Fw: The truth about the "peace plan"

[javed helali]

As received. Israel got everthing it wanted. We can only wait for the Massiah

JH






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Subject: The truth about the "peace plan"


Here's the Truth About Trump's 'Peace Plan' for Gaza
The US allowed Netanyahu to create four key loopholes in the deal to ensure Israel can continue its Gaza genocide – regardless of the 'ceasefire' agreement.
Muhammad Shehada
Oct 15, 2025
The war may be declared “over,” but Gaza is still bleeding. In a spectacle of premature celebration, President Donald Trump stood with Israeli leaders, announcing the end of hostilities, a ceasefire signed in ink but soaked in blood. Yet, to Palestinians and seasoned diplomats alike, the silence from Israel’s most extreme ministers spoke louder than Trump’s fanfare. Behind the curtain of political theater, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had already engineered a roadmap to continue the destruction of Gaza, not through tanks and missiles alone, but through legal loopholes, manipulated agreements, and the weaponization of diplomacy. What lies ahead is not peace, but a more insidious, systematic continuation of genocide in slow motion.
“The war is over,” declared President Donald Trump on his way to Israel. This announcement, however, rang hollow with Palestinians, mediators, and every expert I have spoken to. One immediate red flag was the total absence of protestation from Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right allies, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who had repeatedly vowed to quit and collapse the government if Israel ends the genocide in Gaza. While the pair voted against the ceasefire, the two ministers haven’t quit the government, and they didn’t even comment about Trump’s specific announcement, neither positively nor negatively, which could mean they are under instructions from the prime minister to keep quiet for tactical reasons.
It didn’t take long before Israel resumed killing and besieging Gazans. Within 24 hours of the ceasefire’s beginning, Israel killed at least 35 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 72 others. On Tuesday morning, the day after Hamas released all living captives, Israel resumed aerial bombardment in Gaza with an airstrike that reportedly killed five civilians in Shejaiya and another that killed two in Khan Younis.
Israel then officially declared it would continue to close the Rafah crossing, Gazans’s only gateway to the world, although it was supposed to open both ways immediately after the hostages’ release. Israel also announced restricting humanitarian aid entering the enclave under the pretext that Hamas was “not taking sufficient steps to locate the bodies of [dead] hostages.”
This is one of at least four loopholes Netanyahu created to ensure Israel can continue its Gaza genocide despite Trump’s ceasefire agreement.
1. Bodies of Hostages
Hamas had made clear during the negotiations that it would take time to find the bodies of hostages due to Israel’s vast destruction of the enclave and killing of thousands of its fighters, including some responsible for keeping those bodies. A joint international mission that includes the US, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey was formed to aid in this process.
Israel’s own Mossad chief had already warned Netanyahu that some bodies of dead Israeli captives may never be found because of the vast amounts of rubble and debris (an April estimate put it at nearly 50 million tons of rubble). More than a year ago, the UN estimated it would take up to 15 years to clear the destruction Israel inflicted on Gaza, unless Israel allows way more trucks, bulldozers, and heavy machinery into the enclave – all things that are currently banned.
The very delay Israel anticipated Hamas would encounter in retrieving the hostages’ bodies has now been strategically weaponized by Netanyahu as a convenient pretext to claim that Hamas is violating the first phase of the Trump deal and renege on Israel’s obligations entirely. Even if Hamas were to locate those bodies in time, Israel still has other tricks up its sleeves to maintain the uninhabitability of Gaza.
2. Frozen Withdrawal Lines
Right now, Israel holds 58% of the Gaza Strip as a closed and fully depopulated military zone. Israeli soldiers openly brag that this area is practically an “extermination area,” meaning any civilians who try to return to their homes would be instantly shot on sight. Israel is planning to hold onto much of those areas indefinitely, establishing an invisible Berlin Wall-like deadly line that overcrowds 2 million people in a flattened area smaller than Brooklyn without any of New York’s high-rise or multi-story buildings.
The half of Gaza that Israel currently controls is considered Gaza’s food basket; almost all of Gaza’s agricultural lands are in the northernmost and eastern parts of the enclave, where Israel wants to establish a permanent “security buffer zone.” Without those areas, Gazans would be entirely dependent on international aid indefinitely, the flow of which Israel fully controls.
Israel conditioned its withdrawal from an additional 18% of Gaza on the mobilization of an international force on the ground, leaving 40% of Gaza depopulated and controlled by the Israeli military. Hamas had accepted such a force during the January-March 2025 ceasefire. Back then, an Egyptian-Qatari security group, supervised by American contractors, established a checkpoint in the Netzarim corridor to inspect vehicles returning to northern Gaza to ensure no weapons were being transferred there.
A Hamas leader told me they would accept a “protection force” in Gaza as long as a similar force is deployed in the occupied West Bank. The mandate of this force would be upholding the ceasefire, monitoring and reporting violations, building the local police’s capacity, and leading security sector reform.
Israel wants Trump’s proposed “international stabilization force” to act as a subcontractor of the Israeli military, to dismantle Hamas’s infrastructure, look for and destroy tunnels, and carry out counterinsurgency operations. This would put the international mission on a collision course with Hamas and other armed factions in Gaza who would see that mission as an occupying force trying to accomplish what Israel failed to achieve militarily over 24 months of genocide: to dismantle Hamas and police Gazans into submission.
