[News] Trump’s 20-Point Gaza Plan: A Rubber Stamp of Legitimacy on Israel’s Subjugation of Palestine
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Sep 30 11:23:58 EDT 2025
After his White House speech, Netanyahu said Israel will never withdraw
from Gaza and promised to resume the genocide if Hamas does not disarm.
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for more
Trump’s 20-Point Gaza Plan: A Rubber Stamp of Legitimacy on Israel’s
Subjugation of Palestine
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After his White House speech, Netanyahu said Israel will never
withdraw from Gaza and promised to resume the genocide if Hamas
does not disarm.
Jeremy Scahill <https://substack.com/@jeremyscahill> and Jawa Ahmad
<https://substack.com/@jawaahmad>
Sep 30. 2025
<https://substack.com/@jeremyscahill> <https://substack.com/@jawaahmad>
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President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
after a press conference at the White House in Washington, DC on
September 29, 2025. Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images.
Three weeks after Israel attempted to assassinate Hamas’s lead
negotiators in a series of airstrikes on the group’s offices in Doha,
Qatar, President Donald Trump hailed the public announcement of his
20-point plan to end the war in Gaza as “potentially one of the great
days ever in civilization.” The framework was drafted in coordination
with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top adviser, Ron Dermer, and
spearheaded by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared
Kushner. Several Arab and Muslim states also contributed. No Palestinian
officials from Hamas or any other faction, including the
internationally-recognized Palestinian Authority, were consulted in
crafting the plan.
The proposal, which Netanyahu agreed to after meeting with Trump at the
White House on Monday, links the delivery of food and other life
essentials and the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the demilitarization
of Gaza and includes several loopholes that would permit Israel to
resume the genocide. It also would impose a foreign-led authority on the
demilitarized Gaza Strip, backed by Arab and international troops, and
allow the Israeli army to indefinitely encircle the enclave by
maintaining positions inside Gaza’s territory. The plan requires Hamas
to release all Israeli captives held in Gaza before any Palestinians
would be freed. While the proposal includes a series of apparent
concessions to Arab and Muslim countries in return for their
endorsement, it makes no mention of how Israel would be prevented from
violating the agreement. The plan also includes a nebulous mention of
possible future Palestinian “self-determination and statehood” after
Gaza “re-development advances” and the Palestinian Authority is reformed.
“If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end,”
the framework’s text, released on Monday, states. “Israeli forces will
withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release.
During this time, all military operations, including aerial and
artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain
frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal.”
In his White House remarks, Netanyahu affirmed his acceptance of the
framework, but made clear Israel stands poised to resume the genocide.
“If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr. President, or if they supposedly accept
it and then basically do everything to counter it—then Israel will
finish the job by itself,” he declared. “This can be done the easy way
or it can be done the hard way, but it will be done. We prefer the easy
way, but it has to be done.”
Trump also underscored this point. “Israel would have my full backing to
finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas,” he said. “But I hope
that we’re going to have a deal for peace, and if Hamas rejects the
deal… Bibi you’d have our full backing to do what you would have to do.
Everyone understands that the ultimate result must be the elimination of
any danger posed in the region. And the danger is caused by Hamas.”
On Tuesday, Trump reiterated this and said he would give Hamas “about
three or four days” to respond. “We’re just waiting for Hamas, and Hamas
is either going to be doing it or not, and if it’s not, it’s going to be
a very sad end,” he said, adding that if Hamas rejects the deal, “I
would let [Israel] go and do what they have to do.”
Hamas was not given any details on the proposal prior to Trump and
Netanyahu unveiling it at the White House, a senior leader told Al
Jazeera Mubasher. “Not a single Palestinian has reviewed this plan, and
what was recounted … represents a tilt toward the Israeli vision—an
approach close to what Netanyahu insisted on and pleaded for—to continue
the war and the annihilation. Nothing more, nothing less,” said senior
Hamas leader Mahmoud Mardawi immediately following the Trump–Netanyahu
press conference. “To negotiate an end to this criminal war in exchange
for ending the Palestinian people’s right to their state and their
rights to their land, homeland, and holy sites—no Palestinian will
accept that.”
