Trump’s Peace Plan Bait-and-Switch

by Richard Silverstein,

Pres. Trump afforded Bibi Netanyahu yet another [undeserved] honor of his fourth White House meeting this term.  They held a joint press conference at which Netanyahu [sort of] pledged his agreement to the terms of the 20-point “peace plan.”

The Trump administration began drafting it just as major European nations announced this past summer that they intended to recognize Palestine during the UN General Assembly meeting held earlier this month.  Just before the agreement was announced, 34 countries called for economic and military sanctions against Israel in response to the genocide. Both of these marked major escalations in the global resistance to Israel.  The Bibi-Trump dog-and-pony-show was intended as much to arrest the momentum toward statehood, as to end the war.

The headlines of media reports about the meeting were contradictory. For example, NPR said “Trump announces an agreement with Israel to end war in Gaza.”  While PBS said “Netanyahu rejects demands to end Gaza war.” Which is it?  Because both can’t be true.

Yesterday, I posted that Netanyahu would hem and haw and, in the end, veto the deal.  Today, he did one better: he “accepted” to the deal. But did so with enough provisos that he may as well have rejected it outright.

But in yesterday’s post, I didn’t take into account one key factor: Netanyahu responds differently to Democratic as opposed to Republican presidents.  He balks when dealing with Democrats like Clinton, Obama and Biden. But when dealing with Bush or Trump, he appears to respond favorably publicly, while in practice he ignores any commitment he’s made verbally.

During a speech before his 800 generals, Trump of course trumpeted his success at ending his “eighth war”:

…If it [the Gaza war] were solved, he would give himself credit for solving “eight plus” wars and suggested he would give himself credit for solving “two or three” wars for the one in Gaza.

However, he noted something was missing:

“I think we are beyond very close,” Trump said at the start of a news conference with Netanyahu where he detailed the plan. “We’re not quite finished. We have to get Hamas.”

Steve Witkoff acknowledged the deal had a few “minor” incomplete issues, while offering unsubstantiated claims of that it garnered fulsome support:

Witkoff told Fox New…the Trump plan has widespread backing in the Middle East and Europe. “We have a lot of buy-in. Do we have some details to work out? Yes. But, you know President Trump… everyone is going to be pushed by him,

Curiously but unsurprisingly, Hamas has not been heard from. In fact, it played no role in formulating this plan.  It’s odd to forge such a plan without the participation of one of the main parties.  But this is what passes for Middle East “diplomacy” in the Trump era. Instead of consultation Trump believes the combined power of the US and Israel can compel it to agree.  We have seen over the past two years that this is yet another recipe for failure.  If according to the US Declaration of Independence  “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” peace agreements require the consent of the parties…both parties.

As is to be expected a Hamas official said it is expected to reject the proposed document because it:

“…Serves Israel’s interests” and “ignores those of the Palestinian people.”

The figure said that Hamas is unlikely to agree to disarming and handing over their weapons.  Hamas is also said to object to the deployment of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) in Gaza, which it views as a new form of occupation.

In fact, the confusion I mentioned above is deliberate on Bibi’s part.  If he satisfies Trump by agreeing to his terms, while saying he’s going to continue the war, he satisfies his Judeo-Nazi ministers, who hold the keys to his remaining in power:

It remains to be seen how Netanyahu will be able to justify to far-right members of his coalition his acceptance of the proposal after promising to press against the militant organization until it was “eliminated.”

When push comes to shove, Trump will not be the party he turns to. The president doesn’t hold his fate in his hands.  But Smotrich and Ben Gvir do.  He undoubtedly told them what he told a settler family many years ago: ““America is something that can be easily moved. Moved to the right direction … They won’t get in our way.”  That’s also what he’s told his key coalition partners: don’t worry. I tell Trump one thing, but you are my only constituency.

As Trump announced Netanyahu’s formal apology to Qatar’s emir for the assassination attempt in Doha on Hamas’ key leadership, Ben Gvir was stirring the pot by issuing his own triumphal praise of the same attack. It was his own Silverback gorilla/alpha-male boast that he ran Netanyahu, rather than the other way around:

Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key coalition partner of Netanyahu’s, in a posting on X called the operation “an important, just and ethical attack.”

