[Revolutionary Communist International, 09 October 2025]
Celebrations have erupted in Gaza and Israel at the announcement by Trump on Truth Social that a peace agreement has been reached between Israeli and Hamas negotiators in Egypt. That there is celebration is understandable, especially for Gazans who until this point faced a future of certain death by bombardment or starvation. However, we must tell the truth, ugly as that truth may be.
Firstly, what Israel and Hamas have agreed to, as Trump himself admitted, is not the full implementation of his plan, but just its first phase. Secondly, if it does mark the first step to the full implementation of Trump’s ‘peace plan’, it will have resolved nothing fundamental in the long run.
What does this ‘first phase’ consist of?
- A ceasefire will come into place in 24 hours;
- Israel will begin a phased withdrawal of the IDF, leaving it in control of 53 percent of the Gaza Strip;
- The rest of the living Israeli hostages and a number of Palestinian prisoners will then be released within a 72-hour window; and
- 400 trucks of aid per day will be allowed to enter Gaza.
The first thing to say is this: such an agreement – a ceasefire and exchange of hostages – could have been made at any time since 7 October 2023. Hamas had already agreed to it. It was not made because the Biden Administration, the European imperialist powers, and the Trump Administration until this point, have backed Israeli aggression to the hilt.
The second thing to be said is that this is a humiliating defeat for Netanyahu personally, and for his government. Netanyahu is trying to spin it as a victory. But everyone can see it for what it is: an imposition against Netanyahu on the part of Trump, and a complete climbdown from the position of his cabinet, which was to completely ethnically cleanse and permanently occupy Gaza. His political existence depended on this war.
This shows something of the enormous pressure he is under – not just from Trump, but above all from the massive weight of public opinion inside Israel which supports the deal.
The whole thing may yet collapse. No agreement has been reached as to when the IDF will withdraw from Gaza. And no commitment has been made by Hamas on disarming and effectively disbanding, as demanded by the Trump plan.
Netanyahu may be counting on Hamas refusing to disarm, for instance, as a pretext for recommencing the war. He may get what he wants.
A monstrous plan
If this agreement could have been signed two years ago at the start of the conflict, why has it only been brought about now?
The ruthless continuation of Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinians in Gaza was weakening the position of its imperialist backers. This war has stoked social unrest in the Arab nations and in Europe, culminating in the general strike we saw in Italy last week. It has made it politically very difficult for the European imperialist powers to give their full backing to Israel, which has been left increasingly isolated internationally.
More importantly from the point of view of US imperialism, the war has strained its alliances in the region to breaking point, and risked isolating it even further to the benefit of its rivals like China and Russia.
The turning point in this regard was the attempted assassination of Hamas negotiators by Israel when it bombed buildings in Doha, Qatar. This has left the reactionary Gulf states questioning whether they can depend upon US military backing.
Netanyahu is an expert maneuverer, but he has overextended himself, and Trump was forced to act.
Trump’s ‘20-point peace plan’, however, far from being a guarantee of peace, is a monstrosity that will guarantee further conflict, while the plight of the Palestinian people will remain bleak.
If successfully carried into effect, it would place Gaza under the dictatorship of a board of trustees including Donald Trump and Tony Blair, the butcher of Iraq. IDF troops would be replaced – at an undetermined time in the future – by an occupation consisting of troops from Arab and Muslim countries.
There have been many promises about reconstruction but no detail on who would pay for it. In fact, Gaza would remain a permanent refugee camp under a foreign occupation. The Zionist annexation of the West Bank would continue apace. Palestinian self-determination is permanently ruled out.
Thousands of Gazans are understandably celebrating even a temporary reprieve and resumption of aid, which represents a sliver of hope compared to certain death.
But in the long term nothing whatsoever is solved by this agreement. While Trump has bombastically hailed this as the start of a “Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace”, his plan will inevitably prepare new conflicts, new wars, new genocides, and new suffering for the Palestinian people.
Gaza turned to rubble
The situation in Gaza right now reminds us of the words of Tacitus: “They make a desert and call it peace.”
