The Ceasefire Illusion: Life Under Occupation and the Silence Surrounding Peaceful Protests

​Professor Ramya Vijaya
As the world’s attention shifts elsewhere, violence continues to define daily life for Palestinians. The latest ceasefire has lulled many into believing that the conflict has been resolved. But the circumstances that ignited the violence of October 7th and its aftermath remain unchanged. Despite recent gestures by some European nations recognizing a Palestinian state, the so-called “two-state solution” has become little more than political rhetoric. In reality, there are no two states — only one powerful military state and millions of stateless Palestinians.
Around 3.3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and another 2 million in Gaza. Since 2007, Israel’s blockade has cut off the movement of goods and people to and from Gaza. Visitors are barred, and residents are trapped. For nearly two decades prior to October 7th, Gaza’s people lived in what many described as the world’s largest open-air prison — their economy crippled, their borders sealed, their daily lives confined.
The West Bank, under Israeli military occupation since 1967, is a landscape of checkpoints, restricted roads, and constant control. These barriers fragment even short journeys to work, school, or family. During an academic fellowship in May 2023, I witnessed the daily trauma of these checkpoints — young, restless soldiers facing civilians trying to get to their lives, an ever-present tension where a single misstep could mean humiliation, disrupted days or worse the ever-present threat of violence. I have recounted these stories elsewhere.
Even amid ceasefire talks, violence in the West Bank has only escalated, largely unnoticed. In October 2025, the U.N. humanitarian office reported over 260 settler attacks on Palestinians — the highest number since records began in 2006. Yet much of the world remains silent, often portraying Palestinian resistance as inherently violent while ignoring the ongoing violence of occupation itself.

Much of the world also urges Palestinians to protest peacefully. Yet when they do, their struggles go unheard. During my fellowship, I saw this silence firsthand. A planned trip to Birzeit University was interrupted when we heard the news that, Khader Adnan, a former student activist, died after an 87-day hunger strike protesting his arbitrary detention in an Israeli prison. He was never charged with a crime.

His death highlighted Israel’s widespread use of administrative detention — the indefinite imprisonment of individuals without charge or trial. According to Amnesty International, the routine and extensive use of this practice violates international law and is applied almost exclusively to Palestinians. In May 2023, of 1,010 people held under administrative detention in Israeli prisons, all but four were Palestinian.
Adnan had been part of a Palestinian resistance organization but had himself never been charged with any involvement in acts of violence. He had been arrested several times before and spent a total of six years in administrative detention. His hunger strikes were acts of pure nonviolence — a Gandhian protest against injustice that is common among Palestinian administrative detainees. Yet even this ultimate form of peaceful resistance ended in silence. His death deepened despair among young Palestinians who see little hope for a free or dignified future.

Calls for nonviolent protest have repeatedly been met with repression. In 2018, thousands in Gaza joined weekly peaceful demonstrations against the blockade and for the right of return of refugees. Israel’s response, according to U.N. reports, was tear gas and live ammunition. These protests, like so many others, faded from the world’s conscience.
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To be stateless in a world obsessed with borders is to live with constant restriction and stigma. The occupation enforces a system that denies stateless Palestinians movement, dignity, and agency. Meanwhile, potential leaders and intellectuals — those who might articulate a vision for peace — are imprisoned or silenced.
The world often demands that Palestinians prove their commitment to peace, yet it consistently ignores their peaceful resistance. Until the structures of occupation and blockade are dismantled, no ceasefire can bring true peace — only a temporary pause in an enduring injustice.