Mardawi said that Hamas and other Palestinian factions would need to
study the proposal, adding that, “the official position must be issued
after reading the proposal and then stating our position and making
amendments that conform with our right to self-determination.” The last
time Hamas leaders gathered to discuss a U.S. proposal, on September 9,
Israel attempted to assassinate its negotiators.
Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said Tuesday that
Egypt and Qatar had delivered the plan to Hamas and, along with Turkish
officials, would be holding a “consultative meeting.” Al-Ansari added,
“We are optimistic that Trump’s plan is comprehensive, and the Hamas
delegation is studying it responsibly, and we continue to consult with
them.”
While Trump praised his own plan as a landmark opportunity for “eternal
peace in the Middle East,” the exclusion of all Palestinians from the
process is an extension of decades of Western colonial dominance of
decision-making surrounding the future of Palestine. At the heart of
Trump’s plan is a thinly-veiled ultimatum to Palestinians: bend the knee
to Israel, renounce the right of armed resistance, and agree to
indefinite subjugation by foreign actors.
“This plan is a malicious attempt to achieve through politics what the
war of extermination could not achieve on the ground,” said Sami
Al-Arian, a prominent Palestinian academic and activist and the director
of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University.
“This includes ending the resistance, withdrawing weapons, releasing
[Israeli] captives without a complete withdrawal, maintaining security,
political, and economic control over Gaza, and imposing international
tutelage.” He said the Trump framework is aimed at “perpetuating the
Israeli narrative that the challenge is a security one related to
Israeli security needs, not to ending a military occupation, Israeli
genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and ongoing aggression.”
Al-Arian told Drop Site, “There is no negotiation here. There is an
American plan. It was modified by some Israeli points and possibly some
Arab points. And it’s given to the resistance as a ‘Take it or leave it’
thing.”
In the lead-up to the announcement, the Trump administration pushed a
familiar narrative to friendly media outlets that he pressured a
resistant Netanyahu into the agreement. In reality, Israeli officials
were deeply involved with crafting the proposal right up to the moment
the White House released the text.
In a video address in Hebrew following his event with Trump, Netanyahu
portrayed the plan as a coup for Israel’s agenda, saying it effectively
placed an Arab and international stamp of legitimacy on his genocidal
plans. “This is a historic visit. Instead of Hamas isolating us, we
turned the tables and isolated Hamas. Now the entire world, including
the Arab and Muslim world, is pressuring Hamas to accept the terms we
set together with President Trump: to release all our hostages, both
living and deceased, while the IDF remains in most of the Strip,”
Netanyahu declared. “Who would have believed this? After all, people
constantly say, the IDF should withdraw… No way, that’s not happening.”
In previous “ceasefire” negotiations, when Hamas has sought to propose
amendments or even to clarify phrasing in draft texts, Israel and the
U.S. denounced Hamas, falsely accusing it of rejecting peace, and then
Israel intensified the military assault on Gaza. Israel, meanwhile, has
offered the public perception it agrees to draft deals, while at the
same time securing “side letters”
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Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, authorizing Israel to resume the
war if it determines the agreement is no longer in its interests.
“There is no negotiation here. There is an American plan. It was
modified by some Israeli points and possibly some Arab points. And it’s
given to the resistance as a ‘Take it or leave it’ thing.”
And after it signed the January 2025 ceasefire agreement, Israel
repeatedly violated it, regularly striking Gaza and ultimately blowing
up the agreement entirely after the first of what was supposed to be a
three-phase deal. Netanyahu has made clear that he wants not only
Hamas’s surrender, but the decimation of all Palestinian resistance in Gaza.
