Donald Trump talked up the US-orchestrated peace plan for Gaza during his visit to Israel and Egypt, enhancing its political and diplomatic significance, thereby making it more difficult for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to wriggle out of it – as he did after two previous ceasefires.
The 20 remaining living Israeli hostages were freed by Hamas as well as the bodies of two of the 28 dead hostages, while 2,000 Palestinian prisoners have been arriving in Gaza and in Ramallah on the West Bank.
In a speech to the Knesset in Jerusalem, Trump claimed that his 20-point plan heralded not only long-term peace for Palestinians and Israelis, but “the historic dawn of a new Middle East”. He even forecast a peace deal with Iran, which the US and Israel bombed this summer. Netanyahu also talked of the end to the war as something permanent, where previously he had emphasised its temporary nature.
Despite Trump’s attempts to prevent Israel backing out, much of the 20-point peace plan is vague and subject to negotiations, giving Netanyahu plenty of future opportunities to blame Hamas for reneging on the deal and curtailing desperately needed food and medical supplies entering Gaza. But Trump is basking in international praise for ending the slaughter in Gaza, and so he is likely to do his utmost to make sure the deal does not fall apart.
At least 20 world leaders – including Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron of France, Mark Carney of Canada, and the rulers of many Arab and Muslim states – had gathered in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to see the loosely drafted peace plan solemnly signed, as if it were the fruit of prolonged and detailed negotiations like the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 at the end of the First World War.
Though Trump’s speech was laudatory of Netanyahu as the victor in the war, he made clear that he had told Israel’s PM that now was “the time to translate military victory into a lasting peace”. Trump quoted himself as saying: “Bibi, you can’t beat the world” by continuing the war. The US President did not go into the future governance of Gaza, but he did speak about its reconstruction and future economic prosperity – a very different tone from his talk six months ago of forcing out the 2.4 million Palestinians and turning the Gaza Strip into a new Riviera.
Much of Trump’s speech to the Knesset was self-congratulatory bombast, but he spent an unexpected amount of time talking about the prospect of peace with Iran – saying “we are ready when you are”, which suggests that, at least for now, he is not prepared to join Israel in another attack on Iran, as many have predicted.
The US President mentioned the Palestinians only briefly. Yet the peace deal was only finally struck after Hamas had agreed to it, and its armed and masked fighters were visibly back on the streets of Gaza after the ceasefire.
Trump’s words were very much those of an emperor commending the action of a vassal king. So too was his surprise suggestion to Israeli President Isaac Herzog that he pardon Netanyahu, who is on trial for bribery and other offences.
square PATRICK COCKBURN Newsletter (£)Trump is the only winner of the Israel-Gaza war
Read More
By all accounts Netanyahu had wanted to continue the war, but had no choice except to end it without achieving his stated goal of destroying Hamas. Not that this was ever entirely feasible: Hamas is a lightly armed militia-type force that launched a long-prepared surprise raid into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 Israelis, but otherwise has been able to put up little resistance to the Israeli Defence Forces. In reality, when Israeli leaders speak of destroying Hamas militarily, this has in meant a wholesale assault on the 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza, of whom 67,000 have been killed and 169,000 wounded.
Hamas said at the time of the raid that one of its purposes was to show that the Palestinians could not be ignored or marginalised in settling the future of the Middle East. It succeeded in putting “the Palestinian question” back at the centre of international diplomacy, though at horrendous cost to the Palestinian people. Israel and many others might like to marginalise them again, but this would most likely provoke another explosion.
However much Netanyahu claims a complete victory, the two-year conflict in Gaza has in fact been a bloody disproof of his central ideological belief that Israel could live in safety without making concessions to the Palestinians. But it does not appear that Netanyahu learned that lesson and, even if there is peace in Gaza, this does not mean that the West Bank, home to 2.7 million Palestinians, will be at peace.
Yossi Beilin, the former Israeli justice minister and peace negotiator at the time of the Oslo Accords 30 years ago, told Al Jazeera that for Israel the Gaza war had been “a military success but a policy failure”. The Israel Defence Forces have destroyed Gaza physically but enhanced its significance politically. For all its military successes, Israel is isolated internationally, considered by much of the world to be a rogue or pariah state – with even many Maga Republicans expressing disapproval of its actions.
Triumphant on the battlefield, Israel is more than ever dependent on the goodwill and support of the US Government – something that Trump and Netanyahu are well aware of.
Hence then, the article about netanyahu can t back out of the gaza peace plan trump s ego will hold him to it was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Netanyahu can’t back out of the Gaza peace plan – Trump’s ego will hold him to it )
Also on site :