Conor right here: We’re supplied each day reminders that the US-Israel has no intention of abandoning its genocide in Gaza. Whereas the tempo might have slowed in the intervening time, hunger, shootings, bombings, and Israeli-sponsored gangs proceed the killing. The next piece describes how the true objective behind the so-called ceasefire is to take some warmth off Israel and deflate rising international motion in opposition to the carnage, in addition to hold “Gaza 2035” proper on schedule. Moderately than fall for Trump’s deception, they argue now could be the time to show up the strain on Israel and its enablers.
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies. Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the writer of a number of books, together with Inside Iran: The Actual Historical past and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Davies is an impartial journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the writer of Blood on Our Fingers: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
On October 4th, 2025, in an interview with Axios, President Trump harassed that one of many most important targets behind his Gaza plan was to revive Israel’s worldwide standing. “Bibi took it very far and Israel misplaced a variety of assist on the planet,” Trump stated. “Now I’m gonna get all that assist again.”
Beneath Trump’s plan, a supposed ceasefire took impact on October tenth. However Israel solely withdrew from lower than half of the Gaza strip, and killed not less than 93 individuals within the subsequent two weeks, after killing not less than that many per day for the earlier two years. Israel has solely allowed 15% of the humanitarian assist referred to as for within the plan to enter Gaza, and has stored the essential Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza closed. The each day life-and-death wrestle to seek out meals, water and shelter carries on unabated for 2 million individuals in Gaza.
Whereas the discount within the each day scale of Israel’s mass homicide is clearly welcome, this isn’t an actual ceasefire. Like earlier Israeli ceasefires in Gaza, as in Lebanon, this can be a one-sided ceasefire that Israel violates at will, every day, with no accountability.
Mahmud Hams / AFP / Getty Picture
That is solely the primary a part of Trump’s plan for Gaza, and there’s nonetheless no settlement on the opposite components, such because the disarmament of Hamas, who present the one authorities and police power in Gaza. They now have the added job of defending their individuals from Israel-backed felony gangs and dying squads, some with hyperlinks to ISIS, who prey on them from the Israeli-occupied areas, stealing assist provides, assassinating native leaders and terrorizing the inhabitants.
Hamas is clearly not going to disarm underneath these circumstances, and beforehand stated it could solely give up its weapons as soon as Palestine has an internationally acknowledged authorities with its personal armed forces. On the opposite aspect, Israel has not agreed to different components of Trump’s plan, akin to its withdrawal from the remainder of Gaza, nor to any plan for the way forward for Palestine.
In the US, the place corrupt politicians and company media take U.S. and Israeli lies at face worth and even repeat them as statements of reality, some might consider that Trump’s plan has resolved the disaster in Palestine. The remainder of the world shouldn’t be so naive or simple to control, however many different governments are additionally beholden to oligarchies that revenue from commerce, funding and arms offers with Israel, at the same time as the general public in those self same nations reels in shock at Israel’s mass homicide of Palestinians and U.S.-backed impunity for its crimes.
Trump’s Gaza plan, like a lot of his international coverage, cynically exploits the greed and worry of political leaders and their oligarch patrons. Admitting that Israel has “misplaced a variety of assist on the planet,” he gives a shortcut again to “enterprise as regular” for governments keen to guard—and even broaden—worthwhile ties regardless of Israel’s ongoing atrocities and open contempt for worldwide legislation.
In his first time period, Trump brokered the “Abraham Accords,” normalization offers between Israel and Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan that included mutual recognition and expanded commerce. He now has his eye on the large prize: Saudi Arabia.
However Arab-Israeli relations have lengthy been contested. Within the 1949 UN Common Meeting vote on Israel’s admission, all Arab and Muslim nations besides Turkiye (which abstained) voted in opposition to recognizing the state of Israel. Thirty-two largely Arab and Muslim nations, together with a few of its closest neighbors, nonetheless both don’t acknowledge Israel or don’t have any diplomatic relations with it.
Regardless of many years of hostility, Trump persuaded Israel and a few of these nations to assist his Gaza plan with the promise of future advantages from normalization and commerce. However there’s nonetheless a gaping chasm between Israel and these Arab and Muslim nations over Palestine. They are saying they won’t acknowledge Israel except Israel acknowledges Palestine, with full sovereignty over East Jerusalem, the West Financial institution and the Gaza Strip.
However the foundational foundation of Netanyahu’s Likud Get together is its plan for a Larger Israel, to be shaped by annexing all of occupied Palestine “between the ocean and the Jordan.” And on October 22, throughout Vice President Vance’s go to to Israel, the Knesset voted in favor of annexing the West Financial institution.
Trump unveiled his Gaza plan on the very finish of the UN Common Meeting’s annual high-level assembly in New York, the place many world leaders spoke out for a lot stronger worldwide motion in opposition to Israel. The New York Declaration, which 142 nations voted for, was the outcome of a convention in July led by France and Saudi Arabia that promised “concrete, timebound, coordinated motion” to implement a ruling by the worldwide Court docket of Justice (ICJ) in 2024 that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is unlawful and should be ended “as shortly as potential.”
Trump’s initiative quickly upstaged and marginalized requires additional motion on the UN. However on October twenty second, the ICJ issued a new ruling strongly condemning Israel’s use of hunger as a weapon of warfare in Gaza, and ruling that, as an occupying energy, Israel should make sure that the “primary wants” of the inhabitants are met, together with meals, water, gas, shelter and drugs. The court docket additionally dominated that Israel should allow UN employees working for UNRWA to do their work in Gaza, after Israel offered no proof to the court docket for its declare that UN employees had been members of Hamas or took half in its October 2023 incursion into Israel.
Within the wake of the ICJ resolution, Norway stated it could introduce a decision within the UN Common Meeting to implement the Court docket’s directives, together with guaranteeing the complete quantity of assist reaches Gaza. Humanitarian advocates hope that this decision might be launched in an Emergency Particular Session underneath the “Uniting For Peace” choice, enabling the UN to ship the “concrete, timebound, coordinated motion” it promised in July—doubtlessly together with sanctions akin to an arms embargo and focused commerce and funding measures that ought to take impact inside days if Israel continues to dam assist.
Trump plainly meant his plan to shut the e-book on Israel’s crimes—and on U.S. complicity—and to inaugurate a brand new section: normalization of the occupation and Israel’s diplomatic rehabilitation. But even earlier than the ICJ condemned Israel’s hunger coverage, individuals worldwide had been already mobilizing, urging their governments to not let Israel off the hook.
In Europe, momentum for accountability continues to construct. Because the British parliament debates a brand new pensions legislation, an modification has been submitted to divest native authorities pension funds from firms which are complicit within the unlawful Israeli occupation of Palestine. Many native councils within the U.Ok. have already handed particular person ordinances to do that, however the modification to the pensions legislation would power all of them to divest the $16 billion that their pension funds nonetheless have invested in these companies.
In September, the European Union (EU) introduced plans to droop its 25-year-old free commerce settlement with Israel and impose sanctions on extremist Israeli cupboard members and settler leaders. On October twentieth, it “paused” these steps in response to Trump’s plan, however EU leaders instantly confronted sturdy push-back on that call.
Over 400 former senior diplomats and officers signed an announcement that the EU should take strong motion “in opposition to spoilers and extremists” who would jeopardize “the institution of a future Palestinian state,” noting that Trump’s plan solely vaguely addressed that objective. Worldwide legal professionals suggested EU leaders that EU coverage should adjust to the 2024 ICJ ruling that the Israeli occupation is unlawful and should be ended as shortly as potential.
Particular person European nations, together with Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain, already ban imports from unlawful Israeli settlements in Palestine, and Eire is at present debating an analogous commerce ban in its Occupied Territories Invoice, which ought to get a remaining vote by January. The unique invoice would solely have an effect on commerce in items, however activists need commerce in companies included within the ban, whereas highly effective enterprise pursuits, together with U.S. tech companies with European headquarters in Eire, are lobbying to kill the invoice altogether. It ought to assist that Eire’s newly elected president, Catherine Connolly, is a robust supporter of Palestine.
In stark distinction to a lot of the world, which continues to be grappling with the contradictions of Trump’s Gaza plan and Israel’s ongoing illegal occupation, U.S. officers are already making an attempt to show the web page—shifting to fortify and broaden Washington’s navy alliance with Israel.
This alliance is renewed and up to date each ten years in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the 2 governments, which might usually be negotiated in 2026, earlier than the earlier MOU expires in 2028.
There’s already a bipartisan invoice within the Senate International Relations Committee (S.554) to provoke this course of, titled “United States-Israel Protection Partnership Act of 2025,” authorizing joint tasks with Israel underneath classes like “countering unmanned methods… anti-tunnel cooperation…(and) warfare reserves stockpile authority.”
Conspicuously absent from this coverage overview is any debate over U.S. complicity in Gaza’s destruction—a debate that ought to come first and set the phrases for any severe re-examination of the U.S.–Israel alliance.
On October twentieth, Francesca Albanese, the UN Particular Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, launched a new report titled “Gaza Genocide: a Collective Crime.” Right here is the abstract of her report:
“The continued genocide in Gaza is a collective crime, sustained by the complicity of influential Third States which have enabled longstanding systemic violations of worldwide legislation by Israel. Framed by colonial narratives that dehumanize the Palestinians, this live-streamed atrocity has been facilitated by way of Third States’ direct assist, materials assist, diplomatic safety and, in some circumstances, energetic participation. It has uncovered an unprecedented chasm between peoples and their governments, betraying the belief on which international peace and safety relaxation. The world now stands on a knife-edge between the collapse of the worldwide rule of legislation and hope for renewal. Renewal is simply potential if complicity is confronted, obligations are met and justice is upheld.”
We urge all members of the Senate and Home International Relations Committees to learn the UN report and to ask UN specialists to testify at hearings on U.S. complicity and participation in warfare crimes, crimes in opposition to humanity, and genocide in Palestine.
To maneuver forward with consideration of a brand new MOU or any arms transfers with Israel with out first conducting such a severe and goal coverage overview would solely serve to perpetuate the infinite wars that every one our leaders, together with President Trump, hold telling us they wish to finish.
