The Electronic Intifada 25 October 2025
US President Donald Trump speaks at Israel’s parliament on 13 October.
Agence Québec PresseWith “round-the-clock” efforts needed to salvage a US-brokered ceasefire deal in Gaza after Israel launched a barrage of airstrikes that killed 44 people on 19 October, it is very clear Israel is seeking the kind of agreement in which Israel can choose whether and when to shoot and bomb.
Just like it has in Lebanon.
The key question now is, will this fly?
Sunday’s air raids came after two Israeli soldiers were killed near Rafah. Or maybe they drove over something explosive. Or maybe they weren’t soldiers. Reports differ, though Hamas, for the record, said its fighters had nothing to do with the incident.
That didn’t stop Israel from trying to portray its strikes as “retaliatory” and the incident as the “biggest test” of the ceasefire so far.
Never mind that Israel has violated the ceasefire almost continually since 10 October, the day it came into force, including on 18 October killing 11 members of one family. All this despite the exchanges of captives that have taken place as demanded under the plan.
By 20 October, in fact, 10 days after the ceasefire was meant to have taken effect, Gaza’s authorities said Israel had violated the ceasefire agreement 80 times, killing 97 people.
In addition, while the situation is improving, Gaza is still receiving only an average of 670 metric tons of aid per day since 11 October, much less than the 2,000 tonnes the UN says is needed to meet the demands of a two million strong population.
Diplomats deployed
All of which bodes very badly for the third ceasefire in two years of genocide, despite the apparent enthusiasm of US President Donald “Who’s Your Daddy” Trump, who spoke at meandering length at the Israeli parliament last week to mark the agreement.
Israel unilaterally ended the last ceasefire in March, after two months, even though that was trumpeted as a first triumph for the then just incoming president, who promised to “stop all wars” in his inaugural address in January.
That puts to the lie the idea that since Trump appears invested, the US will ensure Israel’s commitment – which Washington alone can, given the requisite political will.
Nevertheless, the US did dispatch some heavy hitters – as well as erstwhile settlement investor and possible messiah Jared Kushner – to firm up Israel’s resolve. Off went special envoys Kushner and Steven Witkoff, then JD Yeehaw Vance, the vice president, followed by “Little Marco” Rubio, the secretary of state.
And, beyond the usual threats to “obliterate” Hamas, should the bodies of Israeli captives not be released, the messaging from some of these envoys was highly unusual.
Before arriving on 23 October, Rubio said the US was “potentially” seeking a UN mandate for an international peace keeping force in Gaza, a striking position from a US administration that has done little but undermine the international body so far.
It is also an effort that will sit badly with Israel, which has – without evidence – accused UN bodies of being “breeding grounds for terrorism.”
Vance, too, was uncharacteristically critical of the Israeli parliament’s preliminary vote to annex the West Bank, calling it “an insult” and “a very stupid” political stunt.
“The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel. The policy of President Trump is that the West Bank will not be annexed. This will always be our policy.”
Reasons for optimism
But no one had stronger words for Israel than Trump himself.
“[Annexation of the West Bank] won’t happen,” Trump told Time, even though, of course, on the ground Israel is actually seizing West Bank land daily. He followed that, however, with a warning no previous US president has ever come close to uttering when it comes to its dependent:
“Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
Now whether the US has finally woken up to the fact that it needs to wield the “big stick” against Israel if it wants to achieve anything, or if this is just an idle threat, there is no disguising that this is not the kind of rhetoric normally deployed about US-Israel relations, relations that have very publicly been put on the table as a result.Trump justified this, of course, with the suggestion that he was salvaging Israel from itself, warning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he “had to stop because the world was going to stop him … Israel was becoming very unpopular.”
He might have added – but didn’t – that Israel was also becoming more and more unpopular in the US, with prominent figures from across the political spectrum – from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Bernie Sanders – questioning why the US should continue arming Israel when it was using those arms to commit mass murder and genocide in Gaza.
Factor in, too, the Palestinian resistance. Bereft of tanks, planes, missile defense systems or any other of the military advantages enjoyed by Israel, fighters in Gaza nevertheless kept up the pressure right to the end, undermining Israeli morale and prompting military fatigue.
Indeed, the Israeli military’s initial redeployment from Gaza’s cities – or what’s left of them – saw troops pull further back than the agreement called for.
Outside the swivel-eyed malignity of ministers like Bezalel Smotrich, who, just as he did during past ceasefires, is agitating for a return to genocide, Israel’s government may have finally decided its unhinged assault on Gaza is unsustainable.
Opaque
May!
Leave aside the all-important question of what will happen after the Gaza genocide has definitely ended – Tony “The Raj of Gaza” Blair and such harebrained schemes notwithstanding. Will it definitely end?
Trump might lose interest now that his Gaza Riviera plan is no longer on the table. He has far more important priorities after all.
Israel has not only proven perfectly happy to break ceasefires at will, it will also be smarting from what cannot be described as anything other than a defeat for its stated war aims of “total victory” and destroying Hamas as a military and political force.
Trump’s 20-point plan furthermore blurs in the details. It is deliberately opaque to allow wriggle room for all sides. But this is the kind of “constructive ambiguity” that was also deployed with the Oslo Accords to such predictable effect.
Constructive ambiguity favors the status quo.
Constructive ambiguity, moreover, gives neither succor nor certainty to two million people in Gaza who have suffered unimaginable pain and suffering over two years of genocide.
Is there even one agreement? Some reports suggested that what Trump and Netanyahu announced on 29 September contained “significant changes” from what had been presented to Arab and Muslim countries.One Arab diplomat familiar with the negotiations confirmed to The Electronic Intifada that while those reports were true, Arab countries chose not to protest publicly because they wanted to “appease” Trump and “get to a ceasefire” as a first priority.
And for now, that priority still needs to be secured.
Omar Karmi is an independent journalist and former Jerusalem and Washington, DC, correspondent for The National newspaper.
Comments
Hold your nose! This agreement stinks of Zionist duplicity.
Permalink Robin M. Donald replied on
We know that we cannot trust what comes out of the mouths of President Trump and VP J.D. Vance. The annexation of The West Bank has de facto already happened. Both of their assertions that "annexation won't happen" are asking us to believe their words, not what we see. Also, the genocide continues with ongoing IOF slaughter and the siege which causes hunger, starvation and malnutrition. This threatens thousands of Palestinians, especially infants and children, old people, the wounded and all of those whose immune systems are compromised such that seemingly insignificant ailments and condition can become fatal.
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