The Trump Administration Is Refusing To Force A Ceasefire In Gaza.
The Trump Administration Could Force A Ceasefire Deal- They Are Choosing Not To.
Just as the Biden administration did, the Trump administration has all the power to stop the Isreali genocide in Gaza and is choosing not to.
After demonstrating this in January, the Trump administration supported Netanyahu in sabotaging a ceasefire deal that was working.
Now the Trump administration has the chance to force Israel to stop its genocidal ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza, and is choosing not to.
Forcing And Then sabotaging a ceasefire.
In January of this year, Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, showed that the United States had the ability to get a ceasefire in Gaza by putting a minimal amount of pressure on Israel.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in January:
Steven Witkoff, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, called from Qatar to tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's aides that he would be coming to Israel the following afternoon. The aides politely explained that it was in the middle of the Sabbath but that the prime minister would gladly meet him Saturday night.
Witkoff's blunt reaction took them by surprise. He explained to them in salty English that Shabbat was of no interest to him. His message was loud and clear. Thus in an unusual departure from official practice, the prime minister showed up at his office for an official meeting with Witkoff, who then returned to Qatar to seal the deal.
Haaretz reported that “Witkoff has forced Israel to accept a plan that Netanyahu had repeatedly rejected over the past half year.”
However, this turned out to be more of a cynical ploy by the Trump administration than any serious attempt at peace.
Netanyahu intentionally sabotaged the deal, with full backing from the Trump administration.
Right before the deal “fell through,” in March of this year, two insider Israeli government sources went on record to Haaretz to say Netanyahu was intentionally trying to sabotage it.
Before sabotaging the deal, Haaretz wrote “Israeli Sources Believe Netanyahu Intends to Derail the Gaza Cease-fire”.
The first source said:
Netanyahu is signaling quite clearly that he doesn't want to move to the next phase. He's sending a team without a mandate and without the ability to do anything.
Right-wing voters see that we haven't defeated Hamas, and its operatives are still roaming with weapons. The signs on stages in Gaza during the hostage return events mock Netanyahu and reference his 'total victory' slogan, Netanyahu knows he doesn't have a government if he proceeds with the deal.
The Second Source Said:
The process is working, hostages are being released, but Hamas is doing this with the expectation of a second stage, leading to a [full] cease-fire and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Once Hamas realizes there won't be a second stage, they may not complete the first.
Hamas isn't stupid. They see the politicization of the negotiations, the appointment of Netanyahu loyalists Ron Dermer and Gal Hirsch, and the statements from Smotrich and other right-wing ministers threatening to topple the government. They'll understand where this is headed.
In other words, despite the fact that the ceasefire deal was working and hostages were being released, Netanyahu refused to move on to its already agreed-upon second stage, favoring instead advancing the greater Israel project to not lose his extremist coalition of voters.
Insider Israeli sources also admitted that Hamas stuck to the ceasefire deal, while Israel did not.
As the New York Times reported, “The current standoff stems in part from Hamas’s accusation that Israel has not upheld its promises for the first phase of the cease-fire. Israel was required to send hundreds of thousands of tents into Gaza, a promise that Hamas says Israel has not kept. Three Israeli officials and two mediators, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said that Hamas’s claims were accurate.”
While admitting that claims Israel “ has not upheld its promises for the first phase of the cease-fire” were “accurate,” the IDF admitted that Hamas did not violate the ceasefire.
The Israeli newspaper “Maariv” wrote that “The defense establishment and the IDF say that so far Hamas has not violated the (ceasefire) agreement”.
After Netanyahu’s unilateral sabotage of the ceasefire plan in Gaza, the Trump administration stopped putting pressure on Israel and instead backed the sabotage and issued support for Israel’s plan to take over Gaza.
In February, during a press conference with Netanyahu, Trump openly stated support for an Israeli takeover of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of its Palestinian population saying “it would be my hope that we could do something really good, really nice (for Palestinians) that they wouldn’t want to return (to Gaza)”.
On February 24th of this year, right before Netanyahu completely abandoned the ceasefire and returned to the genocide in Gaza, Trump approved a $3 billion arms sale to Israel.
