{"id":304837,"date":"2025-10-13T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=304837"},"modified":"2025-10-12T07:36:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T06:36:31","slug":"trumps-sham-peace-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/10\/trumps-sham-peace-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Sham Peace Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The Wailing Wall – by Mr. Fish<\/p><\/div>\n

There will be no peace in Gaza. Only the temporary absence of war.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

10 Oct 2025 –\u00a0<\/em>There is no shortage of failed peace plans in occupied Palestine, all of them incorporating detailed phases and timelines, going back to the presidency of Jimmy Carter. They end the same way. Israel gets what it wants initially \u2014 in the latest case the release of the remaining Israeli hostages \u2014 while it ignores and violates every other phase until it resumes its attacks on the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n

It is a sadistic game. A merry-go-round of death. This ceasefire, like those of the past, is a commercial break. A moment when the condemned man is allowed to smoke a cigarette before being gunned down in a fusillade of bullets.<\/p>\n

Once Israeli hostages are released, the genocide will continue. I do not know how soon. Let\u2019s hope the mass slaughter is delayed for at least a few weeks. But a pause in the genocide is the best we can anticipate. Israel is on the cusp of emptying Gaza, which has been all but obliterated under two years of relentless bombing. It is not about to be stopped. This is the culmination of the Zionist dream. The United States, which has given<\/a> Israel a staggering $22 billion in military aid since Oct, 7, 2023, will not shut down its pipeline, the only tool that might halt the genocide.<\/p>\n

Israel, as it always does, will blame Hamas and the Palestinians for failing to abide by the agreement, most probably a refusal \u2014 true or not \u2014 to disarm, as the proposal demands. Washington, condemning Hamas\u2019s supposed violation, will give Israel the green light to continue its genocide to create Trump\u2019s fantasy of a Gaza Riviera<\/a> and \u201cspecial economic zone\u201d with its \u201cvoluntary\u201drelocation of Palestinians in exchange for digital tokens.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Palestinians, carrying the belongings they managed to take with them, move toward the northern part of the Gaza Strip via Rashid Street, which connects the north and south of the enclave following the ceasefire announcement in Gaza City, Gaza on 10 Oct 2025.
(Photo by Stringer\/Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Of the myriads of peace plans over the decades, the current one is the least serious. Aside from a demand that Hamas release the hostages within 72-hours after the ceasefire begins, it lacks specifics and imposed timetables. It is filled with caveats that allow Israel to abrogate the agreement. And that is the point. It is not designed to be a viable path to peace, which most Israeli leaders understand. Israel\u2019s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, <\/em>established by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to serve as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and champion messianic Zionism, instructed its readers not to be concerned about the Trump plan because it is only \u201crhetoric.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel, in one example from the proposal, will \u201cnot return to areas that have been withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements the agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who decides if Hamas has \u201cfully implemented\u201d the agreement? Israel. Does anyone believe in Israel\u2019s good faith? Can Israel be trusted as an objective arbitrator of the agreement? If Hamas \u2014 demonized as a terrorist group \u2014 objects, will anyone listen?<\/p>\n

How is it possible that a peace proposal ignores the International Court of Justice\u2019s July 2024 Advisory Opinion<\/a>, which reiterated that Israel\u2019s occupation is illegal and must end?<\/p>\n

How can it fail to mention the Palestinian\u2019s right to self-determination<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Why are Palestinians, who have a right under international law to armed struggle<\/a> against an occupying power, expected to disarm while Israel, the illegally occupying force, is not?<\/p>\n

By what authority can the U.S. establish<\/a> a \u201ctemporary transitional government,\u201d \u2014 Trump\u2019s and Tony Blair\u2019s so-called \u201cBoard of Peace\u201d \u2014 sidelining the Palestinian right to self-determination?<\/p>\n

Who gave the U.S. the authority to send to Gaza an \u201cInternational Stabilization Force,\u201d a polite term for foreign occupation?<\/p>\n

