Trump's Gaza Ceasefire- An Optimistic And A Cynical Interpretation.

Is Trump's Gaza Ceasefire Sincere or is it Another Cynical Ploy by Netanyahu?

As of today, Donald Trump has officially brokered a ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza. There are two interpretations of this, the first being that for whatever reason Trump has gone full “Bullworth” on certain foreign policy issues and is sincere about ending Israel's genocide in Gaza and America’s backing of it.

The second, darker interpretation is that this entire ceasefire is a cynical ploy by Benjamin Netanyahu in order to put forward a new justification for the genocide in Gaza.

In this article, I will go over both interpretations and the evidence behind them.

The Optimistic Interpretation

By all accounts, Trump secured this ceasefire by putting the necessary pressure on Netanyahu which the neocon Biden administration refused to do.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the deal came about after:

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 newspaper went on to write that after Witkoff used “salty English” that was 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”.

The paper reported that “Witkoff has forced Israel to accept a plan that Netanyahu had repeatedly rejected over the past half year.”

Similarly, two Arab officials told The Times of Israel that “US President-elect Donald Trump is doing more to sway the premier (Netanyahu) in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year”.

Israeli newspaper Maariv also reported that “Trump persuaded Netanyahu to accept his own proposal, a proposal that was first presented in May and was still relevant in August”.

Netanyahu’s proxies have publicly been furious about Trump’s pressure to end the Genocide. One of his surrogates said on Israeli TV that“The pressure Trump is exerting right now is not the kind that Israel expected from him. The pressure is the essence of the matter”. Netanyahu spokesman Erel Segal similarly said on TV that “We're the first to pay a price for Trump's election. The deal is being forced upon us… We thought we'd take control of northern Gaza, that they'd let us impede humanitarian aid” .

The optimistic interpretation of this is that Trump this term will finally buck certain orthodox aspects of American foreign policy.

As I wrote about recently ,he has been saying some shockingly accurate things about the war in Ukraine such as the fact that NATO expansion provoked the war and the fact that the Biden administration blocked a peace deal that could have ended the war in April of 2022.

Similarly, he has started to go harder against Netanyahu on social media. He recently shared a video clip to “Truth Social” that featured Columbia University professor Jeffery Sachs calling Netanyahu a “deep, dark son of a bitch” for previously helping to push America into the Iraq war and Syria dirty war and continuing to push for an American war with Iran.

Trump’s opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza certainly does not come from any empathy towards the Palestinians, but it could come from a nationalistic instinct to not want to fund foreign countries. As Ali Abunimah argued in the Electronic Intifada:

While Trump is often unpredictable and mercurial, a consistent aspect of his worldview is that he does not view America’s traditional “allies” as anything more than client states who are taking advantage of American largesse.

He appears to have no sentimental attachment to them, nor does he see them as vital to his “America First” agenda.

Given Trump’s disdain for countries that have long been revered as – albeit subordinate – partners by the transatlantic ruling classes, the question is why would he treat Israel any differently?

This is especially the case when Israel has long been the biggest recipient of American largesse.

At the very least, Trump seems likely to take the approach that with America paying Israel’s bills, America will give the orders.

If this is the case then Trump ending a genocide of civilians- even if it’s out of nationalistic self-interest- is objectively a positive. However, there is a more cynical interpretation.

The Cynical Interpretation

The idea of Trump forcing a ceasefire in Gaza is shocking given his previous record, funding, and campaign rhetoric.

In his first term, Trump did everything Netanyahu wanted from recognizing illegal settlements in the West Bank to backing his massacre of protestors in Gaza.

Furthermore, on the campaign trail, Trump called for Israel to “finish the job” of the genocide in Gaza and attacked the Democrats for not being pro-Israel enough.

Finally, Trump received 100 million dollars from the pro-Israel donor Miriam Adelson and staffed his cabinet with people like Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Elise Stephnik, and Pete Hegseth, all of who are committed zionists and many of who have received large sums of money from Israel lobby groups like AIPAC.

Given these facts, it raises the possibility that the ceasefire is really a ploy put forth by Netanyahu who is using Trump to get hostages back and will continue the genocide afterward.

There is also the possibility that this will be used by Netanyahu to make it seem like he tried a ceasefire but it didn’t work, giving him a new justification for the genocide in Gaza.

There is a growing mountain of evidence to support this grim possibility. Journalist Michael Tracey has documented a number of facts that point to this being the case.