Trump reportedly “coordinated” his bombing of Ansar Allah (the Houthis) in Yemen with Israel's return to genocide in Gaza, because the Houthis were the last remaining resistance group strong enough to get in the way of Israel’s return to genocide.
The Israeli paper Jerusalem Post wrote, “The new Gaza operation seemed to come as a surprise across the world, but was it? Already, multiple top Israeli sources have confirmed to The Jerusalem Post that the timing of the operation was coordinated with the US.”
The paper wrote that this was because “the Houthis, with their ballistic missiles, are the last Iranian proxy that could most viably threaten Israel immediately in retaliation for a return to war such as seems to be happening.”
Since restarting the genocide in Gaza, a move that was “coordinated” and backed by the Trump administration, Israel has committed an endless slew of Genocidal war crimes intended to force the Palestinians out of Gaza.
Early on in the restarted genocide, Israel committed what Haaretz called “the largest child massacre in its history,” killing “two hundred children and 100 women in one day”.
The IDF had even admitted that 82 percent of the people killed by them since March were civilians, meaning they have killed at least 2,280 civilians in Gaza since March.
Along with their relentless assault on civilians, Israel has placed a total blockade on Gaza since March in an attempt to starve its entire population.
Gaza’s government media office has said that “more than 3,500 children below the age of five years ‘face imminent death by starvation’ while some 70,000 children have been hospitalised in the enclave due to severe malnutrition as Israel has blocked the entry of crucial aid, including food, water, medicines and fuel, into the war ravaged territory”.
This fact has quietly been acknowledged behind the scenes by Israeli officials. The New York Times recently reported that “In Private, Some Israeli Officers Admit That Gaza Is on the Brink of Starvation” writing “Some Israeli military officials have privately concluded that Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation unless aid deliveries are restored within weeks, according to three Israeli defense officials familiar with conditions in the enclave.”
The Times wrote “Israeli military officers who monitor humanitarian conditions in Gaza have warned their commanders in recent days that unless the blockade is lifted quickly, many areas of the enclave will likely run out of enough food to meet minimum daily nutritional needs”.
The intention behind the recent mass murder and starvation of civilians in Gaza has been admitted by Israel recently: to ethnically cleanse Gaza and do a full Israeli takeover.
As Axios recently reported, “Israel's Security Cabinet approved a plan to gradually reoccupy all of Gaza and hold it indefinitely. Plans for the operation call for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to flatten any buildings that remain standing and displace virtually the entire population of 2 million people to a single ‘humanitarian area.’”
Axios went on to write, “The alternative to remaining in the humanitarian zone is for Palestinians to leave the enclave ‘voluntarily’ for other countries ‘in line with President Trump's vision for Gaza,’ an Israeli official said. Such departures could hardly be considered voluntary, and no country has agreed thus far to accept displaced Palestinians.”
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, admitted that this plan, officially called “Operation Gideon's Chariots,” is intended to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Smotrich told a group of West Bank settlers that through this plan, “the Gazan population will be ‘concentrated’ in a narrow strip of land between the border with Egypt and the Morag Corridor”, while “The rest of the Strip will be empty” and “Gaza will be totally destroyed.”
He admitted that this plan is intended to force all Palestinians out of Gaza entirely, saying, “The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places”.
Netanyahu has recently admitted this as well.
He recently said at the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Israel has been “destroying more and more homes,” meaning that the “only inevitable outcome will be the wish of Gazans to emigrate outside of the Gaza Strip”.
Trump Administration Doubles Down On Israel Support.
Some have hoped that the Trump administration is split with Netanyahu and would force him to accept a ceasefire deal instead of carrying out his genocidal ethnic cleansing plan.
This hope was bolstered by the fact that Hamas released Eden Alexander, the last remaining American captive in Gaza, as a gesture of goodwill to the Trump administration.
With Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, and Adam Bohler’s current trip to Israel, some have hoped that they would pressure Israel to accept a ceasefire due to the release of Eden Alexander and based on reports claiming that Trump “has lost patience with the Israeli Prime Minister”, Netanyahu.
