AFTER prosecuting the most intense ethnic cleansing exercise in modern historyfor15months,TelAvivandWashington have finally agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza. The pact, brokered by Qatar`s emirs, provides for temporary cessation of hostilities, alongside vague claims that a permanent settlement will be worked out.

However uncertain, the ceasefire deal has stoked celebrations amongst Gaza`s 2.5 million residents. The world`s largest concentration camp has been largely reduced to rubble, with almost 50,000 Palestinians killed and many more maimed. Even imagining a silencing of guns feels liberating.

For all of the Zionist war crimes perpetrated since October 2023, the Palestinian people continue to exist. Their struggle to survive has been supported by a wide cross-section of people globally, many of whom have been on the streets, putting up encampments and organising other solidarity protests. The ceasefire, then, is not just relief from the brutalisation inflicted by Israel, it is in fact a victory of popular resistance to Zionism and imperialism.

However, there can be no romanticising the lived reality of what remains an ongoing colonial occupation. Over the past 15 months, the Israeli war machine has taken the carte blanche it received from the `free world` after Oct 7, 2023, to intensify its apartheid rule in Gaza and the West Bank, and then extend its violence to Lebanon, and most recently, post-Assad Syria. No friend of the Palestinians should harbour any delusion that Israel and its imperialist patron will relinquish the military gains they have made following the ceasefire.

Indeed, all indications are that the Netanyahu regime will do all it can to displace Hamas as the main arbiter of power in Gaza, a position the organisation has occupied for the best part of two decades.

It should not be forgotten that Israel has waged war on Gaza numerous times since the turn of the century. It has repeatedly tried to cut Hamas down to size and turn it into something akin to the Palestinian Authority which meekly accedes to relentless settlement-building in the West Bank.

So while the ceasefire may bring a halt to explicit, genocidal violence, the everyday violence of the occupation will remain as exacting as ever. Check-posts to police the mobility of Palestinians litter the occupied territories. The Zionist regime continues to manipulate the supply of essential goods and services to Gaza and the West Bank alike. And huge numbers of Palestinians are still forced into dehumanising forms of labour serving Israeli capital.

Seasoned observers of Palestinian poli-tics have understood Hamas` actions on Oct 7, 2023, as an audacious attempt to dramatically reconfigure the relationship between the colonised subject by the colonising power. Hamas and the Palestinian resistance at large knew they could not defeat Israel and that the Netanyahu government would respond with excessive, brutal force. But thrusting the cause of Palestinian liberation back into the global consciousness was imperative.

Time will tell whether Hamas and the resistance at large will emerge stronger or weaker than the pre-Oct 7 conjuncture.

Either way, the last 15 months have given a fresh lease of life to the project of Palestinian national liberation so no matter which Palestinian faction rules Gaza, it will not be the pliant puppet Israel craves.

Meanwhile the legitimacy of the socalled US-led `rules-based order` now lies in tatters, with more and more people around the world opposed not only to the occupation of Palestine but also to their own ruling classes and increasingly bankruptforms of representative `democracy`.

It is, of course, also true that the disillusionment with the international system as well as the contemporary nation-state is not translating into the emergence of progressive alternatives at a global scale. Itis the right wing that largely benefits from the excess liberal imperialism and its lackeys. Will this change? Can the solidarity that so many people have expressed with Palestine become the lightning rod for a broader shift in the tone and tenor of politics? Could a new non-aligned movement be on the cards? Might we see the emergence of a genuine alternative to the global capitalist order? Even if the current state of the world engenders intellectual pessimism, history can still be shaped by people`s will over and above the military-industrial-media establishments that over-determine the mainstream political sphere. In the first instance, this means recognition that the ceasefire is a temporary respite, and that we must in fact double down in support of Palestinian liberation as well as the struggle of oppressed peoples everywhere. We can still build an emancipatory future beyond the rule of capital, imperialism and ecological breakdown. • The wnter teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.