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As Gaza’s fragile ceasefire frays and humanitarian conditions deteriorate, a senior UN envoy warned the Security Council last week that delays in implementing the Council-backed transition plan for the enclave will only increase suffering and undermine recovery. Credit: UN NewsATLANTA, USA, May 29 (IPS) - If you have been paying attention to the ongoing wars in Ukraine, Iran, Lebanon, and many other places, perhaps you have noticed that battles today are far different from those of the last century. Now it’s not only tanks and planes but also scores of long-range missiles and massive flights of drones linked to cybernetic warfare.
The tragedy of military and civilian deaths continues, however, with the number of casualties among Russian soldiers in Ukraine reportedly reaching an astonishing 25,000 every month. As always in warfare, civilians are unfairly targeted and suffer the most, with senseless random missile and drone attacks killing innocent people on both sides with regularity.
Professed lovers of peace, like US President Trump and Israel’s Mr. Netanyahu, both of whom have agreed to brokered ceasefire agreements in Gaza and in Lebanon, continue to bomb the other side with impunity. For the most part they are getting away with it, without protests from anybody except a few ineffective agencies and lonely voices.
That is indeed a new, inventive way of war: the combatants agree to a ceasefire, and then one side keeps bombing but insists that the other stop because of the agreed ceasefire. Under such circumstances, all a ceasefire really means is “Your side must stop firing—but we’ll fire at will.”
Such nonsense is a game of meaningless words with no resolution in sight. The increasingly Nazified Likud Party in Israel continues to bomb cities, villages, and individual homes and apartment buildings in Lebanon as if it were licensed to do so, with little effective pushback from the world community.
That is perhaps to be expected since the world has largely stood by silently for almost four years during the certifiable genocide in Gaza. And by now more than 1.2 million people have been driven out of their homes in South Lebanon into a life of desperation and uncertainty.
The efficient US-backed Israeli killing machine in Lebanon has continued to smash residential buildings with impunity and pile up an obscene list of civilians murdered—innocent mothers, fathers, grandparents, and many children.
In Gaza, Palestinian sources have recorded more than 2,000 Israeli violations of the so-called “ceasefire” between October 2025 and March 2026, with a total of over 700 Palestinians killed.
Only a temporary hold from the United States has kept Israel from continuing to bomb Iran. Israel refuses to listen to any restrictions on bombing Lebanon even though there is supposedly a ceasefire in effect.
Deaths there since the short April 17 “ceasefire” continue to escalate day by day. In Iran, both Israel and the US have promised to keep obliterating what was long ago announced as already obliterated.
The number of Iranians killed and wounded in the first three months of the joint US-Israeli aggression has been announced by the Tehran government as in the tens of thousands, and the war is not over yet. Most memorable is the massacre of 120 schoolchildren, mainly girls, on the first day of US bombing at Minab, Iran. Casualties so far on the US side number 13 killed and several dozens wounded. That’s the definition of one-sided warfare.
Modern wars may puzzle observers, but the art of twisting words and phrases and their associated meanings is as old as time. Lying, obfuscation, and obscene claims are the essence of war’s primary weapon, deception. Words can kill and do. “Ceasefire” is the latest lie. For Israel and the US, it means “You cease—we fire.”
James E. Jennings is the Founder and President of the aid agency Conscience International www.conscienceinternational.org and a longtime Middle East Peace Advocate.
IPS UN Bureau
© Inter Press Service (20260529081052) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service
