https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/17/one-of-the-oldest-urban-centres-on-the-planet-gazas-rich-history-in-ruins
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 “ΠαλαιΟΟΞ―Ξ½Ξ·” (PalaistinΔ). 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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https://dissidentvoice.org/2025/10/how-can-the-british-establishment-maintain-credibility-in-proscribing-a-non-violent-direct-action-group-as-a-terrorist-organization/
How can the British Establishment maintain credibility
in proscribing a non-violent direct action group as a terrorist
organization?
by Heather Stroud / October 25th, 2025
......................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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