Trump and Arab leaders consult on original peace plan
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Pres. Trump afforded Bibi Netanyahu yet another [undeserved] honor of his fourth White House meeting this term. They held a joint press conference at which Netanyahu [sort of] pledged his agreement to the terms of the 20-point “peace plan.”
The Trump administration began drafting it just as major European nations announced this past summer that they intended to recognize Palestine during the UN General Assembly meeting held earlier this month. Just before the agreement was announced, 34 countries called for economic and military sanctions against Israel in response to the genocide. Both of these marked major escalations in the global resistance to Israel. The Bibi-Trump dog-and-pony-show was intended as much to arrest the momentum toward statehood, as to end the war.
The headlines of media reports about the meeting were contradictory. For example, NPR said “Trump announces an agreement with Israel to end war in Gaza.” While PBS said “Netanyahu rejects demands to end Gaza war.” Which is it? Because both can’t be true.
Yesterday, I posted that Netanyahu would hem and haw and, in the end, veto the deal. Today, he did one better: he “accepted” to the deal. But did so with enough provisos that he may as well have rejected it outright.
But in yesterday’s post, I didn’t take into account one key factor: Netanyahu responds differently to Democratic as opposed to Republican presidents. He balks when dealing with Democrats like Clinton, Obama and Biden. But when dealing with Bush or Trump, he appears to respond favorably publicly, while in practice he ignores any commitment he’s made verbally.
During a speech before his 800 generals, Trump of course trumpeted his success at ending his “eighth war”:
…If it [the Gaza war] were solved, he would give himself credit for solving “eight plus” wars and suggested he would give himself credit for solving “two or three” wars for the one in Gaza.
“I think we are beyond very close,” Trump said at the start of a news conference with Netanyahu where he detailed the plan. “We’re not quite finished. We have to get Hamas.”
Steve Witkoff acknowledged the deal had a few “minor” incomplete issues, while offering unsubstantiated claims of that it garnered fulsome support:
Witkoff told Fox New…the Trump plan has widespread backing in the Middle East and Europe. “We have a lot of buy-in. Do we have some details to work out? Yes. But, you know President Trump… everyone is going to be pushed by him,
Curiously but unsurprisingly, Hamas has not been heard from. In fact, it played no role in formulating this plan. It’s odd to forge such a plan without the participation of one of the main parties. But this is what passes for Middle East “diplomacy” in the Trump era. Instead of consultation Trump believes the combined power of the US and Israel can compel it to agree. We have seen over the past two years that this is yet another recipe for failure. If according to the US Declaration of Independence “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” peace agreements require the consent of the parties…both parties.
As is to be expected a Hamas official said it is expected to reject the proposed document because it:
“…Serves Israel’s interests” and “ignores those of the Palestinian people.”
The figure said that Hamas is unlikely to agree to disarming and handing over their weapons. Hamas is also said to object to the deployment of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) in Gaza, which it views as a new form of occupation.
⚡️🇮🇱BREAKING:
Netanyahu reveals his own bluff by saying that Israel will not withdraw from Gaza and that they are just using Arabs and Muslims to get their ‘hostages’ back while maintaining presence in the Gaza Strip.pic.twitter.com/9ibEVKN1ON
In fact, the confusion I mentioned above is deliberate on Bibi’s part. If he satisfies Trump by agreeing to his terms, while saying he’s going to continue the war, he satisfies his Judeo-Nazi ministers, who hold the keys to his remaining in power:
Netanyahu’s acceptance of peace plan is “merely lip service”
It remains to be seen how Netanyahu will be able to justify to far-right members of his coalition his acceptance of the proposal after promising to press against the militant organization until it was “eliminated.”
Israel minister presumes Netanyahu has manipulated Trump into guaranteeing no Palestinian state
When push comes to shove, Trump will not be the party he turns to. The president doesn’t hold his fate in his hands. But Smotrich and Ben Gvir do. He undoubtedly told them what he told a settler family many years ago: ““America is something that can be easily moved. Moved to the right direction … They won’t get in our way.” That’s also what he’s told his key coalition partners: don’t worry. I tell Trump one thing, but you are my only constituency.
As Trump announced Netanyahu’s formal apology to Qatar’s emir for the assassination attempt in Doha on Hamas’ key leadership, Ben Gvir was stirring the pot by issuing his own triumphal praise of the same attack. It was his own Silverback gorilla/alpha-male boast that he ran Netanyahu, rather than the other way around:
Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key coalition partner of Netanyahu’s, in a posting on X called the operation “an important, just and ethical attack.”
