Conor here: We\u2019re offered daily reminders that the US-Israel has no intention of abandoning its genocide in Gaza. While the pace may have slowed for the time being, starvation, shootings, bombings, and Israeli-sponsored gangs continue the killing. The following piece describes how the true goal behind the so-called ceasefire is to take some heat off Israel and deflate growing global movement against the carnage, as well as keep \u201cGaza 2035\u201d<\/a> right on schedule. Rather than fall for Trump\u2019s deception, they argue now is the time to turn up the pressure on Israel and its enablers.<\/p>\n By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies. Benjamin is the cofounder of\u00a0CODEPINK for Peace<\/a>, and the author of several books, including\u00a0Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran<\/a>.\u00a0Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of\u00a0Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n On October 4th, 2025, in an\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0with Axios, President Trump stressed that one of the main goals behind his Gaza plan was to restore Israel\u2019s international standing.\u00a0\u201cBibi took it very far and Israel lost a lot of support in the world,\u201d Trump said. \u201cNow I am gonna get all that support back.\u201d<\/p>\n Under Trump\u2019s\u00a0plan<\/a>, a supposed ceasefire took effect on October 10th. But Israel only withdrew from less than half of the Gaza strip, and killed at least 93 people in the next two weeks, after killing at least that many per day for the previous two years. Israel has only\u00a0allowed<\/a>\u00a015% of the humanitarian aid called for in the plan to enter Gaza, and has kept the critical Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza closed. The daily life-and-death struggle to find food, water and shelter carries on unabated for two million people in Gaza.<\/p>\n While the reduction in the daily scale of Israel\u2019s mass murder is obviously welcome, this is not a real ceasefire. Like previous Israeli ceasefires in Gaza, as in Lebanon, this is a one-sided ceasefire that Israel violates at will, on a daily basis, with no accountability.<\/p>\n Mahmud Hams \/ AFP \/ Getty Image<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is only the first part of Trump\u2019s plan for Gaza, and there is still no agreement on the other parts, such as the disarmament of Hamas, who provide the only government and police force in Gaza. They now have the added job of protecting their people from\u00a0Israel-backed<\/a>\u00a0criminal gangs and death squads, some with links to ISIS, who prey on them from the Israeli-occupied areas, stealing aid supplies, assassinating local leaders and terrorizing the population.<\/p>\n Hamas is obviously not going to disarm under these conditions, and\u00a0previously said<\/a>\u00a0it would only surrender its weapons once Palestine has an internationally recognized government with its own armed forces. On the other side, Israel has not agreed to other parts of Trump\u2019s plan, such as its withdrawal from the rest of Gaza, nor to any plan for the future of Palestine.<\/p>\n In the United States, where corrupt politicians and corporate media take U.S. and Israeli lies at face value or even\u00a0repeat<\/a>\u00a0them as statements of fact, some may believe that Trump\u2019s plan has resolved the crisis in Palestine. The rest of the world is not so naive or easy to manipulate, but many other governments are also beholden to oligarchies that profit from trade, investment and arms deals with Israel, even as the public in those same countries reels in shock at Israel\u2019s mass murder of Palestinians and U.S.-backed impunity for its crimes.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s Gaza plan, like much of his foreign policy, cynically exploits the greed and fear of political leaders and their oligarch patrons. Admitting that Israel has \u201clost a lot of support in the world,\u201d he\u00a0offers<\/a>\u00a0a shortcut back to \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d for governments eager to protect\u2014and even expand\u2014profitable ties despite Israel\u2019s ongoing atrocities and open contempt for international law.<\/p>\n In his first term, Trump brokered the \u201cAbraham Accords,\u201d normalization deals between Israel and Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan that included mutual recognition and expanded trade. He now has his eye on the\u00a0big prize<\/a>: Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n But Arab-Israeli relations have long been contested. In the 1949 UN General Assembly vote on Israel\u2019s admission, all Arab and Muslim countries except Turkiye (which abstained) voted against recognizing the state of Israel. Thirty-two mostly Arab and Muslim countries, including some of its closest neighbors, still either don\u2019t\u00a0recognize<\/a>\u00a0Israel or have no diplomatic relations with it.<\/p>\n Despite decades of hostility, Trump persuaded Israel and some of these countries to support his Gaza plan with the promise of future benefits from normalization and trade. But there is still a gaping chasm between Israel and these Arab and Muslim countries over Palestine. They say they will not recognize Israel unless Israel recognizes Palestine, with full sovereignty over East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n But the\u00a0foundational<\/a>\u00a0basis of Netanyahu\u2019s Likud Party is its plan for a Greater Israel, to be formed by annexing all of occupied Palestine \u201cbetween the sea and the Jordan.\u201d And on October 22, during Vice President Vance\u2019s visit to Israel, the Knesset\u00a0voted<\/a>\u00a0in favor of annexing the West Bank.<\/p>\n Trump\u00a0unveiled<\/a>\u00a0his Gaza plan at the very end of the UN General Assembly\u2019s annual high-level meeting in New York, where many world leaders spoke out for much stronger international action against Israel. The New York Declaration, which 142 countries voted for, was the\u00a0result<\/a>\u00a0of a\u00a0conference<\/a>\u00a0in July led by France and Saudi Arabia that promised \u201cconcrete, timebound, coordinated action\u201d to enforce a\u00a0ruling<\/a>\u00a0by the international Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024 that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal and must be ended \u201cas quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s initiative temporarily upstaged and marginalized calls for further action at the UN. But on October 22nd, the ICJ issued a\u00a0new ruling<\/a>\u00a0strongly condemning Israel\u2019s use of starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, and ruling that, as an occupying power, Israel must ensure that the \u201cbasic needs\u201d of the population are met, including food, water, fuel, shelter and medicine. The court also ruled that Israel must permit UN staff working for UNRWA to do their work in Gaza, after Israel provided no evidence to the court for its claim that UN staff were members of Hamas or took part in its October 2023 incursion into Israel.