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Whether it’s the Israeli government, an international peacekeeping force, or a post-conflict reconstruction authority for Gaza chaired by Donald Trump, the fate of Palestine still rests in the hands of outsiders.
this week. The 20 men have been reunited with their ecstatic families. It’s extraordinary that they are still alive, more than two years after Hamas and its allies seized them along with around 230 others after the attacks of October 7. They survived two years of captivity, of war, of privation. They survived when other hostagesThe survival of these 20 Israelis is a testament to their resilience, yes, but more so to their value. The hostages were the only asset that Hamas couldfor the release of Palestinian prisoners, a ceasefire to end the war, and a deal to guarantee a Palestinian state. Israel released 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for these 20 men and more than 20 dead hostages. It has stopped bombingto the region to punish Gazans because Hamas has not returned all the bodies of the dead hostages .had promised not to end the war without extinguishing Hamas. But without the hostages as collateral, the organization has no leverage to force the IDF to relinquish further territory or to guarantee that the Israeli government won’t resume bombing Gaza. As for Palestinian statehood, it remains as elusive after this hostage exchange as it has been for years. Palestinians are no closer to determining their own future. Gaza lies in ruins. The West Bank is being gobbled up by Israeli settlers. Whether it’s the Israeli government, an international peacekeeping force, or a post-conflict reconstruction authority for Gaza chaired byof a peace deal for the entire region—Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have not agreed on the next steps for Gaza. Hamas, not surprisingly, wants to continue being politically relevant. To that end, it has refused to give up its weapons, which is all that’s left of its much-diminished power. Israel wants complete disarmament and no political future for Hamas, which would reduce it to the status of a Boy Scout troop. Trump has threatened to“a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza.” In other words, Trump wants to install a group of functionaries who don’t aspire to do anything other than take out the trash and keep the hospitals running. Israel doesn’t want anything that looks like an actual state that could unite with Palestinians in the West Bank, develop a truly sustainable economy, or develop a foreign policy.The Palestinian Authority is maneuvering to play a role in the new Gaza administration even though Israel wants it sidelined. TheGeneral Assembly last month in New York. Marwan Barghouti, a dynamic figure who could take the reins of the PA and unify Palestinians, remains in Israeli prison. According to the peace deal, the PA is expected to “complete its reform program,” which basically means that it must become even more subservient to Israeli and American interests before it will be invited back to the table. Behind the scenes, however,whereby the PA will likely play a role in choosing the functionaries in charge in Gaza and supplying guards for the border crossing to Egypt. In any case, the real power in Gaza will be held by an international authority, the “Board of Peace,” chaired byand run by the UK’s Tony Blair. This authority will preside over the economic reconstruction of Gaza. Trump’s plan speaks of “convening a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East.” He probably has the cities of the Gulf States in mind—Dubai, Doha—but they of course had oil wealth to spend. Meanwhile, it’s impossible to forget Trump’s preferred strategy of turning Gaza into a huge resort where rich Emiratis and Americans enjoy a Club Med experience while the Palestinians who remain serve them drinks and clean their hotel rooms. To make sure that Hamas doesn’t stage a comeback with a hidden cache of weapons, an Arab-led peacekeeping force is supposed to take over from the IDF as it withdraws from occupied territory. Of course, any peacekeeping body would be an improvement over the IDF, and an Arab force has been part of many proposals for Gaza over the years. On the positive side, such a force would more than likely prevent the expulsion of Palestinians from their land—because the Arab countries in the region don’t want an influx of Palestinian. On the negative side, Arab countries would likely go along with the implementation of a plan that makes Palestinians second-class citizens—because that’s often how they are treated elsewhere in the region.will be involved in the initial stages of this peacekeeping plan. With Tony Blair running the reconstruction authority, it will all start to look like the aftermath of the Iraq war—and that didn’t work out so well for Iraqis.The more support other countries give to Palestinians by recognizing their state—in the absence of an actual state—the more Israel seems to push back against the international