On Monday, US President Donald Trump announced a proposed “peace” agreement between Israel and Hamas that was hailed in the US media as a major breakthrough.
The New York Times promoted it in an editorial as a “promising” agreement that “contains the pillars of a just ceasefire, including an end to military attacks, the return of all hostages, and a Gaza free of Israeli occupation and Hamas governance.”
Despite the media cheerleading, the “peace” proposal was quickly exposed as a ridiculous fraud by the Israeli government. After having just stated his agreement to a document that states that “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza,” Netanyahu published a video in Hebrew on Monday declaring that Israel would continue to occupy the Gaza Strip. Responding to calls for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Netanyahu proclaimed, “No way, that’s not happening.”
Netanyahu said that Trump had stated that if “Hamas refuses [the agreement], he will give Israel full backing to complete the military operation and eliminate them.” Netanyahu reiterated that he will “not agree” to a Palestinian state, even though the US-Israeli “peace” plan calls for a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
Netanyahu’s remarks make clear the true content of the peace agreement. It is intended to allow the US media to claim that the US and Israeli governments are seeking “peace,” while placing the onus on Hamas for rejecting a US-Israeli peace plan. This, in turn, would create the most favorable conditions for the US-Israeli plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who makes it a habit of openly stating the actual policy of the Israeli government, said the “peace” agreement would not be implemented because “the enemy’s obstinacy will once again save us from ourselves”—implying that Hamas could not accept the proposal.
In his meeting with Netanyahu on Monday, Trump made it clear that unless Hamas accepted the surrender plan, he would double down on his support for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, saying, “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas.” As Trump reiterated on Tuesday, “We have one signature that we need, and that signature will pay in hell if they don’t sign.”
In reality, the deal, as outlined, would be an abject capitulation to the colonial domination of the Middle East. Under the proposal, Gaza would be governed by a “Board of Peace” that would be “headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump” and include “Former [UK] Prime Minister Tony Blair.”
This proposal violates the right of the Palestinian people to national self-determination and would mark a return to the open colonial domination of the Middle East that prevailed in the 19th century. It would also require Hamas to completely disarm and give up control over Gaza. For Hamas to accept such an agreement would be an abject capitulation, and this is by design.
Condemning the “peace” agreement, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) wrote that “The plan’s inclusion of an international ‘Board of Peace’... ensures the exclusion of Palestinian voices from the decision-making of Palestinian futures.”
Officer Órlaith Roe, a spokesperson for the ICJP noted that “This plan offers Israel yet another opportunity to pause, rearm, and then return to violence with renewed impunity.” He added that it is “Steeped in colonial rhetoric.”
The plan is designed to be rejected in order to clear the way for the actual US-Israeli plan to ethnically cleanse and annex Gaza, which has been the modus operandi of the Netanyahu government since the start of the onslaught on Gaza.
As a comment in the Wall Street Journal summed it up, “As long as they are unable to close the deal, Netanyahu is better placed to fend off further international condemnation if he continues to fight. Very little may change on the ground.”
Yaakov Katz, a fellow at the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Institute, told the Wall Street Journal, “It makes all the criticism of [Netanyahu] no longer relevant because Israel is saying we’re willing to end the war, we’re aligned with America and every Arab country.”
A particularly foul role is being played by bourgeois nationalist governments in the Middle East and the broader region, including Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, which endorsed the deal and agreed to implement it.
In its editorial praising the US-Israeli “peace” plan, the New York Times called the US-dominated “Board of Peace” mere “bluster,” while the calls by “far-right members of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition” for the annexation of Gaza were “outrageous.” However “outrageous” such calls may be, they constitute the actual US-Israeli policy, which aims at the total annexation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza, as both Trump and Netanyahu have repeatedly made clear.
The US-Israeli policy of mass murder is being actively carried out not only by Israeli bullets and bombs but also through deliberate starvation. On Tuesday, another child died of hunger in Gaza, bringing the number of Palestinians in Gaza who have died from malnutrition or starvation during the genocide to 453, including 150 children.
Since the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared famine in Gaza last month, 175 people have died from hunger. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has warned that the rate of malnutrition for children under five has doubled between March and June as a result of Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.