3. The Disarmament Trap
Israel conditioned its gradual and “progressive” withdrawal to the “security buffer zone” (17% of Gaza) on the international force “demilitarizing” Gaza, but without any timeline, milestones, or clear definition of what demilitarization means, leaving it to Netanyahu’s discretion as to when, how, and where would the Israeli military withdraw, if at all.
The earlier draft of Trump’s plan had only talked about “decommissioning” Hamas’s “offensive infrastructure” (i.e., rockets or tunnels crossing into Israel), something the group had accepted, according to mediators. The group insists on retaining its “defensive weapons” (e.g., rifles, RPGs, anti-tank missiles) to maintain order in Gaza and be able to resume its insurgency should Israel invade Gaza again.
Netanyahu, however, spent six hours with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff changing that formula. He added “demilitarization” and changed the decommissioning framework from “offensive” weapons to “offensive, terror, and military” infrastructure. This means fully stripping Hamas and all of Gaza of any weapons, including firearms or even knives; an explosive process that can never be fully accomplished.
Even if Hamas accepts full disarmament and surrender, the vagueness of words like “terror” and “demilitarization” allows enough maneuvering room for Israel to avoid making any additional withdrawal. Israel can, for instance, claim that there are still other smaller factions, “terror cells,” or armed individuals who “pose a threat” to Israel.
This loophole would also allow Israel to bomb Gaza at will and claim it was neutralizing a Hamas cell or destroying a tunnel, similar to how Israel has been regularly bombing Lebanon despite a ceasefire with Hezbollah, and who is going to verify those claims? In fact, Netanyahu’s Likud spokesperson has already made clear “we can bomb [Gaza] from above without any problem.”
Furthermore, as Israel freezes the Israeli military withdrawal lines from Gaza and turns the genocide into a low-intensity campaign, the prospect of Israeli settlers moving into Gaza increases dramatically. Over a thousand Israeli settler families are already waiting at Gaza’s borders with tents and caravans, ready to move in at the earliest chance. Israeli experts I spoke to believe this threat is imminent; settlers could rebuild the settlements Nisanit and Dugit in the very north of Gaza, as they would be within the Israeli military buffer zone.
If Hamas or any other Palestinian armed factions try to challenge this or forcefully pressure the Israeli military to withdraw, they would get all the blame for the collapse of the ceasefire.
4. Israel’s Proxy Gangs and Militias
One of the most dangerous and explosive aspects of the current ceasefire arrangement is that Israel’s proxy gangs of criminals and collaborators are currently hiding inside the 58% of Gaza that the Israeli military is occupying. This includes the notorious ISIS-linked Abu Shabab gang, responsible for looting the overwhelming majority of UN aid under the Israeli military’s protection and closely linked to the now-defunct Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. There are other gangs Israel has recently created in the buffer areas, such as Husam al-Astal in Khan Younis or Ashraf al-Mansi in Beit Lahia.
Israel cultivated those gangs to create “gated communities” (Israel’s former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called them concentration camps) to push Gazans into. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had openly advocated for moving Gaza’s entire population to the Abu Shabab camp in Rafah.
Now with the ceasefire, Israel is using those gangs to launch attacks deep inside Gaza without the Israeli military having to invade, seemingly as a way to outsource blame and pretend that Israel is upholding the ceasefire. Already, gang members last week killed two officers of Hamas’s military arm, the Qassam Brigades, including Mohammed Imad Aqel, the son of a top Qassam commander.
On Sunday, prominent Gazan journalist Saleh Al-Jaafrawi was abducted, tortured for hours, then murdered with seven bullets by gang members. The Abu Shabab gang blessed those killings and called for more, citing a literal ISIS fatwa that brands Hamas as “infidels.”
Israel might also try to get Gazans to move into those areas with promises of a better life, while the other half of Gaza remains reduced to rubble. Israel’s proxy gang in Beit Lahia published a video on Tuesday calling on people to move to the gang-controlled area in northern Gaza and promising them safe passage.
Israel’s frozen withdrawal lines would allow the Israeli military to cultivate criminal gangs there, send them to carry out attacks on the ground while Israel bombs Gaza from the air under flimsy pretexts.
This is why mediators were not very optimistic about this “peace plan.” One Arab leader said in a recent meeting I have been briefed on that the plan wouldn’t “solve much beyond securing the release of hostages.” Another said the deal is mainly about stopping the most aggressive bombing and allowing unconditional humanitarian aid to give civilians some “breathing space,” without a political settlement being near.
This is not a peace plan; it’s a blueprint for perpetual domination. Behind every clause, every delay, and every redefined term in the Trump-Netanyahu ceasefire lies a calculated effort to ensure Gaza never rises again. From the cynical weaponization of hostage remains to the creation of proxy gangs and the freezing of Israeli military withdrawal lines, Israel has laid the groundwork for indefinite occupation, aerial bombardment on demand, and the possible return of settlers to a land reduced to rubble. As the world applauds a ceasefire in name, the machinery of dispossession grinds on in practice. If history has taught us anything, it is that genocide doesn’t always wear a uniform; sometimes, it hides behind ceasefires, committees, and vague diplomatic jargon, while the rubble grows, and the survivors starve. The devil, as always, is in the details.
Muhammad Shehada is a Palestinian writer and political analyst from Gaza.