Worlds Extinguished: Hostage Returns, Central Casting and the Gaza Ceasefire

Depending on which source you consult, the twenty-point peace plan of President Donald Trump for securing peace in Gaza shows much exultance and extravagant omission.  The exultance was initially focused on the return of the hostages.  It then shifted to the broader strategic goals of the various parties.  Commentary on this point, even as the living Israeli hostages convalescence after their exchange for Palestinian detainees, sidesteps the Palestinian people, those fly in the ointment irritants who never seem to exit the political scene.  

The peace plan, in effect, is being executed to eliminate Hamas and any semblance of a Palestinian militant movement in favour of an Israel-Arab-US axis of preferment and normalisation.  Doing so puts a firm lid on Palestinian sovereignty and statehood in favour of sounder relations between Israel and the Arab states.  

Consider, for instance, the views from the American Jewish Committee in their October 10 assessment. “President Trump’s unconventional approach created new diplomatic realities and forced Israel and key Arab states to align in new ways.”  The peace plan was “the most credible framework to date for advancing Israeli-Arab peace, creating new opportunities for regional engagement, and countering Hamas’ ideology through a united alliance of Israel and Arab nations committed to peace, security, and prosperity.”  Clearly, Palestinians are, if not footnotes, then invisible ink lines in such arrangements. 

This attitude is also echoed in remarks made by the US Vice President, J.D. Vance.  Palestinian subservience is assumed in any new proposed arrangement which prioritises Israeli security and a collective of overseeing nation states that will guard against any mischief in the Strip.  “The President convinced the entire Muslim world really, both the Gulf Arab states, but as far as South-East Asia as Indonesia, to really step up and provide ground troops so that Gaza could be secured in safety.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty gave some sense of what is expected.  “We are going to support and commit troops within specific parameters,” he told CBS.  A UN Security Council mandate would be required, along with clear specifications for what the mission of the troops on the ground would be, “which will be peacekeeping and providing training to Palestinian police.”

Trump’s near cinematic appearance on October 13 in the compact, claustrophobic Knesset after the handover of the hostages set the scene for Israeli grandstanding, staged mawkishness and denial.  Netanyahu was in typical form, accusing Israel’s friends of blood libel stupidity for recognising Palestine; in doing so, they had effectively committed acts of antisemitism, buying “into Hamas’s false propaganda.”  Massacring and starving those in the Gaza Strip warranted no mention, but disarming Hamas and demilitarising the enclave did. With praise for both himself and Trump, Netanyahu spoke of jointly forging “a path to bring the remaining hostages home and end the war. End a war in a way that ensures the disarming of Hamas, the demilitarisation of Gaza, and that Gaza would never again pose a threat to Israel.”

He also thanked Trump for “fully” backing the decision to make the last murderous assault into Gaza City.  This “military pressure” provided momentum that eventually saw Hamas capitulate.  The US President then “succeeded in doing something that no one believed was possible.  You brought most of the Arab world, you did, you brought most of the world behind your proposal to free the hostages and end the war.”  

Opposition leader Yair Lapid, for his part, explicitly denied any genocide or “intentional starvation” of the Palestinians, then proceeded to overlook them in calling on “all the nations of the Islamic world” to engage Israel.

Trump’s own speech was meandering, personal and free of complex turns.  He spoke about his envoy Steve Witkoff as a Henry Kissinger who did not leak, an emissary of singular genius.  An interruption by Hadash lawmakers Ayman Odeh and Ofer Cassif, both demanding that Palestine be recognised, did not faze him.  And then came mention of the Ukraine War, and Russian President Vladimir Putin and more adulatory remarks for the US delegates who have paid homage to the US God King.  They were all part of “central casting”.  

Not a sliver of reference to the Palestinian cause for sovereignty made an appearance, which continues to moan under the strategic expediency of it all, the residents of Gaza doomed to indefinite invigilation at the hands of Trump’s “Board of Peace”.  More to the point, he was happy to admit providing weapons at the request of “Bibi” at a moment’s notice.  The US made “the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel, … and you used them well.”  But the slaughter could not continue, and the Israeli PM would be remembered “far more” for accepting the peace agreement.  “The timing for this is brilliant.  I said, ‘Bibi you’re going to be remembered for this far more than if you kept this thing going, going, going, kill, kill, kill.’”

The Palestinians, granted brief respite from military violence, will be desperately wary.  When Lapid mentioned that Trump had “saved far more than one life, and life is an entire world”, it can also be assumed that killing one life kills a world.  Some 68,000 Palestinian worlds (a conservative estimate) were extinguished by the munitions and weapons of Israel and its backers.  As humanitarian workers return to Gaza, they see the horrors of a lunarscape of devastation.  If only Trump had considered paying a visit to that particular part of earth.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com