Israel Returns Palestinian Prisoners’ Bodies With ‘Signs of Torture, Mutilation, and Execution’
An unknown number of Palestinians abducted by Israel died or were killed while in custody; living former prisoners have described horrific and sometimes deadly torture.
Brett Wilkins, 16 Oct 25, https://www.commondreams.org/news/palestinian-prisoners-tortured
Israel on Wednesday returned the bodies of dozens of Palestinians abducted during the Gaza genocide showing “signs of torture, mutilation, and execution,” as one US-based news site reported—a description consistent with the testimonies of former prisoners held by the Israeli forces over the past two years.
So far, Israel has returned 90 bodies, with more expected to be handed over soon, as part ofo the ceasefire agreement reached with Hamas last week. The Gaza Health Ministry’s forensic team said that some of the bodies were blindfolded and bound, and bore signs of torture similar to those seen on many of the living Palestinian prisoners freed by Israel on Monday.
Some of the dead prisoners appeared to be victims of field executions—a war crime Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops have allegedly committed against men, women, and children alike.
Furthermore, Israel’s obliteration of Gaza’s healthcare and medical infrastructure is making it difficult for Palestinian forensic personnel to identify the bodies returned by Israel, which are in various states of decomposition.
“The horrific scenes visible on the bodies of the martyrs returned by the occupation, bearing marks of torture, abuse, and field executions, clearly reveal the criminal and fascist nature of the occupation army and the moral and human decadence this entity has reached,” Hamas said in a statement.
“We call upon international rights groups, foremost among them the [United Nations] and [its] Human Rights Council, to document these atrocious crimes, open an urgent and comprehensive investigation into them, and bring the occupation leaders to trial before relevant international courts, as they are responsible for committing unprecedented crimes against humanity in our modern history,” the statement added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation. The International Court of Justice is also weighing an ongoing genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and supported by around two dozen nations.
Although warned by their Israeli captors against speaking out, Palestinians freed from Israeli imprisonment this week described being held in a “slaughterhouse” rife with torture and abuse, including beatings, electrocution, and being shot with rubber-coated steel bullets.
Palestinians imprisoned by Israeli forces—including children—have described being raped and sexually assaulted by male and female soldiers, electrocuted, mauled by dogs, soaked with cold water, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, and blasted with loud music. Dozens of detainees have died in Israeli custody, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton. IDF officers allegedly brought Israeli civilians into detention centers and allowed them to watch and film Palestinian prisoners being tortured.
Israeli physicians who served at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison also described widespread severe injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations.
Hamas’ treatment of the Israelis it abducted during the October 7, 2023 attack is more complicated, with some freed captives saying they suffered torture and other abuse while others—especially those released early during the war—said they were treated relatively well. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier captured after the rest of his tank crew were killed said that although he was tortured, his captors granted his request for religious materials including a Torah. One woman even pushed back against Israeli media lies claiming she was wounded by her captors, when in fact it was an Israeli airstrike that injured her.
So far, Hamas has returned the bodies of nine Israeli and other hostages. Israel is calling on Hamas to “make all necessary efforts” to find and hand over the bodies of 21 remaining dead hostages still unaccounted for.
The 9,100 Palestinians left behind in Israeli prisons after the ‘peace’ deal
As world leaders celebrate the release of Israeli captives, over 9,000 Palestinian prisoners still face torture, hunger, and isolation behind bars. Half of them are held by Israel without charge or trial.
Mondoweiss, By Qassam Muaddi October 15, 2025
As the leaders of 20 countries gathered in Egypt’s Sharm al-Sheikh to celebrate the ceasefire, mainstream media celebrated the release of the remaining 20 living Israeli captives in Gaza. After reuniting with their families, the captives described the harsh conditions in which they were held. Meanwhile, 1,968 Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons, 88 of whom were released in the West Bank, 154 were deported to Egypt, and the rest were released in the Gaza Strip. Most of them were abducted by Israeli forces inside Gaza over the past two years. Of the total number of prisoners released, 250 had been serving life sentences for charges related to armed activity.
But over 9,100 Palestinians continue to be held in Israeli prisons. Some 3,544 of them are held under the Israeli system of “administrative detention,” which allows Israel to imprison Palestinians for up to six months without charge or trial. According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, none of the released prisoners in Monday’s swap were administrative detainees.
