What I hear from my home in Beer Sheva

Yesterday, the news came that Israel has again come up with some pretext or another to embark on a mass killing spree in Gaza (with over a hundred casualties, many of them children).

I didn't need to follow the news to know something was happening. From where I live, inside the belly of the beast, I could hear the warplanes and feel the quaking of the explosions. Indeed, yesterday wasn't even all that special in this respect. All this murderous activity continues despite the ceasefire that was declared a couple of weeks ago, albeit at a slightly smaller intensity than before.

As an activist, I also know that the Israeli military continues calling up a large number of reservists with emergency call-up warrants. New Profile, the WRI affiliate I am part of, continues receiving a large number of calls for help from people being called up in this way, all through the supposed ceasefire. I personally spoke to two such reservists about options for avoiding recruitment just a day earlier.

I also know that, despite the supposed ceasefire, journalists from outside the Gaza Strip continue to be blocked from entering the territory (while local journalists continue to be targeted for assasination). A solid presence of journalists from all over the world, exposing what is going on in Gaza even to the mainstream media audiences that would rather not know, would actually be an effective guarantee against a full resumption of the killing, more effective than this or that statement coming from Donald Trump or his entourage. But the block on journalists entering Gaza continues as before.

All this tells me that - despite all the fancy ceremonies with "world leaders" in Egypt - the extermination campaign against the Palestinians of Gaza has not ended . It is, at most, a temporary lull. As far as Israel is concerned, the extermination campaign and, more broadly, the genocide of the Palestinian people (which has been going on, at varying levels of intensity, since the Palestinian nakba began in 1947) still continues. It is way too early to put this episode behind us.