consensus. Before the peace deal, the country’s minister in charge of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir,of Israel’s “complete crushing” of the Palestinian Authority by annexing the West Bank. In supporting a push for more settlements that effectively divide the West Bank in two, NetanyahuEven though 11 more countries recognized a Palestinian state last month at the UN General Assembly, the Trump administration has held firm in its refusal to go along. During Trump’s speech to the Knesset, two Israeli politicians wereYes, Trump’s peace plan talks about creating conditions for “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” But it is pushed into a hypothetical future, much likeonce supported nuclear disarmament, though not in his generation or even his children’s generation but at some vague point in the future. There’s kicking the can down the road, and then there’s kicking the can into the Van Allen belt. In the meantime, Israel will continue to reduce the material basis of a Palestinian state by creating new settlements in the Occupied Territories, preventing the rise of credible political actors in the Palestinian community, and keeping all the important levers of power in the hands of the IDF or external actors.Benjamin Netanyahu has been in charge of Israel for much of the last 30 years . He has presided over a shift in Israeli politics to the far-right. The left has practically disappeared. One of the few credible challengers to Netanyahu, Naftali Bennett, is even further to the right of the prime minister. The 2026 elections may change all that. Even with the Gaza deal in place, Netanyahu faces the very real possibility that he won’t be able to put together a governing coalition. The far-right parties that have kept his current government afloat are losing ground. According, Otzma Yehudit would maintain its six seats if elections were held today. But Religious Zionism, which currently has seven seats, wouldn’t even make it into the Knesset. But whoever emerges from the next elections, they won’t accept a Palestinian state unless they are pressured to do so.that led to the October 7 attacks, his refusal to take advantage of earlier diplomatic opportunities to negotiate hostage returns, and his ongoingcharges. They won’t likely forget the hostility of the far-right to any ceasefire and the fact that Netanyahu had to have his arm twisted by Trump to negotiate the hostage release. Of course, Netanyahu is a survivor. He has been held hostage by parties even further to the right, and yet he has proven resilient. He still might jettison those far-right parties and find a new governing majority. Perhaps in yet another term he would reverse the worst anti-Palestinian policies . Perhaps voters will send him into retirement . But whoever emerges from the next elections, they won’t accept a Palestinian state unless they are pressured to do so. Conjuring such a state out of the broken pieces of the Palestinian community will be much more difficult than the negotiation of a prisoner exchange or even a ceasefire. Let’s first see if the next stage of the Gaza deal can be achieved—the further withdrawal of the IDF, a compromise over the future of Hamas, the delivery of sufficientBut let’s also be clear: Those steps would only bring Gaza back to where it was, more or less, before October 7. The world must keep its eyes on the prize. Palestinians need a viable state that can coexist with Israel and ensure that theIf we are to speak of a Palestinian victory in Gaza, it is a resounding triumph for the Palestinian people, their indomitable spirit, and their deeply rooted resistance that transcends faction, ideology, and politics., it is a resounding triumph for the Palestinian people, their indomitable spirit, and their deeply rooted resistance that transcends faction, ideology, and politics.lay in a strictly negotiated process. “Only dialogue can achieve peace” has been the relentlessly peddled mantra in political circles, academic platforms, media forums, and the like. A colossal industry burgeoned around that idea, expanding dramatically in the lead-up to, and for years after, the signing of theInstead, the conflict has largely been shaped by how these terms, and an entire scaffolding of similar terminology, were defined and implemented. "Peace" forand the US necessitated a subservient Palestinian leadership, ready to negotiate and operate within confined parameters, and entirely outside the binding parameters of international law. Similarly, "dialogue" was only permissible if the Palestinian leadership consented to renounce "terrorism"—read: armed resistance—disarm, recognize Israel's purported right to exist as a Jewish state, and adhere to the prescribed language dictated by The genuine fear that unified Israel, the US, and several Arab countries is the terrifying prospect that Resistance, particularly armed resistance, could reemerge in Palestine, and by extension across the"terrorism" and accepting a restricted interpretation of specific United Nations resolutions