 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. At 2 am on Friday, May 21st, a ceasefire finally came into effect in Gaza, ending the 11-day-long Israeli offensive. At least 248 Palestinians were killed in these 11 days, including 66 children. After the ceasefire was announced, thousands of Palestinians in Gaza came out on the streets, waving Palestinian flags. They claimed it to be a victory of the Palestinian people and a defeat of Israel. The ceasefire has been welcomed as a temporary relief, but it does not ensure that similar actions will not take place in the future. Israel carries out daily offensives against Palestinians irrespective of ceasefires signed in the past. This hostility of Israel is rooted in years of occupation, apartheid, Zionist thought and the process through which the State of Israel came to exist in the first place, the creation of Israel. In 1948, the UN Partition Plan was adopted by the General Assembly Resolution 181. This plan gave the majority of the historic Palestinian land that is around 56% to Zionist groups. But at the end of the 1948 war, Israel ended up occupying more than 78% of all mandatory Palestine. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians became refugees when they were expelled or had to flee as Israel began to occupy their homes and lands. The West Bank, including Eastern Jerusalem and Gaza, remained under the control of Jordan and Egypt. 1967, the 6-day war. Almost 20 years later in June 1967, Israeli forces entered the West Bank and Gaza and captured all territories that had remained under Palestine. Israel claimed Jerusalem to be its capital in complete disregard of the international status, according to the city in the UN Partition Plan. Following the war, Israel began the slow and deliberate process of changing the demography and physical structure of the Palestinian territories it had captured. Israel also expanded the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem by annexing a large part of the West Bank. This process was carried out to ensure that Jerusalem has a Jewish majority, not a Palestinian one. Gradually, it created large Jewish settlements in both the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem by forcing Palestinians out of the lands. Today, more than 200,000 Jews are living in those settlements inside East Jerusalem alone and another 400,000 to 500,000 live inside the West Bank, the apartheid state. Over the years, Israel has imposed several restrictions on the movement of Palestinians across the occupied territories. For instance, a Palestinian from Gaza needs Israeli permission to visit their relatives and friends inside West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem. Israel has erected Jewish settlements and outposts inside occupied Palestine along with settler-only roads. It has also built hundreds of kilometers long concrete walls separating Israeli territories and settlements from Palestinian settlements. These have dissected Palestinian settlements from each other, often separating one village from the next. Palestinians cannot cross these boundaries without Israeli security forces letting them through. Gaza, meanwhile, exists under strict blockades. Gaza is a small enclave with a population of over two million, around 75% of who are refugees. It is one of the world's most densely populated regions. In 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian elections. Israel not only refused to accept the results but also strengthened its control by implementing strict sea, air and land blockades converting Gaza into what activists and human rights groups have called the world's largest open-air prison. Most garrisons live in utter poverty due to lack of economic activities as a result of Israeli restrictions. The local administration often fails to carry out basic minimum maintenance in civilian infrastructure due to Israeli blockades. For several months each year, most garrisons have to live without running water, electricity, basic medicine, sanitation, etc. In the last 16 years, Israel has carried out air and artillery strikes on a regular basis, killing hundreds of Palestinians inside Gaza and destroying whatever little civilian infrastructure remains. Before the current round of strikes, Israel carried out major attacks on Gaza in 2008, 2014, and 2017. In every offensive Israel has claimed it is defending itself against the terrorist aggression from Hamas. However, if one compares the number of casualties and destruction, Israel's claims ring hollow. Israel's offensives are clear cases of war crimes due to the violation of proportionality, current escalation. In the recent offensive as well, Israel's claim that its airstrikes were in self-defense was a manipulation of facts. The tensions had begun much before any rockets were fired by Hamas. Over the years, the Palestinian population of Jerusalem has decreased drastically due to Israel's sustained campaign of ethnic cleansing. As part of the same process, an Israeli court had ordered the eviction of several Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah locality of East Jerusalem on May 2. However, this time, Palestinians scaled up to opposition through protests on the ground and via social media. Many cases of Jewish settlers, verbally and physically attacking Palestinians were reported as tensions rose. On May 8, hundreds of Palestinians had gathered at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound to peacefully protest the eviction order. They were brutally attacked by Israeli forces. Israel repeated the attacks three days later, apparently to make way for Jewish right-wing celebrations of Jerusalem Day, a commemoration of Israel's capture of the city in the 1967 war. The repeated attacks on Al-Aqsa created massive outrage among Palestinians. Because of this outrage, Hamas served an ultimatum to Israel, asking it to withdraw its security forces from Al-Aqsa or face rockets, following the firing of some ineffective short-range rockets by Hamas, most of which were intercepted by the Israeli iron dome. Israeli bombings began mostly in civilian areas. Apart from the hundreds who died, UN estimates say around 450 Palestinian homes were destroyed and over 90,000 people were displaced. Israel claims that it is the victim of Hamas' rocket attacks, but Hamas' rockets are primitive in comparison to the Israeli air force. They cannot be precision guided, so even if they survive the iron dome, they mostly fall in empty areas. Even if they do fall at some target, they are not capable of inflicting significant damage. Israel has one of the world's most advanced air forces. Its jets can fly very low inside Gaza and attack whichever target they want without much fear of retaliation. The difference between the number of casualties on both sides in each war since 2006 makes it clear that Israel is using disproportionate power against Hamas and most importantly against the common Palestinian civilians. Israel's claim of self-defense as a justification of its disproportionate use of force against Palestine is questionable under international law. Israeli actions cannot be called self-defense as Palestinians are under occupation and have a right to resist. The international community, the United Nations in particular, has failed to do its duty so far and stop Israel from extending and intensifying its occupation. So although ceasefire has been reached for now, but they cannot be peace in Palestine as long as there is an occupation.