On today’s show, host Allen Ruff speaks with friend of the program, Mouin Rabbani, about the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and where it might lead. According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, Israeli forces have violated the terms of the ceasefire at least 80 times, killing dozens of Palestinians since the ceasefire was announced on October 10.
Rabbani describes the first stage of the ceasefire, which includes the exchange of captives, surge of humanitarian aid, partial withdrawal of Israel forces from the Gaza Strip, and the cessation of hostilities. He says that Israel has violated all these terms and the exchange has been partial. Hamas has released all remaining living Israeli hostages and has begun returning the bodies of deceased hostages. Israel says that it will not proceed to stage two of the ceasefire until Hamas releases all of the bodies, but refuses to allow access to the heavy equipment necessary to unearth the bodies from the rubble in Gaza. The US is pushing for advancing to the second stage, which would include discussions of governance. Rabbani says that nowhere in the agreements is accountability addressed.
They also discuss Israel’s promotion of inter-Palestinian conflict, the reason the ceasefire was organized  in response to Israel’s bombing of Qatar, Tony Blair’s role in the ceasefire, and how the genocide in Gaza is leading to increased violence in the West Bank. Rabbani says that decades of dehumanization of Palestinians means that they aren’t depicted as hostages or victims of genocide.

Mouin Rabbani is an expert on Palestinian affairs, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He’s currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. Rabbani is co-editor of the e-magazine Jadaliyya and a Contributing Editor to the Middle East Report. He’s written widely and provided expert analysis to a variety of international and US national press, including Al-Jazeera, The Nation, and Democracy Now!.
Featured image of a 2024 Stop the Genocide protest in Helsinki, Finland via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
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