President Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan originated as an Israeli/US collaboration, as the war on the Palestinians is – with Israel leading the United States.

Israel/US is a double act. The US supports Israel unconditionally – just more openly under Trump than previous administrations, who maintained some discreet distance. Trump, an unusual openly amoral politician, has little concern with issues like ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide. If they lead to good business and an opportunity for personal aggrandizement so be it.

Trump’s open contempt for every state in the world, except Israel, appears unprecedented. But with regard to Israel this is the fundamental point of continuity in US foreign policy. There has always been a Special Relationship there that many believe defies the US national interest. While it is often speculated that Israel has something on Trump that makes him “the greatest friend Israel ever had” in Netanyahu’s words, Biden, Obama, Bush jnr., Bush snr., were all in Israel’s pocket just the same – as is most of Congress, and all US Congresses.

What should we make of the Trump plan for Gaza?

The Gaza plan has all the character of an Israel/US diktat and a surrender document in the guise of an armistice. Surrender documents have been eased in like this since 1918. This is to discourage resistance. Continued resistance in Gaza has been immensely damaging to Israel in the West and to the West generally. It is recognised by all but the most extreme that it would be better for both Israel and the West that it should be halted in its present form.

The BBC excuses Netanyahu by suggesting he is a prisoner of “right-wing extremists” in his government who will bring Netanyahu down if he does not pursue the Greater Israel policy with vigour against the Palestinians. They have not told us, however, that the Israeli government has now less than a year to run. So, Netanyahu now has to win an election in an increasingly divided state. Does that not change the equation?

Hamas has been unconsulted over the plan and it has been presented with the surrender document. It knows that without the tunnels Gaza is defenceless before Israel, which commands the skies. No air defence for the Palestinians like the lucky Ukrainians, who only get the best from the West.

Under the Trump Plan Israel would still hold the perimeter of Gaza at the very least and Israel only has to withdraw if it is content that Hamas has disarmed. Such a thing, it should be noted took nearly a decade to achieve in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Unionists were never given such a veto, much to the discomfort of David Trimble.

There is no self-determination for the Palestinians or road to a Palestinian state in the Plan. Less than 10% of Israelis would countenance such a thing, of course. There is only one deadline, which is Trump’s 72 hour demand (modified) that Hamas accept it.

Hamas faces a dilemma that Israel and the US has created for it: The genocide of the Palestinians will continue and be accelerated with full US support, with the survivors being expelled, if it does not agree to the Plan. The West Bank is already de facto annexed. The next step is de jure annexation coupled with ethnic cleansing, if the US permits it. Israel’s project is the long-term one: Deal with Gaza, then with the West Bank, to carve out the Greater Israel.

Hamas has not been defeated, even after 2 years. Hamas are still there in the tunnels. The Wall Street Journal has reported recently that its commanders in Gaza are confident they can resist and survive any assault by the IDF, who they believe is cracking. Hamas is open to partial decommissioning of its weapons, but it wishes to keep defensive weapons. A guerrilla campaign has been planned once the IDF attempt to occupy Gaza.

Hamas commanders know that if they give up the hostages, then the Israelis can, if they find a way to get out of the Plan, which they probably will, pursue a Final Solution of the Palestinian Question. Once all the hostages are released Hamas has no leverage over the situation. Netanyahu, who has an incentive to accept the Trump Plan to get hold of the surviving hostages, to enable an election win in 2026, from a position of achieved war aims, could restart the war and only the US President could stop him.

Just because the Gaza plan is fundamentally a surrender document does not mean Hamas should not embrace it. They will be aware of the savage implications that rejecting it outright would bring to their people. They know the Palestinians will have little or no support from the wider Muslim world in rejecting it. Saudi, Turkiye, Egypt, Qatar – all those who matter for Hamas – are behind it. The Plan has been designed for that purpose.

Hamas are, therefore, probably wise to accept it conditionally and see it as a new battlefield on which the struggle to resist Greater Israel takes place. Hamas has, therefore, made it clear that their agreement to release the Israeli hostages must be carried out “in a manner that achieves the cessation of the war and a complete withdrawal from the Strip”.

Netanyahu, on the other hand, has said that the Israeli military will remain in Gaza after the release of hostages and the text of the Trump Plan and posts on Truth Social confirms this. More than half of Gaza remains under Israeli occupation under the present Trump Plan. There is little or no chance of this being substantially modified in the negotiations in Egypt.  Neither Trump nor Netanyahu will agree to it.

