“There is no peace and there is no plan,” Dr. Mustafa Barghouti emphasized during a discussion hosted by the People’s Health Movement (PHM) on Sunday, October 19, speaking about the situation in Palestine following the announcement of a ceasefire earlier this month. Together with Dr. Hanne Bosselaers and Aziz Rhali, both health workers and participants in recent attempts to break Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza by sea, Barghouti addressed ongoing Israeli crimes and the need for international solidarity movements to keep mobilizing.

The outline proposed by US President Donald Trump, Barghouti argued, “does not mention once the necessity to end occupation. It does not mention the right of self-determination for the Palestinian people. It does not mention the right of the Palestinian people to be free and have a state of their own.”

Read more: Trump says Gaza ceasefire still in place after Israel kills over 100

All of these things, however, remain at the heart of the Palestinian liberation struggle, he said, and they rely also on international solidarity. According to Barghouti, it was this sustained global mobilization that pressured both the US and the Israeli government to reduce the intensity of the assault on Gaza. “I think the ceasefire happened only because of two factors: the steadfastness and heroism of the people of Gaza – of the Palestinian people in general – but also because of the international solidarity movement, which has become a revolution, a true revolution,” he stated.

Israeli abductions fail to break health workers’ solidarity

Bosselaers and Rhali have been active contributors to that movement, particularly over the past two years, including through their participation in the Global Sumud Flotilla and Conscience missions. Although both were illegally intercepted in international waters and kidnapped by Israeli forces on separate days, their experiences following these illegal acts have a lot in common.

“Every hour during the night, they came to wake us up just to count us,” Rhali described how Israeli soldiers tried to exhaust and break the determination of flotilla participants. “When we started protesting because one of us needed insulin, they refused to give it to him. They came armed, with dogs, to tell us we were simply being counted and that they weren’t going to give insulin to terrorists.”

Read more: Pharmacist on board the Global Sumud Flotilla: “Health workers’ solidarity with Palestine must be practiced on the ground”

“They tried everything in that prison to discourage us, to humiliate us, to make us afraid, to break us, but that didn’t work,” Bosselaers added. “We stayed dignified and kept thinking about all the Palestinian prisoners just one wall away from us.”

Bosselaers was one of more than 90 health and media workers aboard the Conscience, whose mission included exposing the deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists and medical staff since October 2023. “When you are committing a genocide, you don’t want anyone to witness it or bring out the truth, that’s why more than 250 journalists were killed in Gaza,” she said. “And if you want to perpetuate a genocide, you don’t want people saving lives, so all health workers, all hospitals were heavily targeted – more than 1,500 health workers were killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023.”

Attacks on healthcare in Palestine continue

Despite the ceasefire agreement, Israeli attacks on Gaza’s health system continue in other forms. “It was completely heartbreaking to see [Palestinian Medical Relief Society] structures and clinics we spent 30 years building destroyed in just a couple of minutes,” Barghouti said. Equally painful is knowing that occupation forces still block the entry of essential equipment and medicine, and prevent thousands of Palestinians in need of care from seeking treatment abroad. “They are preventing the passage of medical materials and medicines that we need very badly,” he emphasized. “They are preventing any construction materials from reaching Gaza, and you know most of the infrastructure there is destroyed.”

“Nobody should think the war in Gaza is over, it’s still going on,” Barghouti warned, adding that the so-called peace plan celebrated by Western leaders is an insult to Palestinians, particularly where it envisions foreign rule over the Gaza Strip. “Why do we need foreign rulers? We struggled for decades against British colonialism and now we’re struggling against Israeli colonialism, certainly not just to have another foreign body ruling us in Gaza.”

Instead, Barghouti said, the focus must remain on maintaining international pressure through grassroots movements and workers’ solidarity. He referred to the recent general strikes in Italy and mass protests in Spain, France, and elsewhere as examples of how the Western working class can play a role in ending Israel’s impunity. “We need to enhance the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against the Israeli occupation,” he said. “Because our goal is not just to end the war on Gaza. Our goal is to achieve freedom. Our goal is to end occupation. Our goal is to end the system of apartheid that we are subjected to.”

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch*. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, click* here.

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