Administrative detention orders are ratified by an Israeli military court, and the six-month period of imprisonment can be renewed indefinitely based on a “secret file” that neither the detainees nor their lawyers can access. Consecutive renewals have led many Palestinians to serve up to two years under this system, never having been given due process.
Administrative detainees represent the largest category of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, says Ayah Shreiteh, the spokesperson of the Prisoners’ Club.
Shreiteh added that around 1,000 Palestinians have been arrested and held without trial, without even an administrative detention order. Many of them have spent months behind bars.
As for those who have been sentenced based on clear charges, the majority of sentences are for belonging to political organizations and unions, participating in protests, or throwing stones. Since October 2023, however, Shreiteh points out that the most common conviction has been over “incitement,” a charge that covers anything from a social media post to delivering public speeches, and even to raising the flags of Palestinian political factions in public.
“Before October 7, the detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners had already been deteriorating,” Shreiteh noted. Then everything changed. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
After October 7, things got dramatically worse, Ansari says. Both verbal and physical violence increased against Palestinian detainees to the point that violence was used during all phases of detention, starting from the moment of arrest. “But the most noticeable change after October 7 has been the complete isolation of Palestinian prisoners, with the ban of family visitation,” she said. “This is still ongoing.” …………………………………………………………………………………………
Palestinian prisoners have been largely absent from mainstream media since before October 7, appearing only in the context of prisoner swaps last January and last week. However, the day before October 7, human rights groups reported that a total of 5,000 Palestinians were in Israeli jails — at the time, it was considered a record that had not been met in several years, including 1,300 administrative detainees. Over the past two years, that record-breaking prison population doubled.
Mass captivity as a phenomenon is foreign to Israelis, but for Palestinians, it has been normalized over decades. According to human rights reports, at least 1 million Palestinians have experienced Israeli detention since 1967. Yet after October 7, the Israeli captives became the only talking point for Western politicians and the mainstream media, while Palestinian prisoners remained invisible.
On Monday, Donald Trump celebrated his vaunted “forever” peace after the signing of the ceasefire deal in Egypt. Now that the Israeli captives have been released, the 9,100 Palestinians languishing in Israel’s dungeons can continue to be forgotten. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/the-9100-palestinians-left-behind-in-israeli-prisons-after-the-peace-deal/
Israel Tortured And Sexually Humiliated Greta Thunberg.
Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 16, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-tortured-and-sexually-humiliated?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=176291910&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
In an interview with Swedish paper Aftonbladet, Greta Thunberg has corroborated earlier eyewitness reports that she and her fellow Global Sumud Flotilla activists were subjected to monstrous abuses by Israeli officials after being abducted from their boats carrying aid for Palestinians in Gaza.
Here are some excerpts (quotes from Thunberg are italicized, quotes from Aftonbladet are in bold):
“They grab me, pull me to the ground, and throw an Israeli flag over me.”
“They dragged me to the opposite side from where the others were sitting, and I had the flag around me the whole time. They hit and kicked me.”
“They moved me very brutally to a corner that I was turned towards. ‘A special place for a special lady’, they said. And then they had learned ‘Lilla hora’ (Little whore) and ‘Hora Greta’ (Whore Greta) in Swedish, which they repeated all the time.”
In the corner where Greta was sitting, the police placed a flag. “The flag was placed so that it would touch me. When it fluttered and touched me, they shouted ‘Don’t touch the flag’ and kicked me in the side. After a while, my hands were tied with cable ties, very tightly. A bunch of guards lined up to take selfies with me while I was sitting like that.”
“They were thrown to the ground and beaten. But I could only see it out of the corner of my eye, because every time I lifted my head from the ground, I was kicked by the guard standing next to me.”
Greta was then taken into a building to be searched and undressed. “The guards have no empathy or humanity, and they keep taking selfies with me. There’s a lot I don’t remember. So much is happening at once. You’re in shock. You’re in pain, but you go into a state of trying to stay calm.”
Outside, she was forced to take off her clothes again, she says. “It was mockery, rough handling, and everything was filmed. Everything they do is extremely violent.”
“It was so hot, like 40 degrees. We begged the whole time: Can we have water? Can we have water? In the end, we screamed. The guards walked in front of the bars the whole time, laughing and holding up their water bottles. They threw the bottles with water in them into the trash cans in front of us.”
“When people fainted, we banged on the cages and asked for a doctor. Then the guards came and said, ‘We’re going to gas you.’ It was standard for them to say that.”
“This shows that if Israel, with the whole world watching, can treat a well-known, white person with a Swedish passport this way, just imagine what they do to Palestinians behind closed doors.”