In essence, the current agreement between Israel and Hamas, through Trump, only deals with the first two points in the Plan. The rest is still very much in the air. 

No one outside of Gaza – having not experienced the terrible conditions Israel has inflicted on 2 million people there – has the right to advise any different, or say I told you so, when Israel moves closer to its objectives in the aftermath, by subverting it, and being allowed to do so by Washington.

It is the case that Israel has been restrained by the Trump Plan, at present. Just before Trump proposed the Gaza Plan Israel attempted to assassinate the Hamas negotiating team seeking settlement with Israel and the US in order to scupper any deal, prevent the release of the hostages and continue the genocide.

Qatar saw Israel having complete immunity in bombing a US ally who was facilitating the negotiating process that is actually part of US foreign policy! The US air defence bought by the Qataris did not shoot down the Israeli attackers, presumably on US orders.

Because the US undoubtedly saw the Israeli attack on Qatar coming and did nothing to stop it, the Israelis are, therefore, likely to push US boundaries in the future.

Trump has now elicited an apology from Netanyahu for attempting to kill the Hamas negotiators in Qatar.

It should be clear to all by now that Tel Aviv’s aim is a Greater Israel and a Jewish Lebensraum. Israel’s aim is to homogenise the Jewish State as much as possible by doing all it can to eradicate the non-Jewish native population of the areas of Greater Israel, which lies undefined by those in pursuit of it.

War situations facilitate the creation of Greater Israel in a shorter time. More peaceful climates tend to retard the objective – although Israel pursues it whether-the-which, relentlessly in whatever ways it can. Norman Finkelstein has called October 7^th “a Godsend for those in Israel who wanted to sort out the Palestinian problem, once and for all. It has been the same game since October 8^th – genocide.”

Israel has stuck to that policy for 2 years now, with some small interludes for political considerations. It is unlikely to depart from that goal, having received an opportunity to realise it. It should be clear to the world now that only the US President was capable of stopping them.

Two recent polls have demonstrated the Israeli mood. One found that 47% believed in the killing of every human being in Palestinian settlements, while 70% said there were no innocent people in Gaza, even babies. Netanyahu clearly has a popular mandate for genocide, a much more popular one than Hitler had in Germany. It is quite open – It has been stated in the Israeli parliament that the IDF “kills toddlers for a hobby.”

The Nazis had to conduct their extermination in relative secrecy with elaborate precautions taken to obscure from the German people what was going on. Netanyahu has very large support for an open extirpation of the Palestinians.

It could be said that Israel has more than one way of solving the Palestinian Question and it “cuts its coat according to its cloth,” like any good Jewish tailor. It can continue with the Iron Wall doctrine of Jabotinsky/Netanyahu. 

The Trump plan would mean predominance for the Iron Wall, of which Netanyahu has been a lifelong advocate of. Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall doctrine foresaw “war with all” until the Zionist objectives were achieved. He didn’t think an actual genocide (extermination of the native enemy population) would be necessary, just their gradual depletion and squeezing out through relentless pressure of war etc. In the process, a residual “Arab” population could be allowed to remain within the territory of Israel, once it had been thoroughly depoliticised and its will to a distinct existence thoroughly broken. The remnant could be managed and even allowed some undefined “national” rights within the overall triumphant Iron Wall.

But rather than splitting hairs on this let us say with certainty that Israel uses genocidal means to rid itself of its unwanted population of non-Jews.

In pursuit of its objectives – which are described as “security” – Israel also destabilises all neighbouring countries, including Syria, Lebanon, Jordan etc. They would also like to turn Iran, the sole source of state resistance to Israeli aims in the region, into a second Syria.

Syria, of course, is the origin of the individual who carried out the synagogue attack in Manchester.

Apart from Iran there are two other states which Israel has to be reckon with. These two states, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, are real states, having fought for their independence through their own means.

Israel relies on the US to neutralize the Gulf States through the Abraham Accords. But the attraction of the Abraham Accords declined with the collapse of the Axis of Resistance and the reckless behaviour of Israel, attacking 6 or 7 countries with impunity.