How are Palestinians supposed to reconcile themselves to the acceptance of an Israeli \u201csecurity barrier\u201d on Gaza\u2019s borders, confirmation that the occupation will continue?<\/p>\n

How can any proposal ignore the slow-motion genocide and annexation of the West Bank?<\/p>\n

Why is Israel, which has destroyed Gaza, not required to pay reparations?<\/p>\n

What are Palestinians supposed to make of the demand in the proposal for a \u201cderadicalized\u201d Gazan population? How is this expected to be accomplished? Re-education camps? Wholesale censorship? The rewriting of the school curriculum? Arresting offending Imams in mosques?<\/p>\n

And what about addressing the incendiary rhetoric routinely employed by Israeli leaders who describe Palestinians as \u201chuman animals<\/a>\u201d and their children as \u201clittle snakes<\/a>\u201d?<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of Gaza and every child in Gaza, should starve to death,\u201d the Israeli rabbi Ronen Shaulov announced<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t have mercy for those who, in a few years, will grow up and won\u2019t have mercy for us. Only a stupid fifth column, a hater of Israel has mercy for future terrorists, even though today they are still young and hungry. I hope, may they starve to death, and if anyone has a problem with what I\u2019ve said, that\u2019s their problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israeli violations of peace agreements have historical precedents.<\/p>\n

The Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin \u2014 without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) \u2014 led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt.<\/p>\n

Subsequent phases of the Camp David Accords, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never implemented.<\/a><\/p>\n

The 1993 Oslo Accords, signed<\/a> in 1993, saw the PLO recognize Israel\u2019s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people. Yet, what ensued was the disempowerment of the PLO and its transformation into a colonial police force. Oslo II, signed in 1995, detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state. But it too was stillborn. It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish \u201csettlements\u201d were to be delayed until \u201cfinal\u201d status talks. By then, Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were scheduled to have been completed. Governing authority was poised to be transferred<\/a> from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. Instead, the West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority had limited authority in Areas A and B while Israel controlled all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.<\/p>\n

The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands<\/a> that Jewish settlers seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created \u2014 a right enshrined in international law \u2014 was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat. This instantly alienated many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees. As a consequence, many Palestinians abandoned the PLO in favor of Hamas. Edward Said called<\/a> the Oslo Accords \u201can instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles\u201d and lambasted Arafat as \u201cthe P\u00e9tain of the Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank when the Oslo agreement was signed. Their numbers today have increased<\/a> to at least 700,000.<\/p>\n

The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo \u201ca sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel unilaterally broke the last two-month-long ceasefire<\/a> on March 18 of this year when it launched surprise airstrikes on Gaza. Netanyahu\u2019s office claimed that the resumption of the military campaign was in response to Hamas\u2019s refusal to release hostages, its rejection of proposals to extend the cease-fire and its efforts to rearm. Israel killed more than 400 people<\/a> in the initial overnight assault and injured over 500, slaughtering and wounding people as they slept. The attack scuttled the second stage of the agreement, which would have seen Hamas release the remaining living male hostages, both civilians and soldiers, for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and the establishment of a permanent ceasefire along with the eventual lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.<\/p>\n

Israel has carried out murderous assaults on Gaza for decades, cynically calling<\/a> the bombardment \u201cmowing the lawn.\u201d No peace accord or ceasefire agreement has ever gotten in the way. This one will be no exception.+<\/p>\n

This bloody saga is not over. Israel\u2019s goals remain unchanged: the dispossession and erasure of Palestinians from their land.<\/p>\n

The only peace Israel intends to offer the Palestinians is the peace of the grave.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times,\u00a0where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief. He previously worked overseas for\u00a0<\/em>The Dallas Morning News,\u00a0The Christian Science Monitor, and<\/em> NPR. He used to be the host of the Emmy Award-nominated <\/em>RT America show\u00a0<\/em>On Contact.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – chrishedges.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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