BARNEY MTHOMBOTHI | Gaza ‘ceasefire deal’ lays bare the breathtaking hypocrisy of Western leaders

A most cynical thing happened this week. Western leaders assembled in Sharm El-Sheikh, the picturesque Egyptian tourist city on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, to congratulate themselves on a job well done.

The occasion was the signing of the “Gaza ceasefire deal”. First of all, this name is misleading and is just an attempt to pull the wool over people’s eyes. There was never a war in Gaza. Never one that would have necessitated a peace deal. Israel invaded the place, killing and destroying with impunity. The numbers are pretty staggering. As of October 7 — the second anniversary of the massacre of Israeli citizens by Hamas — an estimated 70,100 civilians have been killed, about 19,000 of them children, some barely a day old. Other victims include 217 journalists and other media workers, 120 academics, 224 aid workers, and 179 UN employees. Destruction of infrastructure has been no less astounding. Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland — hospitals, schools, places of worship, shelters and ordinary amenities have not been spared. People have even been bombed while queueing for food.

They didn’t need a peace deal to stop the slaughter. All they had to do was switch off the supply of weapons

But Israel would not have been able to achieve all this by itself. It accomplished the task with the active financial and moral support of primarily the bumptious Americans, the guilt-ridden Germans, the duplicitous French, and of course the British, who are in fact the real villains of the piece. They all funded the slaughter. They own it. But they did more than that. They harassed and silenced those among their own citizens who, outraged by the stance taken by their governments, stood up and protested against the absolute horror visited on an unarmed Palestinian population. Support for Israel’s actions became almost mandatory in many Western countries. Opposing them disqualifies an applicant for a US visa, for instance. On taking office, President Donald Trump urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish the job” and proceeded to give him all the aid he needed. Not that he needed any encouragement; Netanyahu duly obliged. Trump now wants the world to believe he’s a peacemaker.

Amid the splendour of Sharm El-Sheikh, a stark contrast to the wasteland Gaza has been reduced to, the leaders met to congratulate themselves and lap up the adoration of all humanity for having sealed the deal. In other words, the people who supported and funded this needless destruction of thousands of innocent civilians are now lining up to be showered with accolades for mercifully bringing the carnage to an end. The cynicism, the hypocrisy, is simply stunning.

They didn’t need a peace deal to stop the slaughter. All they had to do was switch off the supply of weapons. But they wouldn’t. Instead, no penny was spared to make sure Israel had all it needed to do what it had to do. The piper, you see, calls the tune. The patrons are doing all the dancing.

News from Norway is that its government is bracing itself for a fusillade of tariffs and all manner of retribution if Trump does not win the Nobel Peace Prize for clinching this deal. He’s still smarting from Barack Obama, his nemesis, having been inexplicably awarded the prize before he had even warmed his feet under the Resolute Desk. Trump thinks he’s more deserving. “Give me the Nobel Peace Prize, or else …” But peace and Trump don’t belong in the same sentence. There could be nothing more damaging to the credibility of the Nobel Prize than giving it to him.

Co-chairing the summit with Trump was Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a ruthless autocrat and the unlikely beneficiary of the Arab Spring, who has chopped a few heads himself. No friend of the Palestinians, he has successfully subdued the popular uprising that ejected Hosni Mubarak from power. The bad guys are now firmly in the saddle.

In February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the West was able to marshal international opinion in support of the beleaguered state. But with their unstinting support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza, all that sympathy for Ukraine has dissipated. Their duplicity saw to that. While Vladimir Putin has rightly been condemned for his actions, Netanyahu is feted like he’s a conquering hero — a poster child for Western duplicity. The Russian leader is sought by the International Criminal Court for kidnapping Ukrainian children, but the Israel Defense Forces has killed thousands of children in Gaza with impunity.

Hamas committed an outrageously despicable act on October 7 which cannot be condoned. They, and they alone, should be paying for this atrocity. But for some reason the world seems to have bought the Israeli line that the entire population is to blame and therefore should bear the consequences. Once they realised the price Palestinians were paying with their lives, why on earth didn’t Hamas release the hostages? The suffering of their people is clearly of no concern to them. The Geneva Conventions clearly state that civilians — especially those in occupied territory — and medical personnel should always be protected during wartime. Israel and Hamas don’t seem to have any regard for such niceties. But why kill babies? Why deny them life-sustaining food? One would like to hear what apologists of this genocide have to say to that. A friend said emotive language could only add fuel to the fire, but there’s nothing more awful than babies being starved to death.

Peace at what price? The deal seems tenuous even before the ink has dried. Three people were killed this week by Israeli soldiers for breaching it. In a sense, the dead are the lucky ones. The survivors, tired and bedraggled, will stagger back to what used to be their homes, with the air still thick with the stench of the bodies of loved ones and neighbours rotting under the rubble, and the ruins of their neighbourhood gawking at them. Every day will be a constant reminder of what they’ve been through. Destitute, homeless, orphaned, limbless, they will all carry the terrible scars into a bleak future. It will truly be hell on earth.

Gaza will, for decades, remain an indelible stain, not only on Israel, but on all of humanity.