The other Gulf States, being small clan states, fathered into existence by Britain, are nothing without Saudi and they only differ from Saudi on family matters. Israel is not a direct threat to Saudi Arabia and the Saudis have more money than Israel. Money is most things in America and the Saudis pay the salary of Trump’s son in law, Jarod Kushner. So, Israel has to take into account the Saudi restraining hand on Trump and America operated through the influence of money – the thing dearer to Trump’s heart than even Israel.

The Macron/Saudi initiative on Palestine is one thing that has shifted Trump on Gaza according to Dr. Muriel Asseburg, Senior Fellow at the Africa and Middle East division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

She argues that there are 3 practical achievements of the French-Saudi initiative:

“First, the fact that the ‘Gaza Riviera’ fantasy, that would have displaced its residents, officially came off the table. Second, this is the initiative that took the Arab states into account, embraced their engagement and acknowledged their responsibility and commitment, also forcing them to work together rather than pulling in different directions. And the third point is that the French-Saudi initiative led Arab states and also Abu Mazen Abbas to come out publicly to unequivocally condemn the atrocities committed on October 7, 2023, and say there is no future with Hamas.” (‘Despite Suffering Ridicule, Macron’s Two-state Initiative Heavily Affected Trump’s Gaza Plan,’ Liza Rozovsky, Haaretz, 5 Oct 2025)

The other restraining influence on Trump seems to be Tony Blair.

“Tony of Arabia” is a most interesting headline piece in the Observer. It suggests that Blair has sweet talked Trump away from his “Riviera of the Middle East” policy of a Palestine without Palestinians into his 20-point Plan, with Blair leading a technocratic non-political committee as governor of Gaza over the genocide survivors.

The web of influence now revealed around the Gaza Plan is particularly interesting in terms of political power.

Blair is close to both Larry Ellison, founder of the AI tech giant Oracle and Jared Kushner. Ellison, a New York Jewish businessman and strong Zionist, became friends with Blair at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He is presently the richest man in the world and is set to take TikTok from the Chinese curtesy of his friend Donald Trump. Ellison is also a close friend of Benjamin Netanyahu and has donated tens of millions to the IDF over the last 2 decades.

The Ellison Foundation is the major funding source for the Tony Blair Institute of Global Change (400 million dollars given or pledged). He wants to get hold of the extensive NHS state data as a lucrative tool for Oracle’s AI health business interests. Tony Blair Institute people have been brought into Sir Keir Starmer’s government since its establishment last year. Before the election Andrew Marr suggested there would be a tussle between the TBI people and the wing of the Labour Party of the former Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner, over the NHS data. Rayner was apparently not happy about a TBI/Oracle move on the NHS. Rayner, of course has been recently removed as an obstacle when information was found on her personal finances that was used to get rid of her.

The Observer suggests that Blair’s personal charm changed Trump’s mind from his original pursuit of a an empty Gaza being constructed into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Several important people interviewed by the Observer describe Blair as a messianic figure, determined to change the world. Sir Anthony Seldon described Blair as being deeply motivated through his “personal faith.” Sir John Jenkins suggests that Blair believes he has “unfinished business in the Middle East.”

Perhaps this all adds up to Tony Blair being the Messiah.

It was very possible that when Netanyahu and Trump concocted the Gaza Plan they designed it with a mind for it to be rejected.

Trump has a changeable mind and he can be worked on by someone with charm. And Blair trumps Netanyahu in that department. So perhaps Netanyahu was aiming for a Hamas rejection but he was been wrong footed by Blair working on Trump’s ego, along with Arab and Jewish money?

Is this all about the friends of Israel in the West saving Israel from itself, and saving the West from Israel?

It may be that Ellison, Kushner etc. have decided Netanyahu is now expendable and they want to tame Gaza through business rather than the Iron Wall. Normalising Israel, bringing it back from the cold and rescuing the West (which for rich Jews is indispensable to their fortunes) from its collaboration with genocide, are all good motives to ease aside Netanyahu.

In the Middle East Trump seems to have two objectives: To bring home the Israeli hostages, something that will make him more popular with a wider range of Israelis than Netanyahu; and to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

This scenario is possible, but having showed weakness and a lack of resolve against the Israelis he is very likely to be soon dragged into the second Israeli war on Iran, which Netanyahu may use to save himself.

And if that happens, when Iran believes it is facing an existential threat, “all bets are off” and everything falls apart. Would that not tempt Netanyahu?