Israel announced on Thursday (9) that all parties had signed the final version of the first phase of an agreement with Hamas for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli prisoners, in what it claimed would end the Palestinian genocide that marked two years on Tuesday (7).
The president of the Palestinian Arab Federation of Brazil (Fepal), Ualid Rabah, said the deal announced between Israel and Hamas, mediated by U.S. President Donald Trump, is not a peace plan but a truce that maintains occupation and ignores the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. “This is not a peace agreement, only a ceasefire,” Rabah said in an interview with Radio BdF.
“Trump says all prisoners will be released, but this only applies to Israelis. Palestinians remain behind bars: more than 26,000 are illegally detained, between those in the West Bank and in Gaza,” he stressed. According to him, the plan seeks to “deceive global public opinion” by presenting prisoner exchanges as the central issue of the conflict. “Israel never wanted an exchange. The goal was to destroy the Palestinian population and push it back to the Stone Age,” he denounced.
Regarding the mediating countries, Rabah recalled that Egypt had already proposed back in March a ceasefire tied to reconstruction and progress toward a two-state solution. The new proposal, he argued, “does not mention whether Gaza will be unblocked, nor whether there will be full withdrawal from the territory.”
“Trump’s text does not mention the West Bank, the Palestinian state, nor Gaza’s natural resources, which amount to nearly US$1 trillion in gas reserves,” he criticized. “It is a truce that does not resolve the real causes of the Palestinian tragedy,” Rabah summarized.
International pressure and Israel’s retreat
The president of Fepal believes that the ceasefire represents international recognition of the scale of the extermination committed against the Palestinian people. “There are 79,444 exterminated, including more than 11,000 missing under the rubble, the equivalent of 3.57% of Gaza’s population,” Rabah said. “The entire world has seen this genocide and Israel’s ugly face, which has also become the ugly face of the United States, the guarantors of this extermination, the largest in history,” he added.
For Rabah, Israel’s gesture of accepting a truce stems from international pressure. He pointed to a recent statement Trump gave to Fox News, in which the U.S. president reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “Israel cannot fight against the world.” Rabah concluded: “Netanyahu understands this perfectly. The world no longer accepts this genocide.”
