The Trump/Bibi proposals...
Tuesday, September 30, 2025 7:35 PM
Friends + Interlocutors,
A few, initial thoughts on the peace proposals offered by Trump and Netanyahu to Hamas. This development indicates to me that Gaza, because of Hamas' resistance and tactics, has become too big of a hairball for Netanyahu to swallow. He’s looking for an exit and help.
Militarily, Hamas has lost the conflict and siege. This was a foregone conclusion. Tel Aviv has unchallenged, unlimited air superiority not over just bombed-out Gaza but over all of the ME to boot. Netanyahu could continue to carpet bomb Gaza into complete oblivion while maintaining a blockade to force starvation, if he felt he could get away with it, which he almost can.
The problem is, what to do in the aftermath? Israel would be stuck with the cleanup and the cost of cleanup complete with another occupation of unwanted Palestinians like on the West Bank. It makes sense for Tel Aviv to bring in their American knee-jerk supporters and the feckless Gulf kinglets to foot the bill.
True, under the proposed scenario, Israel would be giving up some control of Gaza for the time being, but it will remain in overall charge as before and there would be no influx of Palestinians from the Gaza open-air prison back to Palestine proper (now “Israel”) whence they and their forebears came.
True again, Netanyahu et al. would be getting away with mass murder and war crimes. There would be no justice. Perhaps to deal with this aspect, Hamas could make a counter-proposal that Israel submit itself to the world court and that Hamas would do the same. You see, that jail-break attack which Hamas undertook on October 7th, 2023 was definitely asymmetrical warfare, but was relatively free of war crimes, notwithstanding all the Israeli propaganda to the contrary.
Yes, kidnapping can be considered a war crime, certainly, but taking hostages in wartime has been done since time immemorial. The idea was to exchange them for the thousands of West Bank Palestinians languishing in jail for years.
Patrick
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