First off Haaretz reports that the ceasefire deal “includes the option to resume the fighting at the end of phase 1 if the negotiations over phase 2 don’t develop in a manner that fulfills the war’s goals” .

Tamir Morag, a Lukid party member has claimed that “the current deal allows Israel to resume fighting with an American guarantee” implying that the Trump administration will back Israel reigniting the genocide if Netanyahu decides its “goals are not reached” by the end of the first phase of negotiations.

More recently Benjamin Netanyahu has made some concerning comments saying that:

Both President Trump and President Biden have given Israel the right to return to the fighting if Israel reaches the conclusion that the second stage negotiations are ineffectual.

These comments raise the possibility that this entire ceasefire is a psy-op by Netanyahu. It is possible that he intends to decide that “the negotiations are ineffectual” no matter what happens.

This would allow him to blame Hamas for “not being willing to negotiate” and give the appearance that Israel was open to a ceasefire to give new legitimacy to the genocide in Gaza.

It wouldn’t be the first time Netanyahu tried something like this. The private intelligence contractor Stratfor which often works for the U.S. government put out an intelligence assessment in 2010 that said Netanyahu wanted to “force the failure” of peace talks with Palestine in order to justify the blockade of Gaza and occupation of the West Bank. As the assessment says:

Until recently, Israel's strategy called
for maintaining - despite overwhelming international pressure - the
rigidity of its policies in Gaza adopted in late 2008 in the run-up to
Operation Cast Lead. But the United States, in its attempts to change
the way it is perceived in the Middle East and negotiate with regional
actors to facilitate its withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, has
increased pressure on Israel to soften its policies and engage in peace
talks to better serve U.S. interests in the region. The U.S. pressure
was further strengthened following Israel's raid on a Turkish-led Gaza
bound flotilla, which left nine Turkish nationals dead.

The Israeli government initially resisted these demands, since they
directly contradicted the Israeli policy of continued settlement
expansion in the West Bank and blockading of the Gaza Strip to weaken
Hamas. However, a decline in U.S. support represents an existential
threat for Israel, and thus, once Israel realized the U.S. pressure was
neither temporary nor manipulable, Israel conceded to the U.S. demands
rather than risk potentially widening the schism between the two
countries. In return, the United States has made increasing security
guarantees to Israel, as evidenced by an expanded security aid package
announced July 16.

While Israel has agreed to engage in negotiations with the Palestinians,
it seeks to force the failure of these negotiations by making
unrealistic demands and then blame that failure on the Palestinians'
unwillingness to meet those demands. This tactic - demonstrated by
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's insistence on direct talks
without preconditions - enables Israel to appease U.S. and international
pressure while showing the world that Israel's attempts at peace are
being sabotaged by Palestinian intransigence. Israel also hopes that by
engaging in negotiations, it can further damage intra-Palestinian
relations as the competing Palestinian groups criticize each other's
policies toward Israel while continuing to vie for international funding
and domestic popularity. By engineering the failure of any negotiation
attempt, Israel hopes to be able to reassume the position it abandoned
due to U.S. pressure.

The assessment points out the strategy was to “force the failure of these negotiations by making unrealistic demands” so that Israel could “blame that failure on the Palestinians' unwillingness to meet those demands” allowing them to “appease U.S. and international pressure while showing the world that Israel's attempts at peace are
being sabotaged by Palestinian intransigence.”

Given Netanyahu’s history of these types of deceptions, it raises the possibility that this current ceasefire is another example.

Finally, if this ceasefire deal turns out to be bogus, it wouldn’t be the first time Netanyahu used Trump to put forward a phony peace deal. Netanyahu used Trump to negotiate the Abrahams Accords in his first term. As Vox reported, the deal allowed Israel to normalize with “four Arab nations: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.” The point of the deal was “ that they (Arab States) might let their support for the Palestinians slip and side a little closer with the Israelis.”

As David Reminik put it in the New Yorker “The Trump Administration, led by Jared Kushner, helped draft the Abraham Accords, which aimed to normalize relations between Israel and the Sunni-ruled states, particularly Saudi Arabia, sidelining the Palestinians yet again.”

Given this history, it makes it impossible to rule out the possibility that Netanyahu is the one behind this ceasefire deal with the explicit purpose of continuing the genocide one the first phase is put through.

Final Thoughts

Only time will tell what interpretation is the reality of the ceasefire deal. I hope with every fiber of my being that the “optimistic” interpretation is the reality, but there is a lingering feeling inside me that the “cynical” interpretation is the correct one.