Thunberg told Aftonbladet that the Swedish government greatly downplayed the abuse she and her fellow Sumud Flotilla activists suffered, and wouldn’t even bring them water:
“We were together and told them about the treatment we received. About the lack of food, water, about the abuse. The torture. We showed them the physical injuries we had — bruises and scratches. We gave them all our contact details — I gave them my father’s number and the number of our contact in the organization. We were clear: everything we say now must be released to the media.”
“They didn’t do anything, they just said: ’Our job is to listen to you. We are here and you are entitled to consular support.’”
“We said over and over again: we need water. And they saw that the guards had water bottles. The embassy staff said: ’We’ll make a note of that.’ One of us, Vincent, said: ’Next time we meet you, you must bring water.’”
Then it took two days before the embassy staff showed up again.
“They didn’t bring any water, except for a small bottle of their own that was half empty. Vincent, who was in the worst shape, got to drink it. We kept asking the guards, ‘Can we have some water?’ but they just walked around with their water bottles and didn’t answer.”
“I said, ‘Are you going to leave us like this? If you leave now, they will beat us up.’ But they just kept walking.”
When Aftonbladet compares emails sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to relatives, with what the captives describe telling embassy staff, it becomes clear that the seriousness of the situation has been downplayed.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes the scene at the port, where Greta Thunberg was beaten for hours, as follows: “She told us about harsh treatment and that she had been sitting on a hard surface for a long time.”
On Saturday, several media outlets published testimonies that Greta had been subjected to torture.
Aftonbladet has spoken to three other members of the flotilla who largely confirm what Greta Thunberg says and who have all experienced various types of abuse and humiliation. We have also spoken to relatives. Everyone is highly critical of how the Swedish embassy staff acted.
Thunberg’s statements are not just in alignment with eyewitnesses who said these things were done to her, but with statements from the Israeli government itself.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said last month that Sumud activists must be treated as terrorists in order to “create a clear deterrent” from future flotilla activism, declaring that “Anyone who chooses to collaborate with Hamas and support terrorism will meet a firm and unyielding response from Israel.”
“We will not allow individuals who support terrorism to live in comfort. They will face the full consequences of their actions,” Ben-Gvir said at the time.
After the flotilla activists were abducted by the IDF, Ben-Gvir filmed himself taunting them and calling them “terrorists” and said he “was proud that we treat ‘flotilla activists’ as terror supporters.”
Israel, needless to say, has an extensively documented record of torturing and raping individuals who’ve been given the “terrorist” label by the regime.
So what Thunberg is describing would be Israel doing what it said it was going to do in order to send a message and deter future efforts to feed starving Palestinians — perhaps singling out the most high-profile activist on the flotilla for special abuse in order to really drive the point home.
Israel is so evil it’s actually hard to wrap your mind around it.
The not-so-secret history of Netanyahu’s support for Hamas
From sabotaging Oslo to funneling Qatari cash into Gaza, Bibi has spent his career bolstering Hamas to help perpetuate the conflict. Even after Oct. 7, argues historian Adam Raz, he’s still advancing the same strategy.
972 Magazine, By Ghousoon Bisharat, November 11, 2024
When Israeli historian and human rights activist Adam Raz set out to write “The Road to October 7: Benjamin Netanyahu, the Production of the Endless Conflict and Israel’s Moral Degradation,” he knew he was tackling a blind spot in Israeli public discourse. The vast majority of Israelis, Raz believes, fail to grasp the full extent of Netanyahu’s involvement in bolstering Hamas before the current war, and in perpetuating an unending state of conflict.
Raz’s book, released in May of this year, sheds light on a controversial policy whereby Netanyahu’s governments for years routinely approved and encouraged the transfer of Qatari funds into Gaza to prop up Hamas. While noting that the Israeli media has devoted more attention to this policy in the aftermath of October 7, Raz told +972 that this is “just a sliver of the bigger picture,” which is rooted in Netanyahu’s broader opposition to a just resolution to the conflict. “People need to understand the full scope of Netanyahu’s strategy,” he said.
According to Raz, who also works as a researcher at the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, Netanyahu’s priority is not maintaining Israel’s security but rather preventing any real chance of resolving the conflict through the division of land, ending the occupation, or a two-state solution. Keeping the cash flowing to Hamas served this objective by ensuring the Palestinian national movement remained splintered between Hamas in Gaza and the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, thus allowing Israel to maintain its dominance over the whole of the land. Even after the devastating events of October 7, Raz warns that Netanyahu’s playbook remains unchanged.