“What was announced at the press conference between Trump and Netanyahu
is an American-Israeli agreement, an expression of Israel’s entire
position, and a recipe for continued aggression against the Palestinian
people,” said Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the secretary general of Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, the second largest armed resistance group in Gaza, in a
statement. “Israel is trying to impose, through the United States, what
it has been unable to achieve through war. Therefore, we consider the
American-Israeli announcement a recipe for igniting the region.”
In crafting this plan, Trump deployed his son-in-law, Kushner, to shore
up support from Arab nations ahead of the announcement. Kushner is often
touted by Trump as the mastermind of the so-called Abraham Accord
“normalization” agreements with Israel. Kushner has extensive business
dealings in Gulf countries and his investment firm, Affinity Partners,
is backed by billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, and Qatar.
Trump boasted that he has the full backing of all major Arab nations.
“The level of support that I’ve had from the nations in the Middle East
and surrounding Israel and neighbors of Israel has been incredible.
Incredible. Every single one of them,” Trump said, highlighting the
leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. “These are the people that
we’ve been dealing with and who’ve been actually very much involved in
this negotiation, giving us ideas, things they can live with, things
they can’t live with.”
Embedded within the plan are several terms that Arab nations pushed for
and which certainly were key to getting their buy-in. “The conditions
may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian
self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration
of the Palestinian people,” the plan states. Arab and Muslim countries
also certainly advocated for including a provision that Israel will
cease its military assault and “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza.”
No Palestinians, the outline states, “will be forced to leave Gaza, and
those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We
will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a
better Gaza.”
An earlier leaked draft of Trump’s plan, as reported in Hebrew media,
included a commitment that Israel would not annex the West Bank. That
term does not exist in the text distributed Monday by the White House.
Nonetheless, the foreign ministers of Jordan, the United Arab Emirates,
Indonesia, Pakistan, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt issued a
statement saying they “welcome President Donald J Trump’s leadership and
his sincere efforts to end the war in Gaza, and assert their confidence
in his ability to find a path to peace.”
During his appearance on Al Jazeera after the plan was announced,
Mardawi repeatedly emphasized the exclusion of Palestinians from the
drafting of the Trump plan. “How can an Arab state refuse to allow the
Palestinian people, with all their current political forces and over
past decades, to participate?” he asked, rejecting the premise. “In
everything put forward there is no affirmation of the Palestinian
people’s rights.” He added that Hamas “will examine the proposal,
discuss it with the factions, amend it, and consult the countries—all
the countries that were willing and ready among those that met with
Trump—and review their positions.”
Abu Ali Hassan, a member of the General Central Committee of the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine denounced the plan as giving
diplomatic cover to a continuation of Israel’s broader agenda. “Trump
gave the occupying state sufficient time to achieve its goals to no
avail. The plan is a political intervention to achieve the military
objectives of the war,” he told the Palestinian Sanad news agency. The
plan, he said, “is an expression of a conspiracy involving international
and Arab parties to undermine the rights of the Palestinian people and
defeat their resistance.”
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Trump meets with Netanyahu at White House. Photo by Avi Ohayon
(GPO)/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images.
*Privatizing and Colonizing Gaza*
The Trump plan is riddled with ambiguities, loopholes, and proposals
that leave a multitude of paths for Israel to resume its genocidal
assault on Gaza.
Within 72 hours of an agreement, the plan says, Hamas must release all
Israeli captives held in Gaza. There are believed to be 20 living
Israelis and the bodies of 28 deceased remaining in the Strip. In
return, Israel would subsequently release 250 Palestinians sentenced to
life and 1,700 Palestinians from Gaza taken captive after October 7,
2023, including all women and children. The bodies of 15 Palestinians,
according to the plan, would be returned for the remains of each
deceased Israeli held in Gaza.
