Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Vice President J. D. Vance went out to the Middle East last week to show the MAGA flag. While convicted felon Donald Trump, Vance’s boss, prosecutes his undeclared wars on Venezuela and the American people, he has declared “Peace” between Israel and Gaza, where there is none. Other than the hostage-prisoner exchange, for which the diplomatic teams from Egypt, Turkey and Qatar deserve most of the credit; the rest is a blueprint for a Trump resort in Gaza. Call it a more selfish version of the Abraham Accords. Trump no more deserves credit for “ending the war,” than Ronald Reagan did for the fall of the Soviet Union.
The stated reason for Vance’s visit was to ensure that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t violate the cease fire. It isn’t even clear what that would mean. Other than the hostage-prisoner exchange, no deal has been made for the other vague and obtuse 19 points of this nascent “peace plan.” Israel still controls half of Gaza as an occupying force. And despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to weaponize aid, food and water as tools of war, while Hamas refuses to disarm without a comprehensive agreement for the governance of the Strip. While the Trump Administration may share some credit for the preliminary agreement, and most notably the return of the living Israeli hostages, the heavy lifting to accomplish that was done by high level diplomats from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.
The presence of Vice President JD Vance in Israel last week was no more than a reality TV stunt, which accomplished nothing toward ending hostilities on both sides. The destructive nature of the Israeli Likud government under Netanyahu threatens to undermine any lasting impact of the Gaza ceasefire, with parliament’s recent vote to annex the West Bank territories. As no Palestinians were involved in drafting the agreement, their interests were not represented at the negotiating table, thus affirming the sense of colonial manipulation at their expense.
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One may have thought that Trump’s Siamese-twin criminal relationship with Netanyahu might give him leverage to press for a major change in Israeli policy. Netanyahu’s extreme-right finance minister Bezelel Smotrich, however, is devoted to annexing the West Bank and sending Israeli squatters in to Gaza, leaving the prime minister embarrassed by his Faustian bargain to bring him into his government. Without the support of his extreme-right Religious Zionism bloc, there is no Likud government. Everything about the ceasefire and continuation of the self-sabotaging Abraham Accords is a threat to the Likud agenda.
The extreme-right character of the Israeli government heightens the challenge of getting Tel Aviv to keep to its agreement. Vance’s visit to Israel was an indignant display of showmanship, rather than effective diplomacy. The trip reflected the Trump II Administration’s sense of reality-TV dynamics, at the expense of substance and effective progress. Despite Trump’s proclamations, Hamas never agreed to disarm; only to cede governing Gaza to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The most profane failure of the Gaza Ceasefire has been Israel’s continued bombardment, and Israel’s ongoing strangulation and starvation of Gaza. Vance had no bandwidth, negotiation skills or interest to address that on his trip. The most consequential outcome of the new agreements has been the collapse of the Hamas government in Gaza, which has led to violent chaos, and Hamas publicly shooting suspected Israeli collaborators. Prof. Juan Cole points out that the most cogent question is who will govern Gaza in the vacuum left by Hamas.
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One might think that the Palestinian Authority, dominated by the Palestine Liberation Organization, would be best positioned to govern Gaza, but Netanyahu knee-capped them years ago as a viable negotiating partner in order to empower Hamas. Netanyahu further enabled Hamas to commit the October 7 atrocities by ignoring intelligence warnings about the visible military buildup, and relying on a flawed electronic system, rather than having active boots and eyes on the ground at the border. Since then, he’s done everything he can to prolong the war he invited, to escape the criminal consequences of indictments for bribery, breach of public trust and fraud.
It’s difficult to imagine Netanyahu acquiescing to any form of Palestinian self-rule, without Israeli colonial involvement. Old habits die hard. The official body count in Gaza stands at 68,229 people killed by Israel firepower since October 7. Few functional buildings remain for viable housing or infrastructure. So thorough has been the Israeli devastation that the apocalyptic reality is, “a moonscape of total devastation and unfathomable loss.” While many Hamas fighters were killed, the vast majority of those killed has been women, children and elderly. Then there is an untold number of deaths from starvation, disease, and untreated medical conditions, aside from the official body count. So Israel’s aid embargo killed as many as 50,000 other innocents by “non-trauma deaths.” The phrase refers to deaths not caused by bullets or bombs, but surely any loss of innocent civilian life is traumatic.
Israel already violated the ceasefire by killing 45 Gaza Palestinians in response to the loss of two Israeli soldiers on October 20th, and the Netanyahu government continues to limit the aid allowed into Gaza, a war crime proscribed by UN instruments. The scope and scale of devastation brings an insurmountable challenge to repair, recover and rebuild. The healthcare system and infrastructure for water and sanitation have been bombed to the Stone Age. Israel continues to invent new pretexts for disrupting or discontinuing aid into Gaza.
The extremist coalition in charge of Israel embarrassed Vance by passing a first reading of a bill to annex the West Bank while he was there. Vance dismissed that vote as “a stupid political stunt,” bringing a rare alignment of the Trump Administration with the UN Security Council Resolution 2334. That document characterizes Israel’s imperial efforts as having, “no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”
The “peace plan” proposed by Trump is a collection of admirable goals, couched in obtuse language, with the fantasy of a “temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza.” Apolitical? In this world? And with Trump as the chair of a new “a new international transitional body, the ‘Board of Peace?’” This amounts to a re-colonization of Gaza, as it makes no mention of elections or direct Palestinian participation. It reads more like a lofty real estate promotional brochure, than a blueprint for ending a war.
Vance’s primary job description last week should have been to assure that Israel honors the terms of the ceasefire, including all conditions for aid delivery and rebuilding Gaza. But Vance’s presence was no more than a glorified “tourist visit,” to Holy Sites, and a “working lunch” with envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, author of the disingenuous Abraham Accords. The practical reasons for these men’s presence was to see that Netanyahu does not “actively work against the deal,” so carefully constructed by the Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish diplomats. But Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and his extremist Religious Zionism bloc, along with his Likud colleagues are doing just that.
“Not Peace,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v. 3, ChatGPT, 2025
For the people of Gaza, and the diplomats of Egypt, Qatar and Turkey who did the real work; the Gaza truce is a complex conceptual machinery, with many moving parts still in flux. For Trump, Netanyahu, Witkoff and Kushner; it was just another reality TV episode. Since taking office again, Trump has started wars without declaring them. Now he has declared peace before there is any, in keeping with the president’s habit of, “ . . . claiming credit before closing the deal. As noted by Forward columnist Dan Perry, “ . . . the instinct to declare progress rather than enforce it — haunts this administration,” and undermines the stated goals of the ceasefire.
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