on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank andNot once did Israel consent to "dialogue" with Palestinians without a stringent set of preconditions, driving Arafat to a unilateral series of concessions at the expense of his people. Ultimately, Oslo yielded nothing of intrinsic value for Palestinians, apart from Israel's mere recognition, not of Palestine or the Palestinian people, but of the. In fact, the post-"dialogue," "peace," and "painful compromises" era witnessed the largest expansion and effective annexation of Palestinian land since the 1967 Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.During this period, there was a widespread consensus that violence, meaning only Palestinian armed resistance in response to unconstrained Israeli violence, was intolerable. The PA'sit in 2008 as "useless," and subsequently, in coordination with the Israeli military, devoted much of the PA's security apparatus to suppress any form of resistance to Israel, armed or otherwise.to forge spaces, however constrained, for armed resistance, the concerted efforts of Israel and the PA often crushed or at least substantially reduced these moments. Gaza, however, consistently stood as the anomaly. The strip’s armed uprisings have persisted since the early 1950s, with theof the fedayeen movement, followed by a succession of socialist and Islamic resistance groups. The place has always remained unmanageable—by Israel, and later by the PA. When Abbas loyalists were defeated following brief but tragic violentout of Palestinian population centers in the strip , into the so-called military buffer zones, established on areas that were historically part of Gaza's territory. It was the start of today's hermetic siege on Gaza.a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council, an unexpected turn of events that infuriated Washington, Tel Aviv, Ramallah, and other Western and Arab allies. The fear was that without Israel's PA allies maintaining control over the resistance inside Gaza and the West Bank, the occupied territories would inevitably result in a widespread anti-occupation revolt. Consequently, Israel intensified its suffocating siege on the strip, which refused to capitulate despite the horrific humanitarian crisis resulting from the blockade. Thus, starting in 2008, Israel adopted a new strategy: treating the Gaza resistance as an actual military force, therebyDespite the immense destruction and the relentless siege, let alone external international and Arab pressures and isolation, the strip somehow endured and even regenerated itself. Destroyed residences were rebuilt from the salvaged rubble, and resistance weaponry was also replenished, often utilizing unexploded Israeli munitions.For Palestinians, it represented the ultimate evolution of their armed struggle, a culmination of a process that commenced in the early 1950s and involved diverse groups and political ideologies. It served as a stark notification to Israel that the rules of engagement have irrevocably shifted, and that the besieged Palestinians refuse to submit to their supposed historical role of perpetual victimhood.the country's vaunted military and intelligence as deeply flawed, and revealed that the country's leadership assessment of Palestinian capabilities was fundamentally erroneous. Though Israel and the US—and others, including some Arab countries and the PA—continue to demand the disarming of the resistance, such a demand is rationally nearly unattainable. This failure followed the brief surge of confidence during the normalization campaign initiated by the US and Israel with pliable Arab and Muslim countries during President Donald Trump's first term in office. At that time, it appeared as though the Palestinians and their cause had been rendered irrelevant in the broader Middle Eastern political landscape. Between a co-opted Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and besieged resistance movements in Gaza, Palestine was no longer a decisive factor in Israel's pursuit of regional hegemony. The centerpiece of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy, and his aspiration to conclude his long political career with the ultimate regional triumph, was suddenly obliterated. Enraged, disoriented, but also determined to restore all of Israel's advantages since Oslo, Netanyahuon a campaign of mass killing that, over the course of two years, culminated in one of the worst genocides in human history.to ethnically cleanse the survivors out of Gaza laid bare Israel and its Zionist ideology for their inherently violent character, thus allowing the world, especially Western societies, to fully perceive Israel for what it truly is, and what it has always been.But the genuine fear that unified Israel, the US, and several Arab countries is the terrifying prospect that Resistance, particularly armed resistance, could reemerge in Palestine, and by extension across the Middle East, as a viable force capable of threatening all autocratic and undemocratic regimes. This fear was dramatically amplified