The plan states that deliveries of food and other life essentials to
Gaza will resume in quantities consistent with the January 2025
ceasefire agreement that Israel unilaterally abandoned. “Entry of
distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference
from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and
the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not
associated in any manner with either party,” it says, adding that this
will include “rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity,
sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of
necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.” The plan also
pledges that the Rafah crossing along the border with Egypt—what was
once Gaza’s only gateway to the world beyond Israeli control—would be
opened in both directions under the rules established in the January
ceasefire deal. But a map of the proposed Israeli withdrawals would
allow Israeli forces to remain deployed across southern Gaza, including
along the Philadelphi corridor that runs along the border with Egypt,
until an international force met standards approved by Trump.
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The White House released a map Monday showing proposed Israeli troop
withdrawals as part of Trump’s Gaza plan.
The maps for a proposed phased Israeli withdrawal are consistent with
those proposed by Israel
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July—and rejected by Hamas—with the added term that any Israeli troop
withdrawals will be linked to the verified disarmament of Palestinian
resistance groups. The plan says that Israeli forces would
“progressively hand over the Gaza territory it occupies” to an
international security force, but that Israeli troops would maintain “a
security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly
secure from any resurgent terror threat.”
“The resumption of the aid is extremely important in light of the fact
that there is starvation and famine taking place,” said Al-Arian. “But I
think the thorniest of issues would be the disarmament and the [Israeli]
withdrawal. These could be the two issues that can make this whole deal
unravel.”
The Trump framework also states that if Hamas “delays or rejects this
proposal,” aid distribution will only proceed in areas under Israeli
control or those handed over to the international force after
disarmament of Palestinians in the area.
The plan also contains terms that Hamas has explicitly defined as “red
lines,” namely a demand to strip Palestinians of their right to armed
resistance against Israeli occupation. “All military, terror, and
offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production
facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt,” it states. “There will
be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of
independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently
beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning, and supported
by an internationally funded buy back and reintegration program all
verified by the independent monitors.”
Mardawi, the Hamas official, said the U.S. and Israel were engaged in a
propaganda campaign to rebrand the Palestinian right to self defense as
a justification for Israel’s genocidal war. “To confiscate these weapons
without a horizon, without a roadmap, without steps that lead to the
establishment of the Palestinian state that the world recognizes is an
attempt to bury the international consensus—except for America and the
rogue Israel—on recognizing the Palestinian people’s right to establish
their state,” he told Al Jazeera. “This international diplomatic and
political momentum—especially from Europe, which used to support, back,
and provide all forms of assistance to the state of the occupation—this
recognition and this shift toward affirming the Palestinian people’s
right to establish their state on their homeland is being undermined.”
The Trump plan says that the U.S. will work with Arab and international
partners to create “a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF)
to immediately deploy in Gaza” to establish “control and stability.” In
addition to providing security in Gaza, the plan says the ISF would also
“work with Israel and Egypt to help secure border areas, along with
newly trained Palestinian police forces.” The concept outlined in the
plan is that as the ISF takes control of areas occupied by Israel,
Israeli forces would withdraw. But the entire plan is predicated on the
disarmament of Palestinian factions in areas the Israeli military would
agree to withdraw from. It states that Israeli withdrawal would be
“based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to
demilitarization… with the objective of a secure Gaza that no longer
poses a threat to Israel, Egypt, or its citizens.”
“I think there will be huge reservations from all Palestinian factions,
that they will not surrender their weapons,” Al-Arian said. “People have
the right to defend themselves, particularly when dealing with an enemy
that does not respect any law, any international law, any humanitarian
law whatsoever.”
At the White House on Monday, Trump claimed he had secured commitments
from Arab and Muslim countries “to demilitarize Gaza, and that’s
quickly. Decommission the military capabilities of Hamas and all other
terror organizations. Do that immediately. We’re relying on the
countries that I named and others to deal with Hamas.”
