In an emotional essay, former Palestinian negotiator Diana Buttu reacts to the ceasefire announcement, what it means for Palestinians, and what still worries her.
By Diana Buttu, Reposted from Zeteo, October 09, 2025
No one is happier that Israel’s bombs will stop than the Palestinians. No one. We can finally start to try to locate and bury our dead, collecting our loved ones from beneath the rubble, and begin to comprehend, collectively, what we went through for the past two years. Every day, for two years, we have held one another, physically and with our words, shielding one another from unending gaslighting and dehumanization. We have watched the most sophisticated technology transformed into the most merciless killing machines, shredding children’s bodies with cruelty I never imagined I would ever see. We saw anew what happened to our parents and grandparents in the last century, with this callous destruction of the remains of Palestine at the hands of people who have never cared for it. I am elated and relieved that it may be over. We all are. I can breathe. We can breathe.
Yet, I am worried.
For almost two weeks, since President Donald Trump announced his 20-point plan, I have been explaining, over and over again, how repulsive it is that Palestinians have been required to negotiate an end to their own genocide. Let us be clear: no “agreement” or negotiation ever should have been required in the first place. Really? Palestinians need to negotiate an end to their famine with the very country that is deliberately starving them, bombing them, and reducing their homes to smithereens like fish in a barrel, and advocating our ethnic cleansing? With a country that has blocked at least 50 ships carrying humanitarian aid and kidnapped hundreds from international waters, all to prevent them from giving formula to babies in Gaza? Really? Genocide mandates for every country around the world to intervene to stop Israel, not for the victims to “negotiate” with Israel to spare them.
And so here we are. The latest agreement requires that Israel withdraw from parts, but not all, of Gaza, and that the Israeli captives be handed over in exchange for Palestinians. Aid will be “flooded” into Gaza. Sounds eerily familiar, right? Indeed, it is. This is substantially the same agreement that was signed in January 2025 and that Israel decided to break in March 2025.
But let’s get down to the granular specifics. Why is Israel still allowed to decide how much aid gets into Gaza? Will Israel, as it has done before, prevent a long laundry list of arbitrary items from entering Gaza, or determine the size of the cargo, including the height of pellets of aid? Will it impose endless delays and do all in its power to interfere with the delivery of even more desperately needed assistance? Of course it will. And who will push back against this? Trump, possibly with a shiny new Nobel Prize, obtained only after he aided, abetted, and funded Israel’s genocide (and bombed Iran), only to then stop the genocide in the nick of time to be considered for the prize? With or without a Nobel Peace Prize, it is highly doubtful he will do anything to pressure Israel – his track record speaks for itself. What about when Israel refuses to fully withdraw from Gaza? Who will demand that Israel do that? And what about when Israel continues to fire drones, bombs, and other lethal weapons into Gaza? Who is going to stop Israel from doing that? The answer is no one. Because if the collective international community did not stop Israel from committing genocide, it appears certain that it will not stop Israel when it continues to perpetrate daily acts of extreme violence against Palestinians. It is now expected that we should endure this; this has become the new normal.
For two years, we heard about Israeli hostages and saw the wrath that Israel meted out with the professed aim of getting those hostages back. More than 11,000 Palestinians, the vast majority hostages (and yes, they are hostages because many have not been charged with any offense and are held incommunicado), are held by Israel today. These include doctors like Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, head of the Kamal Adwan hospital, journalists, including Ali Samoudi, who was with Shireen Abu Akleh when she was murdered by an Israeli sniper in 2022, at least 400 children, and so many more. How will our hostages ever get home? What about the bodies of over 720 Palestinians, most held from long before October 2023, which Israel continues to hold hostage? When will these bodies be returned to us for dignified burial?
Applying Israel’s logic (not mine), if it is permissible to execute or injure around 20% of Gaza’s population, deliberately flatten the largest Palestinian city, destroy 90% of Palestinian homes, attack every hospital and school for 248 Israeli hostages, what is a permissible action to secure the release of 11,000 Palestinian hostages? And here lies the problem: if the world turns its eyes away from Palestine as I fear it will now that there is an “agreement” and the parties are “negotiating,” then global public outrage and momentum demanding that Israel be held to account will dissipate. By being permitted to negotiate for what must never be required to be negotiated, Israel will literally get away with genocide.
Haifa-based lawyer & analyst Diana Buttu was a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in the early 2000s, is a frequent commentator & writer on Palestinian and Israeli issues, & is the author of Zeteo’s Diary From a Palestinian in Israel.
RELATED:
- Israel’s Systematic Crimes Against Palestinian Detainees
- Gaza’s children face genetic harm ‘for generations to come’ from Israel’s genocide
- Western media’s pre-existing condition? Gaza atrocity denialism
- 15 reasons why UN experts say Trump’s Gaza plan breaches int’l law, and other startling revelations
- The destruction of Gaza City is a crime against history
