As the anniversary of the 20-point Gaza Peace Plan, announced on 29 September 2025, approaches, Trump’s billionaire son-in-law Jared Kushner’s trip to Israel proved that it is moribund, if not dead. Israel has used it to press ahead with its takeover of Gaza and step up ethnic cleansing on the West Bank.
Six months after the deal was announced, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu launched their war on Iran. This, and their ill-fated attempts to find an off-ramp for it, has driven the Gaza peace plan out of the headlines. But this is also because there is no peace process and there is no ceasefire as far as Israel is concerned.
But the killing goes on. Since the ‘plan’ came into effect on 10 October last year, total Palestinian deaths since 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, increased from 66,288 to 74,582.
The blockade of humanitarian supplies has not ended. Instead of the 600–800 daily truckloads of humanitarian aid promised by Trump’s peace plan, UN sources say only some 100 are crossing. In short, the Israelis are still inflicting malnutrition and they are still targeting health workers.
According to a report published on 13 August by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the world’s biggest famine-monitoring body: ‘In the absence of humanitarian food-security assistance, 1.9 million people, 90 percent of Gaza’s population, are facing high levels of acute food insecurity between July and December 2026.’
As for the Trump peace plan, this is openly derided by Netanyahu. Israeli forces were supposed to withdraw totally from Gaza in return for Hamas and other resistance fighters disarming. Instead, what has happened is the IDF’s yellow lines have been pushed westward towards the sea, continuously shrinking the area allowed to the Palestinian population. Originally the area occupied by the IDF was 50%. It now occupies 70% of the Strip and is bulldozing what remains of its buildings.
According to Haaretz, at least five Palestinian militias operate in Gaza, killing civilians, under the control of the IDF and Shin Bet, while the Israeli Air Force provides cover. Hamas disarmament under these conditions is unthinkable, as Israel knows. ‘Make no mistake,’ the editorial continues, ‘the militia project is another wrench that Israel is throwing in the works.’ (28.08.26)
The fascist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has made clear the state’s genocidal objective: ‘I think targeted assassinations should be carried out in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night. Not just those who pose an immediate threat. There are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.’
In another statement he added: ‘I see all of Gaza as ours. Settlements not just in Gush Katif (a block of 17–21 Israeli settlements in the southern Gaza Strip removed in 2005) but throughout Gaza, encouraging as much emigration as possible, sending them to their countries.’
The West Bank
Though the suffering is greatest in Gaza, conditions in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem have become much worse. Since October 2023, Israel’s occupation forces have killed 1,111 Palestinians—243 of them children—and tens of thousands have been forcibly displaced from their homes, part of Israel’s deliberate policy of displacement of the entire Palestinian people by Israeli settlers.
After IDF forces and armed settlers killed four Palestinians in the village of Til near Nablus in July, during which one IDF soldier was killed with his own weapon by youths defending their homes, the Israeli military imposed a total lockdown and launched large-scale raids on the cities of Nablus and Jenin.
Israel’s fascist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who also heads the West Bank Civil Administration, stated that ‘the villages of Til, Beit Furik, and Irak Burin must become like the refugee camps of Jenin and Tulkarem’, where the IDF in February 2025 expelled more than 40,000 Palestinians from their homes.
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions
BDS was launched in July 2005 with the endorsement of over 170 Palestinian bodies, including women’s organisations, trade unions, NGOs, writers and other cultural associations, the anti-Apartheid Wall campaign, academics and student organisations. Basing itself on the South African Anti-Apartheid Movement, its objectives are summed up in its name.
Over the last two decades Israel stepped up its destruction of any possibility of a West Bank Palestinian state, and thus a ‘two-state’ solution. It did so by fragmenting the 1967 territory by means of armed settlements, military roads and IDF checkpoints.
The increase in the influence of the settler element in Likud-led coalitions over the past decade made it clear that there is no sizeable force in the Israeli population or in Israeli politics which is sympathetic to a two-state solution, despite its inclusion in the Trump peace plan.
Not just Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir or Smotrich, but a wide spectrum of left and centre Zionist parties now oppose a Palestinian state. In July the Knesset passed a resolution that rejected the establishment of any form of this, by 68 votes to 9.
Ed Miliband’s statement to the Commons on 8 September that Britain would sanction violent settlers, ban imports of goods and some services from the occupied territories, and impose sanctions on firms assisting the occupation was significant.
It should be used as evidence that the BDS movement has been right all along. Miliband may have used the euphemism ‘ethnic cleansing’, but this in fact falls within the definition of genocide, and it should be called out as such. But Labour’s U-turn does not go far enough. We have to press home our advantage and demand more.
However, the BDS movement has performed well as a focus for exposing the nature of the Zionist crimes against the Palestinian people, its racist apartheid-like relegation of Israel’s Arab population to second-class citizens, the blockading and fragmentation of the West Bank and the blockade and bombardment of Gaza.
Three years of regular anti-genocide demonstrations, hundreds of thousands strong, have added to the popular revulsion at Israel’s actions in both the Americas and Europe. These have been particularly strong in the states that give uncritical political, economic and military aid to the Zionist state. But, with the partial exception of Spain, we have not cracked our governments’ support for Israel.
Therefore we must renew our efforts to disrupt all the government institutions and corporations aiding Israel’s genocide. We must call for walkouts, like those of the Greek and Italian dockers, boycotts and sit-ins in workplaces carrying out orders for Israel.
Shut down Israeli arms firms, like Elbit Systems, Rafael Advanced Defence Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). We need to pose these objectives in the unions and combat the argument that defending jobs takes priority over working-class solidarity with the oppressed. There must be no business as usual under genocide. We should demand firms, universities, councils or cultural institutions cut all ties with Israel, and withdraw all investments of pension funds from Israeli companies and institutions.
Andy Burnham’s acknowledgment that Labour under Starmer made mistakes over Gaza is just a shame-faced cover-up. Press the Burnham government to end all collusion with the IDF, close down all Israeli defence contractors in the UK and impose a comprehensive military embargo. End all so-called defensive support by British bases or intelligence services.
End the persecution of Palestine Action, release all those detained and end the use of anti-terror laws.
IDF out of Gaza and Lebanon now!
Dismantle all the illegal settlements!
For a single, secular, socialist state of Palestine, with equal rights for all!