Al-Arian said he was skeptical Israel would actually agree to the
deployment of a foreign force, particularly an Arab one. But even if it
did happen, he said it would not be capable of achieving the stated aim
of disarming Palestinian resistance factions. “They’re not going to
bring Arab and international troops to go and fight the resistance. The
resistance will not voluntarily give up its arms,” said Al-Arian. “Which
makes the Israelis say, ‘If that doesn’t happen, we’re not withdrawing.’
So you end up with a frozen conflict that could actually unravel and
return back to genocide. But this time the Americans will say, ‘We
tried, we failed.’ And then the Israelis have a free hand to resume
their genocide.”
Hamas has repeatedly said that it would relinquish governing authority
in Gaza to an independent technocratic committee of Palestinians. On
several occasions, Hamas proposed including the term in previous
ceasefire proposals and the U.S., and Israel removed it. The Trump plan
states, “Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the
governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form.” It does not
clarify which factions this would include.
While the Trump plan states that “Gaza will be governed under the
temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical
Palestinian committee,” it requires that it be overseen by another newly
created entity that would be headed by Trump and reportedly managed by
former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The document references the
potential future involvement of the Palestinian Authority, but offers no
timeline.
Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, denounced the
involvement of Blair, an unrepentant war monger who has spent his years
since leaving office cashing in by peddling his influence to dictators
and despots. “I could call him ‘the devil’s brother’—that’s Tony Blair.
He has brought no good to the Palestinian cause, to the Arabs, or to the
Muslims. His criminal and destructive role since the war on Iraq, in
which he had a central role both theoretically and in practical
participation, is well known,” Badran told Al Jazeera Mubasher on
Sunday. “Tony Blair is not a welcome figure in the Palestinian cause,
and therefore any plan associated with this person is an ill omen for
the Palestinian people.” After resigning as British Prime Minister,
Blair served as the official Middle East envoy for the
Quartet—consisting of the U.S., the UN, the EU, and Russia—from 2007 to
2015 and was widely criticized for achieving little.
Al-Arian said that while Hamas has agreed that it would not be a part of
an interim governing body for Gaza, Israel and Trump seem to be trying
to preemptively strip Palestinians of the right to choose their leaders
democratically. “Eventually there will have to be some sort of a
democratic transition, democratic elections in which Gazans have the
right to rule themselves,” he said. “I don’t think any Palestinian would
agree to have a foreign power governing them. That imperialist,
colonialist mentality is not acceptable to any Palestinian.”
The Trump plan calls for the establishment of an “economic development
plan” that would be managed by a “panel of experts who have helped birth
some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East.” The
language is consistent with the praise Trump heaped on the rulers of
Gulf nations when he visited Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE in May.
While Trump made no mention of his oft-repeated threat to turn Gaza into
a U.S.-run “Middle East Riviera,” the plan indicates he sees massive
private investment opportunities in the rubble of Gaza.
During the Monday press conference, Trump addressed Dermer—Netanyahu’s
chief strategist—in the front row with a rambling digression referring
to Gaza as the most beautiful real estate in the region and offered a
staggeringly false history of Israel “giving it” to the Palestinians in
2005. “They [Israel] said, ‘You take it. This is our contribution to
peace.’ But that didn’t work out. That didn’t work out. It was the
opposite of peace,” Trump said. “They pulled away, they let them have
it. And I never forgot that because I said, ‘That doesn’t sound like a
good deal to me as a real estate person.’ They gave up the ocean, right?
Ron, they gave up the ocean. They said, ‘Who would do this deal?’And it
still didn’t work out. They were very generous, actually. And they gave
up the most magnificent piece of land in many ways in the Middle East.
And they said, ‘All we want to do now is have peace.’ That request was
not honored.”
“Every move on Trump’s part, he gets someone in the back door, whether
it’s his children, his son in law, or friends, to take a piece of the
act,” said Al-Arian. “So he sees big dollar signs coming in and that’s
why he got in Tony Blair, because that is the medium by which he’s going
to be able to control the money and control what’s happening in Gaza.”
