By Willim Dalrymple
Fri 17 Oct 2025 11.00 BST
‘One of the oldest urban centres on the planet’: Gaza’s rich history in ruins
The territory’s ancient heritage has too often been ignored. As we mourn incalculable human losses, learning about its past can help us better understand the present
As a ceasefire brings a measure of peace to the Dresden-like hellscape that Gaza has become, it is time to take stock of all that has been lost. The human cost of what the UN commission of inquiry recognises as a genocide is of course incalculable, but fewer are aware of how much rich history and archaeology has also been destroyed in these horrific months. This is bolstered by the widespread assumption that Gaza was little more than a huge refugee camp built on a recently settled portion of desert. That is quite wrong. In reality Gaza it is one of the oldest urban centres on the planet.
Golda Meir famously declared that “there was no such thing as Palestinians”, but the reality is very different. Palestine is actually one of humanity’s oldest toponyms, and records of a people named after it are as old as literacy itself. Palestine was an established name for the coast between Egypt and Phoenicia since at least the second millennium BCE: the ancient Egyptian texts refer to “Peleset” from about 1450BCE, Assyrians inscriptions to the “Palashtu” c800BCE, and Herodotus c480BCE to “Παλαιστίνη” (Palaistinē). This was all brought home to me as I worked, with my co-presenter Anita Anand, on a 12-part series on Gaza’s history for the Empire podcast....................
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How can the British Establishment maintain credibility in proscribing a non-violent direct action group as a terrorist organization?
......................What the British Government has done, through the misuse of the terrorism act, is to expose their disregard for the rights of the British people in favor of supporting a foreign power that is carrying out a genocide on the Palestinian population in Gaza. In this crackdown, people opposing a crime that should be abhorrent to anyone with a modicum of morality, the government and police have displayed an authoritarianism that is reminiscent of the crackdowns on free speech and protests that occurred during the beginning stages of Stalin’s Soviet State purges and 1930s/40s Nazi Germany.
Most dictatorships and tyrannical governments of the past have considered themselves legal in the narrow sense of the law. They have adopted tyranny above any recognition of justice, democracy, and blatantly ignored the ‘spirit of the law’, which relates to justice and honesty. What we are witnessing today in Britain is little different from the strategies used by past tyrannical regimes – the Kafkaesque secret courts, the enactment of new laws, and the proscribing of any group or movement that opposes them, as terrorists. Of particular concern is that these charges are applied with increasing severity for the benefit of a foreign state against those who oppose its Zionist aims in occupied Palestine. By using Parliament to enact these Zionist US/Israeli-inspired terrorist laws against domestic and foreign resistance movements, the British Government attempts to justify its criminalization of those who demonstrate support for the ‘proscribed’ resistance movements..........................
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https://sojo.net/articles/opinion/palestinian-pastor-i-cant-call-peace-plan-justice
As a Palestinian Pastor, I Can’t Call This ‘Peace’ Plan Justice
October 22, 2025
In Palestine, we welcomed the news of a ceasefire with hope—a fragile, trembling hope. After months of unbearable horror, we allowed ourselves to exhale. For the people of Gaza, it meant a pause in the killing, a night of uneasy quiet, and the possibility of sleep without bombs. For the first time in months, aid convoys could move, families could begin to search for loved ones beneath the rubble, and the living could start to count the dead.
But almost immediately, our reality of living under occupation intruded again. The arrest of Layan Nasser, a young Palestinian Christian activist who was recently detained by Israeli security forces for the third time, reminded us that nothing has fundamentally changed. Even as hostages are released, Israel continues to place more Palestinians under administrative detention. Even as politicians congratulate themselves on achieving “peace,” the machinery of occupation continues its cruel rhythm.
As a pastor and a Palestinian living in the West Bank, I write with gratitude and grief. I am grateful that, for a moment, the people of Gaza can breathe. I am grateful for every life spared, for every child who can wake up to silence rather than explosions. I rejoice for those released from captivity—Palestinian and Israeli—and I mourn for those who did not return. I grieve deeply for the thousands who remain imprisoned, displaced, and exiled, denied even the dignity of mourning.
But I cannot pretend that this ceasefire, or the so-called “peace” plan that follows it, represents anything close to justice. Last weekend, Israel launched airstrikes in Gaza, which killed close to 100 Palestinians and wounded over 200 more. Israel claimed that this breach of the ceasefire was a retaliation for Hamas attacking and killing Israel Defense Force troops in Rafah. But reports indicate that the two IDF casualties were not a result of a Hamas attack, but due to a bulldozer running over an unexploded ordnance. As reported by Al Jazeera, Gaza’s media office alleges that Israel has broken the ceasefire agreement 80 times since it took effect on Oct. 10. Still, despite violent rhetoric from both U.S. and Israeli officials, Hamas told BBC that it remains committed to the ceasefire agreement. The killing of Palestinians continues in large numbers............
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