<\/p>\n In the wake of the ICJ decision, Norway said it would introduce a\u00a0resolution<\/a>\u00a0in the UN General Assembly to enforce the Court\u2019s directives, including ensuring the full amount of aid reaches Gaza. Humanitarian advocates hope that this resolution will be introduced in an Emergency Special Session under the \u201cUniting For Peace\u201d option, enabling the UN to deliver the \u201cconcrete, timebound, coordinated action\u201d it promised in July\u2014potentially including sanctions such as an arms embargo and targeted trade and investment measures that should take effect within days if Israel continues to block aid.<\/p>\n Trump plainly intended his plan to close the book on Israel\u2019s crimes\u2014and on U.S. complicity\u2014and to inaugurate a new phase: normalization of the occupation and Israel\u2019s diplomatic rehabilitation. Yet even before the ICJ condemned Israel\u2019s starvation policy, people worldwide were already mobilizing, urging their governments not to let Israel off the hook.<\/p>\n In Europe, momentum for accountability continues to build. As the British parliament debates a new pensions law, an\u00a0amendment<\/a>\u00a0has been submitted to divest local government pension funds from companies that are complicit in the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. Many local councils in the U.K. have already passed individual\u00a0ordinances<\/a>\u00a0to do this, but the amendment to the pensions law would force all of them to divest the $16 billion that their pension funds still have invested in those firms.<\/p>\n In September, the European Union (EU) announced plans to\u00a0suspend<\/a>\u00a0its 25-year-old free trade agreement with Israel and impose sanctions on extremist Israeli cabinet members and settler leaders. On October 20th, it \u201cpaused<\/a>\u201d these steps in response to Trump\u2019s plan, but EU leaders immediately faced strong push-back on that decision.<\/p>\n Over 400 former senior diplomats and officials signed a statement that the EU must take robust action \u201cagainst spoilers and extremists\u201d who would jeopardize \u201cthe establishment of a future Palestinian state,\u201d noting that Trump\u2019s plan only vaguely addressed that goal. International lawyers advised EU leaders that EU policy must comply with the 2024 ICJ ruling that the Israeli occupation is illegal and must be ended as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n Individual European countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain, already ban imports from illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine, and Ireland is currently\u00a0debating<\/a>\u00a0a similar trade ban in its Occupied Territories Bill, which should get a final vote by January.\u00a0The original bill would only affect trade in goods, but activists want trade in\u00a0services<\/a>\u00a0included in the ban, while powerful business interests, including U.S. tech firms with European headquarters in Ireland, are lobbying to kill the bill altogether. It should help that Ireland\u2019s newly elected president, Catherine Connolly, is a strong supporter of Palestine.<\/p>\n In stark contrast to much of the world, which is still grappling with the contradictions of Trump\u2019s Gaza plan and Israel\u2019s ongoing unlawful occupation, U.S. officials are already trying to turn the page\u2014moving to fortify and expand Washington\u2019s military alliance with Israel.<\/p>\n This alliance is renewed and updated every ten years in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two governments, which would normally be\u00a0negotiated<\/a>\u00a0in 2026, before the previous MOU expires in 2028.<\/p>\n There\u2019s already a bipartisan bill in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (S.554) to initiate this process,\u00a0titled<\/a>\u00a0\u201cUnited States-Israel Defense Partnership Act of 2025,\u201d authorizing joint projects with Israel under categories like \u201ccountering unmanned systems\u2026 anti-tunnel cooperation\u2026(and) war reserves stockpile authority.\u201d<\/p>\n Conspicuously absent from this policy review is any debate over U.S. complicity in Gaza\u2019s destruction\u2014a debate that should come first and set the terms for any serious re-examination of the U.S.\u2013Israel alliance.<\/p>\n On October 20th, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, released a\u00a0new report<\/a>\u00a0titled \u201cGaza Genocide: a Collective Crime.\u201d Here is the summary of her report:<\/p>\n \u201cThe ongoing genocide in Gaza is a collective crime, sustained by the complicity of influential Third States that have enabled longstanding systemic violations of international law by Israel. Framed by colonial narratives that dehumanize the Palestinians, this live-streamed atrocity has been facilitated through Third States\u2019 direct support, material aid, diplomatic protection and, in some cases, active participation. It has exposed an unprecedented chasm between peoples and their governments, betraying the trust on which global peace and security rest. The world now stands on a knife-edge between the collapse of the international rule of law and hope for renewal. Renewal is only possible if complicity is confronted, responsibilities are met and justice is upheld.\u201d<\/p>\n We urge all members of the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees to read the UN\u00a0report\u00a0<\/a>and to invite UN experts to testify at hearings on U.S. complicity and participation in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Palestine.<\/p>\n To move ahead with consideration of a new MOU or any arms transfers with Israel without first conducting such a serious and objective policy review would only serve to perpetuate the endless wars that all our leaders, including President Trump, keep telling us they want to end.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Screenshot-2025-10-27-at-9.02.42\u202fPM-1024x578.png\")
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