While Trump and Netanyahu can forge ahead with their attempt to impose
this plan on Gaza, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad still hold nearly
50 Israeli captives, living and dead. Hamas knows this is the only
leverage it holds in any negotiation. “The only thing that Hamas can
reject really is the hand over the captives,” said Al-Arian. “Hamas
doesn’t want to be stripped of this card and then end up with another
war in which they have zero leverage after that.” Should Netanyahu and
Trump attempt to entirely circumvent Hamas and recover the captives
through military force, it is certain that many, if not all of them,
would be killed. Hamas’s armed wing, Qassam Brigades, has issued several
warnings to Israel against such plans.
The Trump plan states that, “Once all hostages are returned, Hamas
members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their
weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza
will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.” This clause
portrays Hamas as akin to a small group of foreign fighters, rather than
a political movement that has won democratic elections, governed Gaza
for two decades, and which still enjoys a sizable amount of support in
public polls across Palestine.
While the Trump proposal contains some elements that the Palestinian
resistance has long demanded, including the resumption of life
essentials and humanitarian aid, the exchange of captives and a
framework, albeit deeply skewed toward Israel, for withdrawal of
occupation forces. But Al-Arian said these terms do not outweigh the
traps embedded within the plan’s text.
“We may get the first phase of the plan. What happens to the rest of the
plan is going to depend pretty much on other dynamics, but more
importantly on the Trump administration, which is Zionist to the core.
So I don’t have much hope that this is going to be carried out,”
Al-Arian said. “And what comes after that is going to be a renewed
effort to establish Greater Israel, which will also precipitate greater
effort to resist this. That means that the whole region will stay unstable.”
<https://substack.com/redirect/60077230-1959-42c5-8f50-37e85ee72e49?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>
Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff on July 13, 2025 on a tarmac in New
Jersey. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
*Killing Negotiations*
Some terms of the plan appear to be rooted in the terms of a 13-point
U.S.-Israeli-drafted plan that Hamas agreed to on August 18. Israel
never formally responded to Hamas’s acceptance of the so-called Witkoff
framework, which the U.S. publicly characterized as the deal that would
end the war. By that point, Israel was finalizing preparations for a
sustained ground invasion of Gaza City aimed at expelling one million
Palestinians. On August 20, two days after Hamas made major concessions
<https://substack.com/redirect/9f0abebf-7574-4c42-ba72-499e8cb4d493?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>and
accepted the Witkoff plan, Israel forged ahead with its invasion of Gaza
City.
As Israel intensified its air strikes and ground operations against
Gaza, Trump bombastically announced
<https://substack.com/redirect/06122d7b-1769-499d-830f-3815fd3e67fd?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>on
September 3 that he was making a final offer to Hamas. Ignoring the fact
that Hamas had already conceded to what Trump had also called the last
chance for a deal, the U.S. delivered to Hamas via Qatari mediators a
100-word document
<https://substack.com/redirect/fa2b4be3-274f-450b-b14b-ce415deff512?j=eyJ1IjoibHZwcGIifQ.9RIwWbE6EVIB7Jy8lfazxZKfps8R18neRGMKwOiqnRM>that
called for the unconditional release of all Israeli captives, living and
dead, in Gaza in return for a 60-day ceasefire and an opaque commitment
to end the war. As the U.S. initiated backdoor communications with
Hamas, claiming to want to make a deal, Israeli army Chief of Staff Eyal
Zamir publicly threatened to assassinate Hamas leaders outside of Gaza
if the group did not surrender.
As Hamas officials convened in Doha on September 9 to discuss how to
respond to the paragraph-long document from Trump and messages it
received through intermediaries, Israel carried out what it called
Operation Day of Judgement, bombing Hamas’s offices and the Qatar
residence of its chief political leader and negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya.
While the strike failed to kill any Hamas leaders, Israel’s missiles
took the lives of Al-Hayya’s son and four Hamas administrative staff as
well as a Qatari security guard. The attack also wounded Al-Hayya’s
wife, daughter-in-law, and some of his grandchildren.