However, it appears that this was all a ruse, and it seems that the Trump administration will put no pressure on Israel and is actually aiding them in their ethnic cleansing plan.
Steven Witkoff has reportedly told the families of hostages that he and the Trump administration have no plans to pressure a ceasefire in Gaza.
Haaretz reported that the father of the IDF soldier Nimrod Cohen, captured by Hamas on October 7th, asked Witkoff “Why aren't you forcing the Israeli government to stop the war? Because this is the only way it could end. For the good of everybody.”
Haaretz reported that Witkoff replied saying, “We're not the Israeli government. We don't disagree. The Israeli government is a sovereign government. They can't tell us what to do, and we can't tell them what to do, You're our ally. It's not for us to tell a sovereign country how to engage in foreign policy. It's just not."
In reality, Witkoff knows full well that he could force Israel to accept a ceasefire deal, just as he did in January, but is choosing not to.
The Trump administration also apparently promised Hamas that they would force Israel to end the blockade on Gaza and accept a ceasefire if they released Eden Alexander in a cynical ploy to get him released.
Journalist Jeremy Schahill reports in Drop Site News that:
A senior Hamas official told Drop Site that the group received a direct commitment from Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, that two days after the release of U.S. citizen and Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, the Trump administration would compel Israel to lift the Gaza blockade and allow humanitarian aid to enter the territory. Witkoff, according to the official, also promised that Trump would make a public call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for negotiations aimed at achieving a ‘permanent ceasefire.’
Basem Naim, an official with Hamas’s political wing, told Scahill that “It was a deal” promised by “Witkoff, himself”.
Naim told Scahill that Witkoff told him “If we release [Alexander], Trump will speak out thanking Hamas for its gesture, obliging Israel on the second day to open the borders and allow aid to come into Gaza, and [Trump would] call for an immediate ceasefire and to go for negotiations to end the war.”
Instead, Niam said that Trump and Witkoff “did nothing of this,” saying, “They didn't violate the deal. They threw it in the trash”.
The Times of Israel writes that “Since hostage talks between Israel and Hamas resumed in Doha on Wednesday, US special envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff has told other mediators that Washington doesn’t plan to force Israel to end the war in Gaza amid Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s staunch refusal to do so”.
The Trump administration is not only not forcing a ceasefire in Gaza but actively aiding their ethnic cleansing plan.
NBC News reports that “The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya”.
NBC reports that “The plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership”.
Libya, formerly one of the most successful states in Africa, was destroyed in 2011 when the United States and its NATO allies invaded the country to overthrow the country’s government led by Muammar Gaddafi.
Since the invasion, Libya has been rife with terrorism, ISIS bases, civil war, and open slave trading.
While supporting Israel in making Gaza unlivable, the Trump administration is attempting to force Palestinians into a deeply unstable, failed state rife with civil war.
Trump and Netanyahu On The Same Page.
Unfortunately, the idea that there is any light of day between Israel and Trump is a fantasy.
Trump’s campaign received 100 million dollars from the pro-Israel mega donor Miriam Adelson; that kind of money is not given away for no reason.
Yes, Witkoff did force a ceasefire in January, but the Trump administration supported Israel in sabotaging it, seeming more like a cynical move to get Hamas to release some Israeli hostages, only for Israel to continue the genocide afterwards.
This is exactly what the Trump administration appeared to be with Eden Alexander, lying to Hamas by claiming that they would force a ceasefire to assure his release.
As by Witkoff’s own admission, he and the Trump administration do not plan to force Israel to end the genocide.
The Trump administration is actually fully backing the Israeli ethnic cleansing plan, even attempting to force Palestinians to move to Libya.
These recent moves show, despite the headlines, that the Trump administration is still fully in the pocket of Netanyahu and Israel.
Note to readers: The Dissident is a reader-supported outlet. If you liked this article, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
DISGUSTING DISTURBING SHAMEFUL UNETHICAL INHUMAN CRIMINAL
Good Grief! I thought it is quite obvious there is no daylight between Obama, Biden, Bernie, Trump, Netanyahu, Erdoğan and all the Arab rulers. All of them want a Final Solution to the Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank.