Donald Trump claims his 20-point ‘peace plan’ will end the war in Gaza and bring stability to the Middle East. The proposal, whose essential element is the disarming of the Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza, would transform the strip into a colony of the US and its regional allies. It should be condemned and rejected by all forces fighting for Palestinian liberation.
Trump has given Hamas a ‘few days’ to accept the deal or he will allow Netanyahu to ‘do what he needs to do’, i.e. complete the Gaza genocide, with the backing of the United States. It is not a proposal for peace, it is an ultimatum demanding the unilateral surrender of the Palestinian resistance.
Insofar as any deal leads to an end to the bombing and the entry of aid into the strip, it would provide desperately needed respite. But disarming the population and leaving the strip at the mercy of the genocidal IDF is no guarantee of security.
Netanyahu has form agreeing to ceasefires and then reneging on them. The last ceasefire was broken by Israel which went on to intensify its genocidal onslaught. Netanyahu has openly admitted that he reserves the right to break any new ceasefire on the slightest pretext, because he knows that, with Trump behind him, there is no force that will stop him.
An imperialist project
The plan was drawn up between the US and the reactionary despots who rule Turkey and the surrounding Arab states—without any input whatsoever from Palestinian representatives.
For Trump, the overriding purpose of the plan is to get the Abraham Accords back on track. This 2020 agreement to ‘normalise’ relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco, has as its aim persuading the Arab world to accept a Middle East under US hegemony, with Israel a pre-eminent regional power acting as unchallenged gendarme of US interests.
If October 7 and Israel’s genocidal response put the Accords on ice, then Israel’s blitzkrieg against Hezbollah, Syria and Iran, demolished the so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’. In proving their indispensability to US imperialism, Israel secured license from the US to wage its genocide in Gaza and extend its campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
Nevertheless Israel’s September strike on Hamas’s political leaders in Qatar—host to a huge US air base and lynchpin of US military strategy in the region—threatened to undermine years of US policy. The Gulf states and Saudi Arabia were forced to realise that far from Israel being an economic partner in the Abraham Accords, it is a dangerous and unpredictable disturber of the peace in their region.
The European imperialists also fear that Israeli attacks will further destabilise the region and undermine western influence. This explains the attempts by some powers to distance themselves from Israel’s aggression. For now, all the great powers including China and Russia have endorsed Trump’s peace plan, hoping it will restore a US-led ‘order’ in the region. This demonstrates once again that the Palestinian people can have no illusions in the rival camps.
But if Israel sabotages those elements of the plan insisted on by the Arab monarchies and Turkey, continues with the genocide in Gaza and the settlement of the West Bank, then the Abraham Accords will disintegrate.
No road to peace
The cynical nature of the so-called ‘peace plan’ is exposed by the words of Isarael’s leaders themselves. When asked whether he agreed with the plan’s provision for a ‘credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood’, Netanyahu replied ‘No, absolutely not’, and has elsewhere claimed Israel will ‘forcibly resist’ Palestinian statehood—as if there could be any doubt!
The fascist settlement minister Bezalel Smotrich has denounced the plan as a ‘historic missed opportunity’ to free Israel from the shackles of Oslo. This previous peace plan has been a dead letter for a quarter of a century except for ghostly appearances in the speeches of Arab and European leaders.
A senior Hamas figure told the BBC the plan ‘serves Israel’s interests’ and ‘ignores those of the Palestinian people’, and that the organisation is unlikely to agree to disarmament—a critical element of the plan.
Hamas will inevitably be subject to immense pressure from the regional powers and understandably by many Gazans, but the worldwide Gaza movement must find the strength to condemn the deal as a trap laid by Trump and Netanyahu.
Direct action against genocide
Whatever the immediate prospects of Trump’s deal, the international solidarity movement has entered a new phase of development as demonstrated by the 22 September general strike in Italy and the courageous activists on the Global Sumud Flotilla. Our urgent task is to defend those challenging Israel’s criminal blockade and demand an immediate end to the genocide:
- An immediate and total end to the IDF’s bombardment of Gaza
- The complete opening of Gaza’s land crossings and seaports and airports to food and medical aid, free of Israeli inspections
- An end to the blockade of Gaza’s territorial waters.
- The total withdrawal of the IDF beyond Gaza’s borders and an end to all overflights by war planes and drones
- The opening of links to Jerusalem and the West Bank and an end to the expansion of settlements and the murder of Palestinians there.
- Emergency reconstruction of housing for those made homeless by the IDF
As long as the racist settler state exists and the Palestinian people are denied the right to a sovereign state in their entire historic homeland, there will be no peace there or in the entire Middle East.
- Break all ties with the Zionist entity. Follow the example of Italian workers and youth—protest, strike and occupy to impose a total economic, military and cultural blockade of Israel.
- Free Gaza – Free Palestine – Down with the Racist Israeli State! For the right of return!
- For a united, democratic, socialist Palestine with equality for all as part of a socialist federation of the Middle East!