Qatar is the home of U.S. Central Command, the premiere American
strategic military facility in the region. Israel was able to conduct
its attacks without encountering any apparent resistance from the
U.S.-provided air defense systems in Qatar, raising serious questions
about the extent of U.S. involvement in the strike. While the Trump
administration claimed it was only alerted by Israel soon before the
Israeli air strikes and tried to warn Qatar’s leader, the contention
defies common sense. No country in the world has a more extensive
military and intelligence apparatus in the region than that operated by
the U.S.
Whether by Israeli design or the product of a U.S.-Israeli plot, the
series of events—most prominently the U.S.-enabled sabotage of yet
another ceasefire agreement—paved the way for weeks of wanton killing,
forced displacement and mass destruction in northern Gaza.
Arab leaders gathered in Doha for an emergency summit on September 15 to
discuss Israel’s bombing of Qatar. In the end, they issued only a
strongly worded statement and declined to engage in any military
response to Israel’s attack. Trump claimed he was not happy with the
Israeli bombing of Qatar and claimed it would not happen again. But two
Arab diplomatic sources told Drop Site that on his recent visit to
Qatar, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told officials in Doha that the
U.S. could make no such guarantee as long as Hamas was allowed to
operate in Qatar. A State Department spokesperson declined to confirm or
deny what the sources told Drop Site.
During his meeting with Trump on Monday, Netanyahu offered an apology to
the emir of Qatar on a phone call made from inside the White House and
promised not to violate Qatari sovereignty again. But the apology was
narrowly focused on the killing of the Qatari security guard and not for
bombing the Hamas office in an effort to kill its negotiating team in
the midst of negotiations which Qatar was mediating at the request of
the U.S.
On Monday, Qatar’s foreign ministry released a statement acknowledging
Netanyahu’s apology and stated that it would resume its mediation
efforts in support of Trump’s plan. Since Israel’s attempt to
assassinate Hamas’s external leadership, several of the group’s senior
leaders have been held in safe houses in Qatar with limited access to
communications. While this has created challenges for the group to
maintain contact with commanders on the ground in Gaza, sources have
told Drop Site they have developed alternative methods.
As Hamas and other Palestinian groups debate their response to the Trump
plan, the final word will lie not with those in Doha, but inside Gaza.
“That proposal will come to the leaders in exile. They will look at it,
they will make some decisions. These decisions would also be consulted
with the people in the field in Gaza. They will have to be heard at the
end. They are the ones who control the [Israeli] captives,” Al-Arian
said. “It doesn’t even matter what the people say outside. It’s only
going to be an opinion and they hope that that opinion would be accepted
by the people inside [Gaza]. But the people who are leading in the field
in Gaza will have to make that decision. But I believe, all in all, that
Hamas and the resistance have shown that they have tremendous
discipline, that they are capable of communicating and having a unified
position.”
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<https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=2510348&post_id=174918213&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&isFreemail=true&comments=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozNjc1MTU4MywicG9zdF9pZCI6MTc0OTE4MjEzLCJpYXQiOjE3NTkyMzg1MjEsImV4cCI6MTc2MTgzMDUyMSwiaXNzIjoicHViLTI1MTAzNDgiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.JbrnRiE4KS2_JRst67TCRAx3JQRqi4lKbBzALQTjCCg&r=lvppb&utm_campaign=email-half-magic-comments&action=post-comment&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email>
Restack
<https://substack.com/redirect/2/eyJlIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9vcGVuLnN1YnN0YWNrLmNvbS9wdWIvZHJvcHNpdGVuZXdzL3AvdHJ1bXAtZ2F6YS0yMC1wb2ludC1wbGFuLWhhbWFzLWlzcmFlbC1uZXRhbnlhaHU_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.Y5-RMEti5v55GZOeWPTZIcxIC_-e-yFKyFTm_M0Zooc?&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email>
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