[News] If Gaza resistance ends: What history tells us about the Palestinian fate

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Comments <https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/>
If Gaza resistance ends: What history tells us about the Palestinian fate
Ramzy Baroud <https://english.palinfo.com/authors/ramzy-baroud>

Thursday 11-December-2025

US President Donald Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ is reportedly set to be
announced before the year’s end. This news coincides with increasing
reports that the US administration is serious about pushing forward the
second phase of the Gaza ceasefire.

However, many critical questions remain unanswered. How can a governing
council be superimposed on Gaza when Palestinians are unified in their
rejection of any new form of Western mandate over their lives?

Furthermore, how can the proposed ‘International Stabilization Force’ (ISF)
operate in Gaza without total clarity regarding its mission? If the ISF
ends up serving primarily as an Israeli line of defense, the entire project
will collapse before it begins.

Neither Arab nor Muslim countries will seriously engage in subduing
Palestinians on behalf of Israel. Any other participating force will
inevitably be treated by Palestinians as an occupation force.

The main obstacle, however, is the fact that Israel has never truly
respected the first phase of the ceasefire, which began, in theory, on
October 10. Since that date, Israeli forces have killed over 360
Palestinians and wounded hundreds more, while demolishing thousands of
residential structures, according to satellite images verified by the BBC.

Worse, Israel has habitually bombed targets beyond the ‘Yellow Line’, which
was designated as the Palestinian area where humanitarian aid is allowed to
flow and people are meant to return to some kind of normalcy, despite
Gaza’s near-total destruction.

Israel is hoping to make the first phase of the agreement a permanent one.
This intent is evident in the continued bombings, the prevention of
life-saving supplies and aid, and the constant, unsubstantiated accusations
that Palestinians are the ones violating the ceasefire.

It is expected that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will make the
disarmament of Gaza the main sticking point, knowing in advance that Gaza
will not surrender its weapons. He has made this clear and repeatedly so,
including on 15 November, when he stated that “Hamas will be disarmed —
either the easy way or the hard way”.

But what if Gaza agrees to surrender its weapons? Will Israel leave the
Palestinians alone? Will the prospects of a just peace and Palestinian
freedom increase exponentially? To address this question, let’s delve very
quickly into three experiences, two from history.

Palestinian and even some Israeli historians have argued that, during the
ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine, the Nakba, Israel had the intention
of depopulating the country regardless of whether Palestinians resisted or
not.

The implementation of Plan Dalet, the operation aimed at expelling the
Palestinian population, was in no way related to the method or intensity of
Palestinian resistance to Zionist militia violence.

In fact, the framework of that expulsion was predicated on the use of war
as a pretext, as opposed to war as a response to Palestinian resistance.
“The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it
happen, such as a war,” wrote Zionist leader and Israel’s first prime
minister at the time, David Ben-Gurion.

Though some Mukhtars (village leaders) assumed that no resistance meant
that they would be spared the same fate as those who resisted, they were
wrong. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe writes: “Whereas the official Plan
Dalet gave the villages the option to surrender, the operational orders did
not exempt any village for any reason”.

The same pattern was repeated throughout history. In 1982, after a
US-brokered agreement to evacuate Palestinian PLO forces out of Lebanon,
the assumption was that their departure would keep the Israeli army from
attacking Palestinian civilians.

Indeed, on 21 August 1982, PLO factions began leaving the country, leaving
the camps undefended and their Lebanese allies vulnerable. However, Israeli
violence in West Beirut had grown, not subsided, leading in September 1982
to the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which killed up to 3,500 Palestinian
refugees and Lebanese civilians.

All the promises by Washington, the supposed ‘guarantees’, and the
diplomatic language of US envoy Philip Habib, who acted as the President’s
Special Envoy, meant absolutely nothing, as Israel helped facilitate one of
history’s most brutal massacres.

And, of course, there is the ongoing saga of the West Bank itself, which,
unlike Gaza, lacks armed resistance infrastructure and is administered by
the Palestinian Authority (PA), which operates based on an
Israeli-US-Western mandate.

Yet, even before the Gaza genocide, the West Bank’s suffering had grown,
its land confiscated, entire communities ethnically cleansed, whole refugee
camps destroyed, and hundreds of residents killed.

Between 7 October 2023, and late 2025, UN and human rights reports indicate
that Israeli forces and settlers killed over 1,000 Palestinians in the West
Bank, including East Jerusalem (more than 200 children). Thousands more
were injured, and Israeli authorities destroyed or confiscated thousands of
Palestinian-owned structures, displacing many. Additionally, an estimated
10,000 Palestinians from the West Bank were arrested between October 2023
and August 2024.

If Israel’s genocide in Gaza is entirely motivated by the desire to crush
the armed groups, then why the continued crushing of the West Bank?

Those who continue to entertain the Israeli narrative regarding Gaza must
confront this historical record and acknowledge two crucial, enduring
realities. First, Israel’s violence is fundamentally driven by its
settler-colonial ambitions, not merely by Palestinian resistance. Second,
Palestinian resistance is a deeply rooted historical imperative — the
native population’s determined struggle for self-liberation from foreign
occupation.

Only by abandoning the reductionist language that frames Israeli wars as
simple responses to armed groups can we arrive at a profound understanding
of events in Palestine, Israel’s true motives, and the legitimacy of the
Palestinian struggle.

*-Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine
Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His forthcoming book, ‘Before the
Flood,’ will be published by Seven Stories Press. His other books include
‘Our Vision for Liberation’, ‘My Father was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The
Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center
for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA).*
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