By Marc Wutschke
On September 29, President Trump unveiled a 20-point ceasefire plan to stop hostilities in Gaza. It is not so much a peace plan as a blueprint for the eventual takeover of Palestinian land, a fig leaf for annexation
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize journalist and the former New York Times Middle East bureau chief, describes the plan as “a deceptive continuation of past sham agreements, designed not to achieve peace but to legitimize Israel’s ongoing genocide and permanent dispossession of the Palestinian people under U.S. protection.” (“Trump’s Sham Peace Plan.” Reprinted in Socialist Action)
Hedges continues: “A pause in the genocide is the best we can anticipate. Israel is on the cusp of emptying Gaza, which has been all but obliterated under two years of relentless bombing. It is not about to be stopped. This is the culmination of the Zionist dream.” He predicts how this will be done: “Israel, as it always does, will blame Hamas and the Palestinians for failing to abide by the agreement — most probably a refusal, true or not, to disarm, as the proposal demands. Washington, condemning Hamas’s supposed violation, will give Israel the green light to continue its genocide to create Trump’s fantasy of a Gaza Riviera and ‘special economic zone,’ with its ‘voluntary’ relocation of Palestinians in exchange for digital tokens.”
Hedges is not an outlier among knowledgeable observers; many expect this to be how the plan is implemented. The corporate media will ignore that reality, instead parroting the absurd claim at the plan’s core: that Hamas and the Palestinian people are responsible for the near-total decimation of Gaza and the deaths of over 100,000 Palestinians — not Israel. In truth, Israel, with the region’s most powerful military and the world’s sixth-largest air force, waged a horrific bombing campaign against an essentially unarmed civilian population. Yet Palestine — its governing entities and its main resistance force, Hamas — is to be disarmed of sundry small arms. That will render Palestinians abjectly defenseless, while Israel retains its prodigious arsenal and the homicidal IDF remains fully armed. The awaiting catastrophe is obvious.
Zionism and the Drive for Land
The focus of the plan — the disarmament and “deradicalization” of Palestinians — is its Achilles’ heel. The plan studiously avoids the proverbial 800-pound gorilla glaring at the world: a barbarous Zionist state steeped in an ideology born of racist hate and territorial ambition, armed to the teeth — with nuclear weapons, no less. Without dealing with this monster, thousand point-plans are futile. There will be no peace in the Middle East until the Zionist, apartheid state of Israel is dismantled, its nuclear arsenal destroyed, and a secular state is established in which Jews, Muslims, Christians, and those of any other faith — or of no faith — have equal rights and citizenship.
Grounded in Zionism, Israel’s raison d’être is to possess, by any means necessary, the land occupied by Palestinians — all of it, “from the river to the sea,” a slogan popularized by Netanyahu’s Likud Party two decades ago. But Israel’s appetite does not end with Palestine; it covets further Arab territory to create a so-called “Greater Israel.”
Historical Roots: Settlement, Violence, and the Nakba
Encased in Zionist ideology, Israel has repeatedly frustrated treaties and agreements that stifle the objective of territorial expansion. Zionism is woven into Israeli institutions and society; the actions of terror against Palestinians and the drive to expel them from their native lands became axiomatic.
Early Zionist leaders were explicit: the Jewish homeland, carved from Palestine, should contain as few Arabs as possible and encompass as much land as possible. Menachem Ussishkin, a major Zionist leader in the early 1900s, spoke of acquiring land by “force and conquest” once Jews became rulers — revealing a long-term plan for domination. Zionism intended to drive out the indigenous population. Believing Jews had an inalienable historical right to Palestine, early Zionists encouraged European Jews to settle and buy land. When that proved insufficient, they resorted to violence. Zionist gangs such as the Irgun and the Stern Gang (Lehi) used terror to encourage Palestinian “transfer,” a euphemism that became synonymous with removal — what we now properly call ethnic cleansing. Hundreds were killed, culminating in the mass expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 when the state of Israel was established. This forced expulsion — the Nakba — remains the most horrific event in Palestinian history.
From Religion to Secular Nationalism: Zionism and Jewish Identity
But the expulsion of the Palestinians wasn’t the most significant accomplishment of the early Zionists. Perhaps the Zionists’ greatest achievement was ideological: recasting Jewish identity from a primarily religious or cultural orientation to a secular-nationalist one bound to the creation and defense of a homeland. Zionism — originally rejected by many Jews — was normalized and accepted through institutions, schooling, and ubiquitous propaganda that was fused into Israeli society.
Dehumanization, Impunity, and Popular Support
Zionist indoctrination has led to the dehumanization of Palestinians. They are frequently referred to — even by high officials — as “animals” who “need to be exterminated.” The level of animus toward Palestinians within Israeli society is shocking. Polls have shown broad Israeli support for the violence in Gaza: many Israelis believe there are no innocents in Gaza and endorse leveling its cities and leaving no survivors. Israelis sat on hilltops overlooking Gaza to observe bombardments from a distance, cheering as buildings, homes and people incinerate. Thousands marched on the Knesset to demand that soldiers accused of raping Palestinian prisoners be released without charges and that rapists of Palestinians face no legal consequences; the Knesset complied.
The oppression and cruelty inflicted on Palestinians have persisted for decades. Meanwhile, Israel maintained a sophisticated, well-financed propaganda campaign to whitewash its image. Israel — a racist, apartheid state by any reasonable definition — holds Palestinians as impoverished prisoners in their own land, violates international law, seizes Palestinian land, and has attacked other countries in the region, often to seize more territory (notably in 1967 and 1973). Yet, in grand Orwellian fashion, Israel’s propaganda machine has cast the nation as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” a victim of Arab designs to destroy it and of Palestinian terrorism — thereby justifying its “right to defend itself.” The cynical instrumentalization of the Holocaust to engender sympathy has been a crucial part of this campaign.
October 8, 2023: The Genocide Exposed
However, the genocide that Israel launched on October 8, 2023, shattered that facade. The world has had to see Zionism for what it is and what it has created. Zionism’s poisonous ideology has slaughtered tens of thousands of Palestinians with shocking callousness. The sheer barbarism marshalled against Palestinians by Israeli troops — forces whose members have been raised on Zionist doctrines of hatred — cannot be overstated.
Why Trump’s Plan Cannot Bring Peace
Trump’s plan is untethered from reality if its aim is a just peace. The plan favors Israel over Palestine and offers no meaningful path to dismantling the Zionist structures that produced the present catastrophe. If the plan’s intent is to aid Israel’s Zionist quest to complete its takeover of Gaza and to help create Trump’s Gaza Riviera, it may well succeed; but to bring peace, it is doomed.
There can be no durable peace so long as Zionism’s expansionist project remains intact, its military dominance unchecked, and Palestinian dispossession unaddressed. Any genuine peace requires confronting Zionism’s political and military structures, restoring Palestinian rights, and establishing a secular state in which equal citizenship and justice are real, not rhetorical. Anything short of that is only another pause in a prolonged and brutal dispossession.
Marc Wutschke is a member of Socialist Action. He is a retired teacher in Los Angeles and can be reached at marcwut@icloud.com.