This book isn’t a history lesson about the conflict, Raz emphasizes, but rather a damning exploration of a political alliance that continues to degrade Israel’s moral fabric. “I didn’t write this book, I yelled it on the pages,” he said.
I spoke with Raz about the long history of Netanyahu’s symbiotic relationship with Hamas and its recently-killed leader Yahya Sinwar; why the current war represents a continuation of, not a break from, the prime minister’s strategy vis-a-vis the Palestinians as a whole; and why even after more than a year of war and the death of Sinwar, for Netanyahu little has changed. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
…………………………………….. Adam Raz : This is a book about Netanyahu. I didn’t set out to write the story of the occupation under Netanyahu, the history of Hamas, or the collision between the two national movements. It’s the story of the relationship between Netanyahu and Sinwar. I’m trying to understand the motivation of the two most important actors in this game, who have been holding their societies by the neck.
Israel is Bibi-land. Whatever is at stake in Israel, whether it’s the Palestinians, the Iran nuclear deal, or any other foreign policy issue, it’s all in Netanyahu’s hands. In my book you can read how this came to be, and how Bibi changed Israeli politics. ………………………………………………………………………..
Netanyahu is the number one opponent of a two-state solution………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Since coming back to power, Netanyahu has resisted any attempt, be it military or diplomatic, that might bring an end to the Hamas regime in Gaza……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
his central interest is never-ending war, and Hamas was a tool to maintain the conflict while Israel had the upper hand…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.972mag.com/netanyahu-hamas-october-7-adam-raz/
The Trumpanyahu Administration Is Already Sabotaging The Ceasefire
Caitlin Johnstone Oct 15, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-trumpanyahu-administration-is?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=176195807&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I don’t know who first coined the saying that an Israeli ceasefire means “you cease and we fire,” but it proves reliably accurate time after time.
The IDF reportedly killed nine Palestinians trying to return to their homes today under the usual justification that they were traveling in some kind of unauthorized area in ways that made the troops feel threatened, blah blah. They did this all the time during the previous “ceasefire” at the beginning of the year, using the exact same excuses.
Just as we speculated the other day might happen, Israel has announced that it is going to cut the aid it allows into Gaza in half and cut off fuel and gas shipments because Hamas hasn’t returned the bodies of all the dead Israeli hostages. Israel was fully aware when it signed the agreement that Hamas would not be able to deliver the bodies of all the hostages right away due to the rubble and chaos caused by the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza.
On October 9, CNN published an article titled “Israel assesses Hamas may not be able to return all remaining dead hostages” which reported that “the Israeli government is aware that Hamas may not know the location of, or is unable to retrieve, the remains of some of the 28 remaining deceased hostages.”
The Red Cross says that finding all the bodies of the hostages will be a “massive challenge” in all the rubble created by Israeli airstrikes in the areas where hostages were being kept.
Drop Site News’ Jeremy Scahill explains that “During Gaza negotiations, Israel understood it would take time to recover all bodies of deceased captives. A specific mechanism for recovering the bodies was agreed. Now Israel is pretending that didn’t happen so it can violate the deal and cut the agreed aid shipments in half.”
Mondoweiss reported last week that Hebrew-language Israeli media had been saying that a “secret clause” in the ceasefire agreement would allow Israel to resume its onslaught if the bodies of the dead hostages were not returned within a 72-hour window.
So it looks like this was planned from the beginning. Create obligations that Israel knew Hamas would be unable to fulfill, then use it as an excuse to resume the slaughter.
And President Trump appears to be going right along with it, posting on Truth Social that “A big burden has been lifted, but the job IS NOT DONE. THE DEAD HAVE NOT BEEN RETURNED, AS PROMISED!”
“We were told they had 26, 24 dead hostages… and it seems as though they don’t have that, because we’re talking about a much lesser number,” Trump told the press on Tuesday, saying, “I want them back.”
Trump also told the press that Hamas is going to have to be forcibly disarmed, which amounts to an open admission that this entire “ceasefire” show is a sham.
“If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them, and it will happen quickly and perhaps violently,” Trump said on Tuesday.
This statement matches recent comments from Benjamin Netanyahu saying that Hamas will be disarmed “the easy way” or “the hard way”.
