Palestinians are pleading for an end to the Gaza war. No one is listening

Palestinians protest to demand an end to the war in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip 26 March, 2025 (Reuters)

The people of Gaza are revolting against their killing and starvation. In the north, the streets are packed with desperate voices chanting: “We want to live! End the Israeli killing! We are peaceful people! Out, out, out! Hamas, out!”

My social media has been flooded with videos of these demonstrations by people who have lost everything, who are starving, who just want the killing to end.

Western media, of course, have amplified this, reporting it as a major event. I just wish they had shown the same urgency when thousands of Palestinians were being slaughtered.

Our deaths were barely a footnote. When Israeli bombs reduced homes to rubble, with entire families buried under the debris, there were no breaking news alerts, no in-depth analyses, no panel discussions dissecting the scale of Palestinian suffering.

Our deaths came and went in a single line of text at the bottom of the screen - cold, distant, and insignificant. 

Some Arab media, meanwhile, have downplayed the recent protests, calling them isolated incidents or ignoring them altogether.

But no one is asking why people are out on the streets. No one is acknowledging their desperation, their unbearable grief. These are not people playing politics; these are people who have lost their families, their homes and their futures. They are starving. They are broken. And they are willing to pay any price just to make it stop.

'Let the killing stop'

How much pain must a person endure before they stop fearing bullets in the hands of the powerful? How much hunger must a child feel before their parents are willing to stand in front of guns and demand that something - anything - change?

I have heard from people in Gaza who have lost their parents, children and siblings. Still, through their devastation, they say: “I accept it, just let the war end.”

When my nephew Fouad was killed, I called my mother. Through her pain, she simply said: “May God bless his soul. We accept what has been written for us. But let the killing stop. I hope we lose no more.”

There was a deep, quiet grief in those words - a grief that has learned not to scream, because screaming does nothing. A grief that is tired of waiting for the world to notice.

The people of Gaza know what kind of world they live in. It is a world where they are just numbers; where their lives mean nothing

The people of Gaza cannot take this genocide anymore. They understand now, more than ever, what kind of world they live in. It is a world where they are just numbers; where their lives mean nothing. They know that Israel has been given free rein to kill as many of them as possible and that they are trapped in a brutal game of regional and political calculations.

They know that their suffering is useful to some, inconvenient to others, and irrelevant to most.

They see Israel carrying out its greed-driven, genocidal agenda.

One protester told CNN: “Our message is to the Israeli army to stop the bloodshed and the war that has drained our energy and caused us to lose all our loved ones and friends."

There is something deeply tragic in these words, in how Palestinians - my people - have been reduced to figures in a brutal equation. And yet, the world only listens when it suits them.

Suffering in silence

No one wants to hear what the people of Gaza actually want. The anti-Hamas voices in the West only amplify their suffering when it serves their agenda. They were silent when Gaza was screaming in agony, in mourning, in starvation.

They want to use our voices when we chant against Hamas, but they mute us when we cry out for our murdered families. They never want to hear us demand an end to Israel’s slaughter.

On the other side, some voices dismiss this suffering. They act as though these protests are nothing; as if people risking their lives to demand an end to this nightmare are somehow irrelevant. Their voices, too, have only ever amplified what suits them.

And in the end, no one cares.

No one has pointed out that not all of Gaza is Hamas, that not all of Gaza is fighting. Israeli politicians once justified their mass killings by claiming otherwise. They have spent years conditioning the world to believe that Gaza is nothing but Hamas, that every Palestinian in Gaza is part of some vast, faceless enemy.

But if that were true, then why are these same civilians now in the streets, demanding peace? Why are they risking their lives to demand an end to this war?

And why is Israel still starving them? Why is Israel still bombing them?

If they are not Hamas, if they are civilians, if they are now standing in the open, asking for nothing but survival - why is the world still watching them die in silence?

The truth is in their slogan, in their plea: “We want to live.”

Ahmed Najar is a Palestinian political analyst and a playwright who uses theatre to tell the stories of Palestine, blending personal experience with broader political commentary.