78 percent of all buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged. More than half have been completely destroyed. Most schools have been destroyed, not a single university remains. There is not one functioning hospital. Most of the population live today in tents in central Gaza and along the southern coast. 98.5 percent of agricultural land has been destroyed. All infrastructure is gone: there is no running water, no sewerage system, nothing.
Every corner of Gaza is littered with unexploded ordnance. It has been truly transformed into a wasteland unfit for human life. If serious rebuilding efforts were to begin, it would take many decades to repair Gaza. But no such reconstruction plans exist. Gaza thus has a future as a huge, permanent refugee camp, which will be completely dependent on foreign aid.
The territory will be blighted by huge social problems, and enormous resentment will continue to boil. Therefore, even if Hamas agrees to disarm and effectively disband, there will be no shortage of recruits to armed resistance groups filling the vacuum left by Hamas.
Hamas itself grew out of the atrocious conditions in Gaza after the Oslo Accords 30 years ago. The conditions are even more atrocious now, which are fertile ground for new resistance groups akin to Hamas.
The aims of Israeli expansionism will not change one iota either. The Zionists are certain to plunge into new wars.
Since 1948, the attitude of the Zionists has been ‘what we have, we hold’. Expand, occupy new territory, push things to the limit, and then retreat temporarily, sign an agreement, act ‘reasonable’, on the private understanding that you will break that temporary agreement when the time is right.
The Oslo Accords were such an agreement. The idea of a Palestinian state was held aloft, based on a Palestinian Authority ruling over Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. What happened? The Palestinian Authority was systematically undermined in Gaza. In the West Bank, the agreement was undermined by a constant build-up of Zionist settlements. Finally, the whole thing was cast off after 7 October 2023.
Now there is a new ‘agreement’. Israel will continue to hold a buffer area, and in the meantime, West Bank settlement expansion continues. The Zionists will hope that unlivable conditions in the territory will encourage Palestinians to leave. And new opportunities will arise to occupy it once more.
Meanwhile, imperialism is continuing to destabilise the whole region, in which new conflicts are being prepared.
Overthrow Zionism! Overthrow imperialism!
The effects of the Gaza war will be long lasting.
If this peace holds, it will be far more onerous than the ‘peace’ that existed before 7 October 2023. Peace under imperialism is just a period of preparation for new imperialist wars, the outlines of which we can already see.
But this reactionary war has also wrought other changes.
It has also torn apart the fabric of Israeli society. Before 7 October 2023, the Israeli ruling class was in a state of near-civil war with itself. The war temporarily masked those contradictions, and its end will reveal them once more only raised to the nth degree.
This war has enormously shaken the faith of a large layer of Israeli citizens in the ability of the Zionist ruling class to ‘protect’ them.
If Trump’s ‘peace plan’ goes ahead, Egyptian, Turkish and Saudi soldiers will have the task of policing the Gaza strip on behalf of the Israelis, keeping Palestinian resistance down. This will make the Palestinian question even more explosive inside these countries.
Far beyond the region, the genocidal war has acted as a catalyst, bringing to fruition the anger of millions of workers and young people and giving it a point of reference in the solidarity movement. That anger, in millions of minds, has connected Zionism and imperialism with remilitarisation and austerity at home.
The political general strike in Italy in solidarity with Palestine, and particularly the direct action taken by dockworkers to block trade with Israel, was the high point of this movement. That cannot be undone: it represented an awakening of the working class who tasted their own power. It represented a qualitative advance in the class struggle, with the emergence of very advanced methods.
If the entry of the working class onto the scene was not the only factor, it was clearly one very palpable factor feeding the anxieties of the ruling class in the West, which finally forced it to bring serious pressure to bear on Israel.
Whatever the outcome of this ‘peace’ negotiation, we must carry with us these lessons. That the working class has the power to bring down the war machine. That fighting Zionism and fighting imperialist war means bringing down our own ruling class at home. That, ultimately, the horrors in the Middle East are the product of capitalism and of imperialism, and that the struggle to free Palestine is a struggle to overthrow capitalism, to form a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, and to eradicate imperialism throughout the world.