The president and prime minister are making it clear that in order for the ceasefire negotiations to proceed to a lasting peace, Hamas is going to have to completely surrender and Israel is going to have to be handed total victory. They’re branding it as a ceasefire deal when it’s actually a total surrender deal, and Hamas has made it explicitly clear that it is not surrendering.
As Drop Site News explains, “In reality, senior Hamas, Islamic Jihad and figures from other resistance factions have repeatedly rejected disarmament throughout negotiations, including in multiple interviews with Drop Site over the past year.”
A big part of the confusion around the ceasefire in public discourse today is that there are two contradictory ideas going around about what the ceasefire is and what it means. Israel supporters think “ceasefire” means “total victory and complete surrender by Hamas,” while everyone else thinks “ceasefire” means ceasefire.
That’s why you see Israel supporters celebrating the deal while Palestine supporters are much more apprehensive. Palestine supporters understand that a ceasefire and a surrender are two different things, and see Trump and Netanyahu stating that Hamas is going to have to completely disarm if “ceasefire” negotiations are going to move toward a lasting peace. They understand that the unyielding mutually exclusive positions of the Trumpanyahu administration and of Hamas are likely to come to a head in ways that result in the reignition of the Gaza holocaust.
So for all the applause and fuss that has been made about the ceasefire, as things stand right now it doesn’t look like much has changed. From the very beginning of this genocide it has been the officially stated position of the US and Israel that the killing will not end until Hamas lays down its arms and surrenders, and that is still their position today. There’s a much-needed pause in the slaughter, sure, but the Trumpanyahu team is making it explicitly clear that it is going to ramp up again under the justification of Hamas refusing to disarm.
And that’s assuming negotiations even make it that far; Israel is already doing everything it can to sabotage the ceasefire by murdering Palestinians and greatly reducing the amount of aid it promised.
Unless something significant changes about all this fairly soon, even this feeble reduction in Israel’s Gaza atrocities cannot be expected to hold.
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Let Us Now Bury the Truth (Again)
October 13, 2025, By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News
What is going around now is another cover up, another denial of what a lot of people on both sides call “the second Nakba,” the sin atop the original sin.
Headline in the Sunday editions of The New York Times: “A New Test for Israel: Can It Repair Its Ties to Americans?”
What a question. Let us set aside our indignation and think about this.
The piece below this head is by David Halbfinger, whose trade over the years has been to appear balanced when covering the Zionist state while glossing its past, which is wall-to-wall condemnable, and faithfully apologizing for its present, which — need this be said — is also wall-to-wall condemnable.
David Halbfinger, who has just begun his second tour as the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief, in action:
“The war in Gaza may finally be ending, after two years of bloodshed and destruction. But among the damage that has been done is a series of devastating blows to Israel’s relationship with the citizens of its most important and most stalwart ally, the United States.
Israel’s reputation in the United States is in tatters, and not only on college campuses or among progressives….
The question is whether those younger Americans will be lost to Israel long- term — and what Israel’s advocates will do to try to reverse that.”
Halbfinger proceeds to quote none of “those younger Americans,” or anyone else of any age who stands forthrightly against “the Jewish state” in response to the campaign of terror, murder and starvation it has conducted against the civilian population of Gaza these past two years.
No, his sources are professors, think-tank inhabitants and, of course, Israeli Zionists, American Zionists and in two cases Israeli–American Zionists — the good old divided-loyalties crowd.
Halbfinger quotes Shibley Telhami, an Arab–Israeli scholar with safe harbors at The Brookings Institution and the University of Maryland……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
You see what is going on here, I trust.
I have anticipated for many months — no great insight in this — that when something like the end of Israel’s terror in Gaza comes there will be no thought among its allies in the West, and certainly none among its Zionist supporters, of any kind of reckoning in the name of justice.
No, a “war” will be over, not a racist campaign of annihilation, and certainly not a genocide. The highly honorable Cost of War Project at Brown University put out a paper on Oct. 7 reckoning total casualties in Gaza (killed and injured) at 236,505, “more than 10% of the pre-war population.” These are responsibly researched facts.
We know these facts. “It doesn’t take rocket science to grasp the picture,” Norman Finkelstein said in a lecture delivered at the University of Massachusetts five days before the Netanyahu–Trump “peace plan” was announced.
He said: “Everyone at this point knows the picture — unless you have a material stake in lying to yourself and lying to others.”
‘Everyone Knows the Picture’
Yes, we know the picture and the facts, and we are invited to live with these facts without any kind of investigation, truth and reconciliation project, such as post-apartheid South Africa conducted in the late 1990s, or any other effort in behalf of restorative justice.