“It is very good that it happened,” he added.
Trump and Arab leaders consult on original peace plan
Arab states furious over final “agreement”
When Trump met with Arab leaders at the White House last week and presented his then 21-point plan, they endorsed it with a few a few “amendments.” The document announced this week had been altered significantly by Netanyahu. In fact, it hardly resembled what had been presented to them earlier. They were “furious.” They felt Trump had done a bait-and-switch: presented one document to them and replaced it with one they never would have endorsed.
The putative deal later did receive some support from those leaders. But the kicker is in the final paragraph, whose terms are wholly unacceptable to Israel. There you have key Arab players at loggerheads with Netanyahu:
Arab foreign ministers statement
They reaffirm their joint commitment to work with the United States to end the war in Gaza through a comprehensive deal that ensures unrestricted delivery of…humanitarian aid to Gaza, no displacement of the Palestinians, release of hostages, a security mechanism that guarantees the security of all sides, full Israeli withdrawal, rebuilds Gaza and creates a path for a just peace on the basis of the two state solution, under which Gaza is fully integrated with the West Bank in a Palestinian state in accordance with international law as key to achieving regional stability and security.
But even this statement is weak tea. It offers a “commitment to work with the US.” Not a demand. Not a specific deadline. Further, it seeks to “create a path” based on the two-state solution. As I’ve written here, such bromides mean nothing. Creating a path is not creating a state. That is all that matters. Anything short of that is meaningless. The statement also declines to mention Israel at all, expecting any potential agreement to derive not from it, but from Trump. Relying solely on him for anything is a recipe for failure.
Israel will block the deal
The plan includes provisions Netanyahu has rejected many times. It calls for the Palestinian Authority to take control of Gaza after an unspecified set of “reforms” are implemented. He has summarily rejected any PA role in Gaza. Since no one knows what the reforms are, I suppose Bibi can confidently say that the PA will never satisfactorily complete them and hence never take control.
One of the 20 points calls for Israel to end hostilities and eventually withdraw from Gaza. Netanyahu has persistently rejected this ever since 10/7. Just after he met with Trump, he told an Israeli audience that Israel would maintain a permanent security presence in Gaza. This flies in the face of the explicit language in the deal.
In fact, he must continue the war in order to remain in power. That is probably why the terms under which this would happen are so vague as to be meaningless:
Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza. As the ISF establishes control and stability, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will withdraw based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization that will be agreed upon between the IDF, ISF, the guarantors, and the United States…
The IDF will decide whether it should withdraw from Gaza? This is certainly a provision that would please Bibi. As far as the IDF is concerned, it will never withdraw from Gaza. Unless of course it is forced to do so. There is only one party that can do that, and it will never do so: Trump.
Reading the plan as outlined in the NPR report is an exercise in frustration and even desperation. How can anyone be so unhinged as to believe this is a viable solution to the Gaza conflict? It is full of wish-fulfillment. Full of mistaken assumptions. Full of hubris in assuming these two parties can impose their will on one of the most intractable longest-running conflicts over the past century.
An example of the mistakes inherent in this process is the Bush administration’s plan to bring stability to Iraq. Once Saddam was toppled, the US spent billions for nation-building there. We created the equivalent of the ISF, called the Coalition Provisional Authority. It frittered away all of these funds in mismanagement and corruption. In the end, the US withdrew from Iraq and left it to sink into years of sectarian violence. We didn’t build a nation. We destroyed one. This will be the fate of the current exercise in futility.
One key factor in scientific research is “Occam’s Razor”: that the solution needs to be as simple as possible and account for as much data/evidence as possible. The more complicated, the less guarantee there is of a viable solution. This is precisely the case here. The agreement has scores of moving parts, none of which will necessarily integrate or agree with each other. The list of agents is endless: IDF, ISF (International Stabilization Force), US, UN, Red Crescent, “Board of Peace,” and Egypt, among others. If any one of them balks or pursues an agenda out of synch with the others, the deal is broken. The chances of this happening are 100%. Especially given the past history of Israeli rejectionism. Paraphrasing Will Rogers: Israel never met a deal it didn’t break.
Silverstein is an independent journalist and has published Tikun Olam since 2003. It exposes the secrets of the Israeli national security state. He publishes regularly at Middle East Eye, the New Arab, and Jacobin Magazine. His work has also appeared in Al Jazeera English, The Nation, Truthout and other outlets.
