This deal could have been made much sooner, indeed it is the same agreement that was proposed in May of 2024. The simple truth was that Israel did not want an agreement and had to be forced into one.
Gazans return North.
Trump's negotiation team apparently gave the Israelis no choice but to agree to a ceasefire. This is a huge indictment of the Biden administration's handling of the situation. Biden and Blinken could have stopped the onslaught many months ago. Instead, they ran cover for the Israelis and smeared the Palestinians with blood libels. It was not the Gazan resistance groups that didn't want a ceasefire, it was Israel the entire time.
The IDF withdrew from Gaza in mid-January, leaving behind their destructive aftermath. They left behind razed neighborhoods and cities. Deliberate bulldozing, bombing and controlled demolitions to ensure that the Palestinians had nothing to come back to. Under the rubble are thousands of now skeletonized bodies that could not be retrieved.
Harrowing photographs of the return of Gazans to the North of the strip show them among rubble. Skeletons litter the ground.
In the coming months and years the true death toll will become known as bodies are slowly recovered. With few pieces of machinery left to excavate and no concrete mix coming into the Gaza strip, this will be a slow process.