by the ascent of other non-state actors, such as, who collectively with the Gaza resistance managed to forge a formidable alliance that required direct US involvement in the conflict. Even then, Israel failed to achieve any of its strategic objectives in Gaza, owing to the legendary resilience of the Palestinian people, but also the prowess of the resistance that managed toover 2,000 Israeli military vehicles, including hundreds of the pride and joy of the Israeli military industry, the Merkava tank. No Arab army has managed to exact this scale of military, political, and economic cost from Israel throughout the country's violent existence of nearly eight decades. Though Israel and the US—and others, including some Arab countries and the PA—continue to demand the disarming of the resistance, such a demand is rationally nearly unattainable. Israel hasover 200,000 tons of explosives over Gaza over the course of two years to achieve that singular objective, and failed. There is no plausible reason to believe that it can achieve such a goal through political and economic pressures alone. Not only did Israel fail in Gaza, or, more accurately in the words of many Israeli historians and retired army generals, was decisively defeated in Gaza, but Palestinians have managed to reassert Palestinian agency, including the legitimacy of all forms of resistance, as a winning strategy against Israeli colonialism and US-Westernin the region. This explains the profound fear shared by all parties that Israel's defeat in Gaza could fundamentally alter the entire regional power dynamics.in negotiating in an attempt to resurrect the almost 90-year-old Palestinian leader Abbas and his Oslo paradigm as the only viable alternatives for Palestinians, the medium and long-term consequences of the war are likely to present a starkly different reality, one where Oslo and its corrupted figures are definitively relegated to the past. Finally, if we are to speak of a Palestinian victory in Gaza, it is a resounding triumph for the Palestinian people, their indomitable spirit, and their deeply rooted resistance that transcends faction, ideology, and politics. All of this considered, it must also be clearly stated that the current ceasefire in Gaza cannot be misconstrued as a "peace plan"; it is a mere pause from the, as there will certainly be a subsequent round of conflict, the nature of which depends heavily on what unfolds in the West Bank, indeed the entire region, in the coming months and years.The announcement came as the confirmed death toll from Israel's two-year genocidal assault on Gaza rose to 67,183 Palestinians, widely believed to be an undercount.will withdraw their Troops to an agreed-upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace," he claimed on Truth Social. "All Parties will be treated fairly!" "This is a GREAT Day for the Arab and Muslim World, Israel, all surrounding Nations, and the United States of America, and we thank the mediators from Qatar,, and Turkey, who worked with us to make this Historic and Unprecedented Event happen," Trump added. "BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!"to social media, writing in Hebrew that it was "a great day for Israel" and he would "convene the government to approve the agreement and bring all our dear hostages home." The prime minister then thanked thewith a Hamas official who confirmed that "from our side, yes," the Palestinians reached a deal, but they still needed to "finalize some points" with the mediators. "It's over, it's over. It's been decided," a second source told the journalist. "Everybody's agreed on it. There are a few things that will be discussed, but it's over." Hamas led an attack on southern Israel that killed over 1,100 people on October 7, 2023. Since then, Israeli forces have bombed and blockaded, whose health officials put the death toll at 67,183, with another 169,841 injured. Global experts have warned that these are likely undercounts, given the thousands of people missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the strip's destroyed infrastructure.Top ICE Official Says Protesters Can Be Arrested for Simply Criticizing Mass Deportation Campaign: Court FilingThe Librarian’s Call: Documenting Is ResistanceTrump Targets Another Late Night Comedian, Saying It's 'Probably Illegal' to Make Fun of HimReport Details Massive Federal Contracts, Enforcement Actions Against Trump's Ballroom Donors
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Common DreamsCommon Dreams has been providing breaking news & views for the progressive community since 1997. We are independent, non-profit, advertising-free and 100% reader supported. Our Mission: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
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Common DreamsCommon Dreams has been providing breaking news & views for the progressive community since 1997. We are independent, non-profit, advertising-free and 100% reader supported. Our Mission: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
Read more »