In both Israel and among its Western allies, the Gaza ceasefire deal is seen as an opportunity – to move on from the accusations of genocide against it, and to restore close relations weakened as a result of public anger.
Over two years of its unrelenting war on Gaza, Israel has killed more than 67,900 Palestinians and injured more than 170,000. It has destroyed or damaged 92 percent of the enclave’s residential housing and its actions in blockading Gaza have led to a famine being declared.
Rights groups, international bodies, and organisations from within Israel, such as B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), have concluded that the country’s actions amount to genocide: a view confirmed by a UN commission of inquiry in September.
By that month, criticism of Israel’s war had reached near consensus across Europe, and millions attended protests against Israel’s actions in world capitals every weekend.
However, marking the ceasefire in the Israeli Knesset on Tuesday, opposition leader Yair Lapid told lawmakers, including United States President Donald Trump: “Those who demonstrated against Israel in London, Rome, Paris … were deceived by propaganda … The truth is, there was no genocide, no intentional starvation.”
Denial
“There is a relatively strong consensus that outside criticism must be dismissed as unjust,” former Israeli government adviser Daniel Levy told Al Jazeera. “This dismissal has been central to manufacturing societal consent for genocide: relentless media mobilisation around the war, coupled with rejection of criticism.”
“This pattern is consistent across almost the entire Zionist political spectrum, save for a small dissident cohort,” he said of the various groups within Israel which opposed the war from the outset.
Across Israel, there remains a refusal to accept the scale of the devastation their war has visited on Gaza, the lives destroyed, and the people – including children – pushed into famine as a consequence of government policies.
According to observers from within Israel, no public reckoning with the human cost of its war looks likely. Without acceptance of that cost, a resumption of hostilities – whatever the international consensus may be – remains possible.
“It’s not as if there’s just no awareness of the genocide in Israel,” Guy Shalev of PHRI told Al Jazeera. “There isn’t even an awareness of the suffering or widespread destruction of Gaza.
“A lot of the conversation is still fixed on [false allegations of] faked footage [of starving children or other potential war crimes] and how it’s all Hamas’s fault,” said Shalev. “Many of us aren’t even living in the same reality. My family and I aren’t even living in the same reality. We can’t agree on what truth is and, until that happens, there can never be accountability, and all of this could happen again.”
Some in Israel are hoping for just that.
Reacting to news of the impending ceasefire over the weekend, Israel’s hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir branded the agreement a “national defeat” and “eternal disgrace”. Others, such as Amit Halevi, a member of the Israeli parliament representing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, went further, saying Israel should have declared “to Hamas and to the whole world that the Jewish people will not forget or forgive until the complete annihilation of the neo-Nazis in Gaza and the restoration of Israeli control over this strip of our homeland”.
International amnesia
Many in the West already appear to be rushing to accept the ceasefire and US assurances of “everlasting peace” at face value.
Earlier this month, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he saw no reason for Germans to continue protesting against Israel now that the ceasefire had been reached. On Wednesday, some of the country’s most senior politicians called upon him to resume arms exports to the country, despite the continued death toll in Gaza, and Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.
On Monday, Israel’s new ambassador to the EU, Avi Nir-Feldklein, suggested that the US might allow the EU to participate in Gaza’s reconstruction if the EU would just “clear the table of what is hanging above our relationship”, he said of the potential sanctions the bloc is considering against Israel.
An aerial view shows the extensive destruction in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis following the implementation of a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces on October 15, 2025 [Muhammed Eslayeh/Anadolu]
In both sport and culture, potential bans on Israel’s participation by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and Eurovision are reported to be in doubt following the US-imposed ceasefire.
“Israel is eager to normalise relations with Europe and its other Western allies,” Levy said. “The current narrative [in Israel] emphasises that, with the ceasefire, Israel is no longer isolating itself, that Hamas is contained, and that international opinion has swung in its favour.”
“In many respects, Israel and the Western political establishment share this goal of quieting public dissent,” he said, before noting that while Western governments may be eager for rapprochement, their publics may not. “The cultural and public zeitgeist has shifted. Increasingly, people will not accept the narrative that ‘everything is fine’ or that government complicity in structural violence and genocide is acceptable.”
Toleration of violence
With no drastic reappraisal of Israel’s internal policies towards Palestinians or the occupied West Bank likely, analysts such as Royal United Services Institute’s HA Hellyer suggested that lawmakers in the West and beyond may be preparing for a return to relations similar to the period following the Oslo Accords in the 1990s.
The accords were supposed to eventually bring about a Palestinian state, but as Israeli intransigence made that increasingly unlikely in the years that followed, Western rhetoric shifted from claiming outright support for the two-state solution to supporting the process towards it.
“I think we can see a similar phase ahead,” Hellyer said, “as long as the violence is below a certain level, it will be acceptable.”
Displaced Palestinians, including children, returning to their homes after the ceasefire agreement walk among the destroyed buildings in the Israeli attacks on October 12, 2025, in the Sabra neighbourhood in southern Gaza City, Gaza [Khames Alrefi/Anadolu]
“For now, the focus will be moving rubble and rebuilding; not on the fact that half of Gaza remains off-limits to all Palestinians apart from collaborators and the other half remains under occupation,” he told Al Jazeera from Washington.
However, while lawmakers – wary of US pressure and, for some, their own country’s potential complicity in Israel’s genocide – may be eager for a return to pre-war detente, among the public, especially the young, two years of carnage in Gaza have produced a seismic shift.
“Public attitudes have changed,” Levy said. “More and more people are refusing to accept the story that ‘everything is fine’ or that government complicity in systemic violence and atrocities is acceptable.
“The reality on the ground – Israel’s ongoing dehumanisation of Palestinians, its structural violence, and harsh occupation – gives people plenty of reason to speak out.”
However, for the remaining population of Gaza, still suffering from hunger and Israeli attacks, the implications of any international rehabilitation of Israel carries far more immediate consequences.
“People will move on, not just in Israel, but for the many states who weren’t too concerned about the genocide or want to avoid questions over their complicity in it,” Shalev said.
“It’s not only that that’s immoral,” he added, “it just doesn’t work. The victims are not going to just walk away. Organisations such as ours, or anyone who cares about humanity isn’t going to walk away. The victims can’t forget.”
