After two years of relentless bombardment, starvation, and displacement, Gaza’s fragile ceasefire feels less like peace and more like a pause between acts of tragedy. The guns have fallen silent for now, but the air still hums with the memory of drones and the grief of a people brutalized into exhaustion. Israel’s continuing violations of the truce are a reminder that restraint, for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, remains an alien concept.
On Monday, the Muslim world spoke with rare unity. In Istanbul, foreign ministers from Pakistan, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Indonesia, Qatar, and Jordan demanded Israel’s immediate withdrawal from occupied Gaza and the full implementation of the October 9 ceasefire agreement. Their words carried the weight of nations that have watched, horrified and powerless, as two years of systematic destruction have unfolded under the world’s watch.
That it took so long — and that it required the intervention of a U.S. administration desperate for a diplomatic win — underscores the moral bankruptcy of the international order. For too long, the suffering of Palestinians has been rationalized as collateral damage in Israel’s “security operations.” For too long, Western capitals have extended unconditional support to a government whose policies are openly grounded in vengeance and ethnic supremacy.
The world’s patience — especially that of Muslim nations — is wearing dangerously thin. The language emerging from Ankara, Doha, and Islamabad is no longer one of quiet diplomacy but of insistence. The demand is simple: an end to occupation, accountability for war crimes, and the birth of a Palestinian state that can finally breathe without foreign tutelage. The Muslim bloc’s coordination with Washington on a stabilization force for Gaza may yet offer a glimmer of pragmatic hope, but it will mean little if Israel continues to flout international law with impunity.
The moral stain of Gaza is not just Israel’s; it belongs also to those who armed it, shielded it at the United Nations, and rationalized its brutality as “self-defense.” Netanyahu’s coalition — an alliance of zealots intoxicated by blood and messianic delusion — has turned Gaza into a proving ground for cruelty. His ministers, men like Itamar Ben-Gvir, treat Palestinian suffering as spectacle and policy alike.
For Gaza, for the millions still trapped in rubble and ruin, justice remains distant. Yet the Istanbul meeting offered a glimmer of moral clarity. The Muslim world may not have the leverage to end the occupation overnight, but its collective voice — sharpened by grief and outrage — is beginning to resonate. It must not be silenced again by Western double standards or diplomatic delay.
A ceasefire delayed by two years is no victory. It is merely a reprieve — and one the world cannot allow to collapse back into carnage.
