David Finkel
Posted October 15, 2025
TO BEGIN TO understand the Gaza ceasefire and what might follow, it’s essential to view it from multiple angles.
FIRST, is the deal as (partially) announced to be welcomed?
YES, there is hope that the two-year genocidal slaughter will end, and that food and medical supplies will finally arrive in quantities to alleviate Gaza’s full-scale famine and spreading health catastrophe. These are absolutely things to celebrate (we hope they come true), however they’ve come about.
The surviving Israeli hostages, Gaza detainees held in brutal Israeli imprisonment conditions, and some longterm Palestinian political prisoners have been freed — although thousands more “administrative detainees” remain incarcerated, whom the world must not allow to be forgotten, as well as leading Palestinian political figures such as Marwan Barghouti whom Israel never intends to be freed.
The joyful celebrations in Tel Aviv and Ramallah are fully justified. Equally, it is enraging to consider that this same deal could have occurred at least 18 months ago, even as early as January 2024, except that the pathetic “Genocide Joe” Biden and the sickening Antony Blinken would not impose it on Netanyahu.
The same deal then would have prevented the full obliteration of Gaza, saved tens of thousands (at minimum) of Palestinian lives, several hundred Israeli soldiers and dozens of hostages, and curtailed the descent of much of Israeli society into sadistic savagery — the lasting consequences of which for both Israelis and Palestinians we haven’t yet properly contemplated.
Why the ceasefire now? There are a bundle of reasons, including obviously Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize fantasy but also his rage over Netanyahu’s “genius decision” (as HAARETZ analyst Amos Harel bitterly calls it) to bomb the Hamas ceasefire bargaining team in Qatar, in order to sabotage the negotiations. Trump forced Netanyahu, live on camera, to phone his apology to the Qatar prime minister, reading word for word a script that the Qataris dictated for him.
Trump was obviously infuriated, for at least two reasons. Qatar is a strategic ally and host to major U.S. military facilities, a relationship that a rogue Israeli regime will not be allowed to sabotage. Equally important, it threatened the real estate deals and investments through which the Trump, Kushner and Witkoff families, along with other crony capitalists, will become even more fabulously wealthy.
On this point, Iris Leal (HAARETZ, October 12, “Why Did it Take Two Years to End the Gaza War?”) nails the importance of “the big money that drives every war and every regional peace agreement since the dawn of history.”
I would suggest that the squalid factors of Trump’s malignant narcissism and greed intersected here with broader imperial geopolitics,
Since October 2023, the strategic military destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah, the severe weakening of Iran and crippling of the so-called axis of resistance, have been Israeli operations that greatly benefitted U.S. imperialism. But the Netanyahu government’s junior-Mafia drive toward depopulating Gaza, annexing the West Bank, and launching a Greater Israel project carving up Syria and Lebanon isn’t in Washington’s regional interests, and needs to be curbed by the overlord.
We also have to credit Israel’s international isolation, which we can expect and hope will only deepen as the FULL extent of the genocide becomes known with the entry of international journalists and medical experts. And there’s the growing evident exhaustion of its army with so many reservists not showing up for duty, the global and U.S. pro-Palestinian protest movements, as well as the evident collapse of support for Hamas inside Gaza following its delusional October 7 “al-Aqsa flood” attack.
Beside all the uncertainties around the actual implementation of the ceasefire, we have to recognize that we don’t know what’s actually in the deal: in particular, what are the secret provisions and understandings in it? What are the deals for the Trump, Kushner and Witkoff families in collaboration with the regional Arab kingdoms?
Are there commitments from Israeli factions outside Netanyahu’s current coalition to join up and stop his criminal corruption trials (as Trump has demanded)? Will the military-settler ethnic cleansing rampage in the West Bank continue? What promises or threats have the Arab states made to Hamas?
No “Peace” In Sight
SECOND, is this deal a step forward toward peace and any measure of justice in Israel/Palestine?
NO: We have to keep in mind that while this is a ceasefire agreement — and may it be implemented! — it is in no way a road to the “peace of the millennium” that Trump boasts. Its vaunted 20 or so points are little more than a rather vague formula for normalizing colonial apartheid in Israel/Palestine.
In fact, I would not call it “neocolonial,” which after all implies preserving relations of domination in collaboration with local elites. Rather, it’s actually more “paleo-colonial.” It resembles a return to the post-WWI Mandate time when Palestine was turned over to be run by colonial outsiders — Britain then, and Trump’s “Board of Peace” now to be run by himself and George W Bush’s junior-partner-in-crime Tony Blair
Blair, since his retirement from active politics following the Iraq catastrophe, has been active pursuing lucrative deals in the Middle East and the Gulf. No wonder Trump is eager for such a veteran partner in grift.
As for the Palestinian people, all the fundamental problems remain, in more bitter and brutal conditions on the ground than two years ago. Only very intense and sustained international pressure on Israel, at both governmental and grassroots (especially BDS) levels, what historian Ilan Pappe calls the “Global Palestine” movement, could change the gross power imbalance that blocks any substantive change for the better, let alone any actual “solution.”
Among the critical tasks of “Global Palestine” is to ensure that there is no “amnesty” — literally, forgetting — for the Israeli-U.S. genocide. Not only a full accounting of the real death toll, but the truth of the murderous targeting of journalists, medical personnel, and humanitarian aid workers. Our demands must include the full entry of international journalists to make sure that global popular opinion will “never forget, never forgive.”
In the United States especially, there’s a danger that our corporate media will drown the genocidal reality of the past two years in celebration of the hostages’ return and crediting of Trump’s great triumph. October 7, 2023, was Israel’s greatest national trauma, and a colossal catastrophe for Palestine, but a great gift for Netanyahu and his far-right and fascist coalition — a gift that has kept on giving through two years of slaughter and destruction.
There is much more that can and must be said, but this is a first brief summary of the good, the bad and the ugly. Anyway, if Trump ultimately gets his Nobel Peace Prize he wouldn’t be the first genocidal criminal to receive the award. Henry Kissinger got one, remember?
[Solidarity’s September 2025 national convention resolution on “consistent anti-imperialism” with focus on Palestine and Ukraine is posted at https://solidarity-us.org/imperialism-and-consistent-anti-imperialism-in-the-trump-era/].
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