Thank you Richard for your rather temperate view on this. Fool me once. Fool me many times in fact. But this caught my attention, as for many. This is anger producing because many are falling for it. Of course they have to give this a thumbs up- in principle. This has been mostly what had to happen from the beginning and it’s not Trump’s plan. Like Rosie Ruiz Trump is stepping at this moment to declare himself a winner (already). This plan I understand comes from Biden and Biden’s from before. Only maybe it adds the “Board of Peace” (Orwellian ) where Trump is the head of it. And then of course he’s getting ready for the Nobel.. while all other lawless cruel detractions continue here. The US is no mediator.
Who is really taking their wallets out to construct Gaza.. developers related to Trump- or Trump himself?
Ha..first return the hostages. This is the Hamas bargaining chip. Netanyahu/Trump have no credibility. As Israel keeps this, what some call genocide, up, Israel loses. Diminishing return . See in the NYT article the Moshe Ya’Alon quote. link to nytimes.com
US officials now court Gulf capital as eagerly as they once courted Gulf oil, with sovereign wealth flows into American tech and infrastructure climbing sharply over the past five years.
The implicit deal is no longer “oil for security” but “capital for access.” Washington reassures Gulf elites of enduring ties; in return, Gulf money helps fund America’s innovation economy. The transactionalism is stark and not lost on the region’s rulers.
As human beings, we are shocked and appalled at the mass destruction unleashed by the State of Israel against the people of Gaza in its military operation, following years of Israeli occupation, siege, and deprivation.
As Americans, we protest the carte blanche given Israel by the US government to pursue a war of “national honor,” “restoring deterrence,” “destroying Hamas,” and “searing Israel’s military might into the consciousness of the Gazans.”
As progressives, we reject the same justifications for the carnage that we heard ad nauseam from the supporters of the Second Iraq War: the so-called “war on terror,” the “clash of civilizations,” the “need to re-establish deterrence” – all of which served to justify a misguided and unnecessary war, with disastrous consequences for America and Iraq.
But as Jews of different religious persuasions, from Orthodox to secular atheist, we are especially horrified that a state that purports to speak in our name wages a military campaign that has killed over 1,400 people, a large percentage of them civilians, children, and non-combatants, with little or no consideration for human rights or the laws of war.
The attack of 7/10 did not come from a calm, clear blue sky 🌌… horrendous crimes of occupation, neglect in a concentration camp. Treated as subhumans since 1948.
t is ever-timely, to remember the stern reminders from the US Department of State – to the US Truman Presidential Administration (between 1946 and 1948):
“The proposals contained in the UNSCOP plan are not only not based on any principles of an international character, the maintenance of which would be in the interests of the United States, but they are in definite contravention to various principles laid down in the [U.N.] Charter as well as to principles on which American concepts of Government are based.
We are under no obligations to the Jews to set up a Jewish state. The Balfour Declaration and the Mandate provided not for a Jewish state, but for a Jewish national home. Neither the United States nor the British Government has ever interpreted the term ‘Jewish national home’ to be a Jewish national state.”
[ Ref: Loy Henderson Sept. 22, 1947 ] Just a small point for you though
Washington’s Battle Over Israel’s BirthBy Richard Holbrooke
Truman announced recognition at 6:11 p.m. on May 14 — 11 minutes after Ben-Gurion’s declaration of independence in Tel Aviv. So rapidly was this done that in the official announcement, the typed words “Jewish State” are crossed out, replaced in Clifford’s handwriting with “State of Israel.”
The US can squeeze out an “agreement” from any of the developing and M-E countries by sheer brute displays. Qatar is held hostage because it “hosts” the largest US base in the M-E; one nod from a US President and there will be no Qatar government anymore. Almost every dictatorship and tyranny in the world is there because of US support…except for Israel which runs the US like a puppet.
Palestinians are going to leave or die because by the time any Western bloc gets its righteousness to wake up, the only thing that they can do is to build yet another “Never Again!” monument. Except this time, there will not be any Nuremberg trials, and nobody will be hanged for war crimes or genocide.
Americans? We will gripe and gripe and gripe but when November comes around, we will “hold our noses” and still vote for our parties. Politicians know that so they do not have to listen to us, they only have to remain servile to their paymasters.
During the meeting, the leaders of Arab/OIC states thanked President Trump for calling for this important meeting. They highlighted the unbearable situation in the Gaza Strip, including the humanitarian catastrophe and high human toll, as well as its serious consequences for the region and impact on the Muslim world as a whole.
[…]
They emphasized the need to work out details of a plan for stabilization, while ensuring stability in the West Bank and Jerusalem’s Holy Sites. They supported Palestinian Authority reform efforts.
