Davin News Server

By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost

There is no shortage of failed peace plans in occupied Palestine, all
of them incorporating detailed phases and timelines, going back to the
presidency of Jimmy Carter. They end the same way. Israel gets what it
wants initially — in the latest case the release of the remaining
Israeli hostages — while it ignores and violates every other phase
until it resumes its attacks on the Palestinian people.

It is a sadistic game. A merry-go-round of death. This ceasefire, like
those of the past, is a commercial break. A moment when the condemned
man is allowed to smoke a cigarette before being gunned down in a
fusillade of bullets.

Once Israeli hostages are released, the genocide will continue. I do
not know how soon. Let’s hope the mass slaughter is delayed for at
least a few weeks. But a pause in the genocide is the best we can
anticipate. Israel is on the cusp of emptying Gaza, which has been all
but obliterated under two years of relentless bombing. It is not about
to be stopped. This is the culmination of the Zionist dream. The
United States, which has given Israel a staggering $22 billion in
military aid since Oct, 7, 2023, will not shut down its pipeline, the
only tool that might halt the genocide.

Israel, as it always does, will blame Hamas and the Palestinians for
failing to abide by the agreement, most probably a refusal — true or
not — to disarm, as the proposal demands. Washington, condemning
Hamas’s supposed violation, will give Israel the green light to
continue its genocide to create Trump’s fantasy of a Gaza Riviera and
“special economic zone” with its “voluntary”relocation of Palestinians
in exchange for digital tokens.

Of the myriads of peace plans over the decades, the current one is the
least serious. Aside from a demand that Hamas release the hostages
within 72-hours after the ceasefire begins, it lacks specifics and
imposed timetables. It is filled with caveats that allow Israel to
abrogate the agreement. And that is the point. It is not designed to
be a viable path to peace, which most Israeli leaders understand.
Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, established by
the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to serve as a mouthpiece for
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and champion messianic Zionism,
instructed its readers not to be concerned about the Trump plan
because it is only “rhetoric.”

Israel, in one example from the proposal, will “not return to areas
that have been withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements the
agreement.”

Who decides if Hamas has “fully implemented” the agreement? Israel.
Does anyone believe in Israel’s good faith? Can Israel be trusted as
an objective arbitrator of the agreement? If Hamas — demonized as a
terrorist group — objects, will anyone listen?

How is it possible that a peace proposal ignores the International
Court of Justice’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion, which reiterated that
Israel’s occupation is illegal and must end?

How can it fail to mention the Palestinian’s right to
self-determination?

Why are Palestinians, who have a right under international law to
armed struggle against an occupying power, expected to disarm while
Israel, the illegally occupying force, is not?

By what authority can the U.S. establish a “temporary transitional
government,” — Trump’s and Tony Blair’s so-called “Board of Peace” —
sidelining the Palestinian right to self-determination?

Who gave the U.S. the authority to send to Gaza an “International
Stabilization Force,” a polite term for foreign occupation?

How are Palestinians supposed to reconcile themselves to the
acceptance of an Israeli “security barrier” on Gaza’s borders,
confirmation that the occupation will continue?

How can any proposal ignore the slow-motion genocide and annexation of
the West Bank?

Why is Israel, which has destroyed Gaza, not required to pay
reparations?

What are Palestinians supposed to make of the demand in the proposal
for a “deradicalized” Gazan population? How is this expected to be
accomplished? Re-education camps? Wholesale censorship? The rewriting
of the school curriculum? Arresting offending Imams in mosques?

And what about addressing the incendiary rhetoric routinely employed
by Israeli leaders who describe Palestinians as “human animals” and
their children as “little snakes”?

“All of Gaza and every child in Gaza, should starve to death,” the
Israeli rabbi Ronen Shaulov announced. “I don’t have mercy for those
who, in a few years, will grow up and won’t have mercy for us. Only a
stupid fifth column, a hater of Israel has mercy for future
terrorists, even though today they are still young and hungry. I hope,
may they starve to death, and if anyone has a problem with what I’ve
said, that’s their problem.”

Israeli violations of peace agreements have historical precedents.

The Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 by Egyptian president Anwar
Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin — without the
participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — led to
the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which normalized diplomatic
relations between Israel and Egypt.

Subsequent phases of the Camp David Accords, which included a promise
by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and
Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza
within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the
West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never implemented.

The 1993 Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, saw the PLO recognize Israel’s
right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate
representatives of the Palestinian people. Yet, what ensued was the
disempowerment of the PLO and its transformation into a colonial
police force. Oslo II, signed in 1995, detailed the process towards
peace and a Palestinian state. But it too was stillborn. It stipulated
that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” were to be delayed
until “final” status talks. By then, Israeli military withdrawals from
the occupied West Bank were scheduled to have been completed.
Governing authority was poised to be transferred from Israel to the
supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. Instead, the West Bank was
carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority had limited
authority in Areas A and B while Israel controlled all of Area C, over
60 percent of the West Bank.

The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands that
Jewish settlers seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a
right enshrined in international law — was given up by the PLO leader
Yasser Arafat. This instantly alienated many Palestinians, especially
those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of
refugees. As a consequence, many Palestinians abandoned the PLO in
favor of Hamas. Edward Said called the Oslo Accords “an instrument of
Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat
as “the Pétain of the Palestinians.”

The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took
place. There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank
when the Oslo agreement was signed. Their numbers today have increased
to at least 700,000.

The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo “a sham, a lie, a trick to
entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had
sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of
creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of
statehood.”

Israel unilaterally broke the last two-month-long ceasefire on March
18 of this year when it launched surprise airstrikes on Gaza.
Netanyahu’s office claimed that the resumption of the military
campaign was in response to Hamas’s refusal to release hostages, its
rejection of proposals to extend the cease-fire and its efforts to
rearm. Israel killed more than 400 people in the initial overnight
assault and injured over 500, slaughtering and wounding people as they
slept. The attack scuttled the second stage of the agreement, which
would have seen Hamas release the remaining living male hostages, both
civilians and soldiers, for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and
the establishment of a permanent ceasefire along with the eventual
lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Israel has carried out murderous assaults on Gaza for decades,
cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” No peace accord
or ceasefire agreement has ever gotten in the way. This one will be no
exception.

This bloody saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged: the
dispossession and erasure of Palestinians from their land.

The only peace Israel intends to offer the Palestinians is the peace
of the grave.

https://scheerpost.com/2025/10/11/chris-hedges-trumps-sham-peace-plan/


"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"