“It is very good that it happened,” he added.

Arab states furious over final “agreement”

When Trump met with Arab leaders at the White House last week and presented his then 21-point plan, they endorsed it with a few a few “amendments.” The document announced this week had been altered significantly by Netanyahu. In fact, it hardly resembled what had been presented to them earlier.  They were “furious.” They felt Trump had done a bait-and-switch: presented one document to them and replaced it with one they never would have endorsed.

The putative deal later did receive some support from those leaders.  But the kicker is in the final paragraph, whose terms are wholly unacceptable to Israel. There you have key Arab players at loggerheads with Netanyahu:

They reaffirm their joint commitment to work with the United States to end the war in Gaza through a comprehensive deal that ensures unrestricted delivery of…humanitarian aid to Gaza, no displacement of the Palestinians, release of hostages, a security mechanism that guarantees the security of all sides, full Israeli withdrawal, rebuilds Gaza and creates a path for a just peace on the basis of the two state solution, under which Gaza is fully integrated with the West Bank in a Palestinian state in accordance with international law as key to achieving regional stability and security.

But even this statement is weak tea. It offers a “commitment to work with the US.”  Not a demand.  Not a specific deadline. Further, it seeks to “create a path” based on the two-state solution.  As I’ve written here, such bromides mean nothing.  Creating a path is not creating a state.  That is all that matters. Anything short of that is meaningless. The statement also declines to mention Israel at all, expecting any potential agreement to derive not from it, but from Trump.  Relying solely on him for anything is a recipe for failure.

Israel will block the deal

The plan includes provisions Netanyahu has rejected many times.  It calls for the Palestinian Authority to take control of Gaza after an unspecified set of “reforms” are implemented.  He has summarily rejected any PA role in Gaza.  Since no one knows what the reforms are, I suppose Bibi can confidently say that the PA will never satisfactorily complete them and hence never take control.

One of the 20 points calls for Israel to end hostilities and eventually withdraw from Gaza.  Netanyahu has persistently rejected this ever since 10/7.  Just after he met with Trump, he told an Israeli audience that Israel would maintain a permanent security presence in Gaza. This flies in the face of the explicit language in the deal.

In fact, he must continue the war in order to remain in power.  That is probably why the terms under which this would happen are so vague as to be meaningless:

Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza. As the ISF establishes control and stability, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will withdraw based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization that will be agreed upon between the IDF, ISF, the guarantors, and the United States…

The IDF will decide whether it should withdraw from Gaza?  This is certainly a provision that would please Bibi.  As far as the IDF is concerned, it will never withdraw from Gaza. Unless of course it is forced to do so. There is only one party that can do that, and it will never do so: Trump.

Reading the plan as outlined in the NPR report is an exercise in frustration and even desperation. How can anyone be so unhinged as to believe this is a viable solution to the Gaza conflict?  It is full of wish-fulfillment. Full of mistaken assumptions. Full of hubris in assuming these two parties can impose their will on one of the most intractable longest-running conflicts over the past century.

An example of the mistakes inherent in this process is the Bush administration’s plan to bring stability to Iraq.  Once Saddam was toppled, the US spent billions for nation-building there.  We created the equivalent of the ISF, called the Coalition Provisional Authority.  It frittered away all of these funds in mismanagement and corruption.  In the end, the US withdrew from Iraq and left it to sink into years of sectarian violence. We didn’t build a nation. We destroyed one.  This will be the fate of the current exercise in futility.

One key factor in scientific research is “Occam’s Razor”: that the solution needs to be as simple as possible and account for as much data/evidence as possible.  The more complicated, the less guarantee there is of a viable solution.  This is precisely the case here.  The agreement has scores of moving parts, none of which will necessarily integrate or agree with each other. The list of agents is endless: IDF, ISF (International Stabilization Force), US, UN, Red Crescent, “Board of Peace,” and Egypt, among others. If any one of them balks or pursues an agenda out of synch with the others, the deal is broken. The chances of this happening are 100%. Especially given the past history of Israeli rejectionism.  Paraphrasing Will Rogers: Israel never met a deal it didn’t break.

Source: https://www.richardsilverstein.com

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