Participants affirmed the need to ensure a comprehensive plan for reconstruction in Gaza, based on the Arab and OIC plan, as well as security arrangements, with international assistance supporting the Palestinian leadership, and expressed commitment to work together to ensure the success of plans and to rebuild the lives of Palestinians in Gaza.
They also emphasized the importance of maintaining momentum to ensure that this meeting is the beginning of a process on the right path to a future of peace and regional cooperation.
Important note: OIC states … however the Shia are once again missing … Bahrain (governate KSA) – Iraq – Iran and no mention of Syria nor Lebanon left in chaos/terror after the Neocon wars at the behest of Israel.
Still uncertainty over rebuilding the 3rd temple in Jerusalem. Red heifers from Tx waiting …
Judeo-Christian wasn’t this the original term for converted Jews?
So Bari Weiss heads CBS now … an empire comes crashing down … Old Glory survived as does Manifest Destiny. Another genocide looming.
Thank you Richard for your rather temperate view on this. Fool me once. Fool me many times in fact. But this caught my attention, as for many. This is anger producing because many are falling for it. Of course they have to give this a thumbs up- in principle. This has been mostly what had to happen from the beginning and it’s not Trump’s plan. Like Rosie Ruiz Trump is stepping at this moment to declare himself a winner (already). This plan I understand comes from Biden and Biden’s from before. Only maybe it adds the “Board of Peace” (Orwellian ) where Trump is the head of it. And then of course he’s getting ready for the Nobel.. while all other lawless cruel detractions continue here. The US is no mediator.
Who is really taking their wallets out to construct Gaza.. developers related to Trump- or Trump himself?
Ha..first return the hostages. This is the Hamas bargaining chip. Netanyahu/Trump have no credibility. As Israel keeps this, what some call genocide, up, Israel loses. Diminishing return . See in the NYT article the Moshe Ya’Alon quote. link to nytimes.com
BREAKING NEWS⁉️
Trump calls on Israel to stop bombing Gaza, Hamas says willing to free hostages
From a well know author …
link to richardsilverstein.com
The attack of 7/10 did not come from a calm, clear blue sky 🌌… horrendous crimes of occupation, neglect in a concentration camp. Treated as subhumans since 1948.
absolutely— more than annoying to read in articles that Hamas started this on October 7th
@ Oui: I think I co-wrote that with Chip Manekin, then a professor at Univ of Maryland. Back in the day.
t is ever-timely, to remember the stern reminders from the US Department of State – to the US Truman Presidential Administration (between 1946 and 1948):
“The proposals contained in the UNSCOP plan are not only not based on any principles of an international character, the maintenance of which would be in the interests of the United States, but they are in definite contravention to various principles laid down in the [U.N.] Charter as well as to principles on which American concepts of Government are based.
We are under no obligations to the Jews to set up a Jewish state. The Balfour Declaration and the Mandate provided not for a Jewish state, but for a Jewish national home. Neither the United States nor the British Government has ever interpreted the term ‘Jewish national home’ to be a Jewish national state.”
[ Ref: Loy Henderson Sept. 22, 1947 ] Just a small point for you though
Washington’s Battle Over Israel’s Birth By Richard Holbrooke
link to washingtonpost.com
The US can squeeze out an “agreement” from any of the developing and M-E countries by sheer brute displays. Qatar is held hostage because it “hosts” the largest US base in the M-E; one nod from a US President and there will be no Qatar government anymore. Almost every dictatorship and tyranny in the world is there because of US support…except for Israel which runs the US like a puppet.
Palestinians are going to leave or die because by the time any Western bloc gets its righteousness to wake up, the only thing that they can do is to build yet another “Never Again!” monument. Except this time, there will not be any Nuremberg trials, and nobody will be hanged for war crimes or genocide.
Americans? We will gripe and gripe and gripe but when November comes around, we will “hold our noses” and still vote for our parties. Politicians know that so they do not have to listen to us, they only have to remain servile to their paymasters.
Important note: OIC states … however the Shia are once again missing … Bahrain (governate KSA) – Iraq – Iran and no mention of Syria nor Lebanon left in chaos/terror after the Neocon wars at the behest of Israel.
Still uncertainty over rebuilding the 3rd temple in Jerusalem. Red heifers from Tx waiting …
Judeo-Christian wasn’t this the original term for converted Jews?
We have seen this before. Orange man bringing peace < 24 hours to Ukraïne. Putin playing with ‘peace’ has been replaced by Netanyahu.