No, the invitation is to go back to our comfort zones while a regime of racist murderers continues on its way.
The liars propose to prevail, to put this point another way.
Whatever other purpose this commentary may serve, I use it to raise my voice in protest against this… this desecration of the human cause.
When I consider the project of the liars now my mind goes back to al–Nakba — further, indeed. David Ben–Gurion and others of his time acknowledged the injustice and the violence on which the State of Israel was founded in July 1948. “We have come and we have stolen their country,” Ben–Gurion remarked.
[“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.]
There is no putting the point more truthfully. And all that has occurred since is the outcome of this, a covering up, a denial of the original sin.
And now again.
…………………………………………Along with everyone else, I do not know at writing whether the Gaza Peace Plan, as it is billed, will hold or when — the better question at this point — it will fall apart like all those that have preceded it.
But — grim knowledge — I know this: It will not end well if the events of the past two years are buried as the events of the past seven and some decades have been buried. The human spirit simply does not work that way.
It will not, indeed, end at all. https://consortiumnews.com/2025/10/13/patrick-lawrence-let-us-now-bury-the-truth-again/
Palestinians freed from Israeli prison denied reunion with families as Trump claims a ‘forever’ peace
At the end of the prisoner exchange, between 9,000 and 10,000 Palestinians will remain behind bars, including around 5,000 Palestinians who are being held without charge or trial, and without clear release dates, under Israel’s system of “administrative detention.”
Palestinians gathered in the West Bank to reunite with loved ones set to be released as part of the prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas. But many were devastated to learn that Israel had deported them instead.
Mondoweisss, By Qassam Muaddi October 13, 2025
Palestinians in Gaza lived another day without bombs dropping over their heads as the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas continued into Monday, which saw the release of Israeli captives from Gaza and the release of 1,718 out of 10,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
At around 8:00 a.m. local time, Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, handed the first group of seven Israeli captives to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza, without any ceremonies or media exposure. The second group of 13 Israeli captives came an hour later. Meanwhile, the Israeli prison services moved hundreds of Palestinians out of its detention centers.
Palestinians in Gaza lived another day without bombs dropping over their heads as the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas continued into Monday, which saw the release of Israeli captives from Gaza and the release of 1,718 out of 10,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
At around 8:00 a.m. local time, Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, handed the first group of seven Israeli captives to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza, without any ceremonies or media exposure. The second group of 13 Israeli captives came an hour later. Meanwhile, the Israeli prison services moved hundreds of Palestinians out of its detention centers.
A total of 1,718 Palestinians were released into the Gaza Strip, all of whom were abducted by Israeli forces from within Gaza during the past two years. In addition, Israel released 250 Palestinians who had been serving high or life sentences in Israeli prisons, 88 of whom were released in the West Bank, while the rest were deported to Gaza and Egypt.
In the town of Beitunia, adjacent to Ramallah, dozens of Palestinians gathered in expectation of the released prisoners, who were announced to be released from Israel’s Ofer detention center just outside of the town. Israeli drones flew over the gathering, dropping leaflets that read “we are watching you everywhere. If you show any support for a terrorist group, you will expose yourself to arrest and punishment.”
At around 11:00 a.m., two Red Cross-marked buses drove through Beitunia as Palestinians waved at the released prisoners along the way, in decidedly smaller numbers than the crowds that had received released prisoners during the previous January-March ceasefire.
At the Ramallah Cultural Palace, prisoners’ families and crowds of Palestinians gathered to receive the released prisoners. In the crowds, the family of a prisoner, Murad Abu al-Rub, 45, including two of his sisters, his cousin, and his paralyzed mother, stood on a sidewalk trying with difficulty to get a glimpse of the Red Cross buses as they arrived.
“He has been in jail for 19 years with a life sentence, and the last time we visited him was before October 2023,” the cousin told Mondoweiss. “For more than two years, we haven’t seen him, and the news we have had about him through lawyers is very limited.”
“His father and one of his brothers died during his time in jail,” the cousin explained. “And his mother suffered a stroke last year that left her unable to move or speak. But we brought her because she has been very anxious to see him.”
The family left Jenin in the northern West Bank at 6 a.m. to avoid the Israeli army’s expected road closures, as it did during the previous ceasefire. “The Israeli Shabak came to our house yesterday and warned us not to show any signs of celebration, and they told us that Murad will be released here.”
After all the prisoners left the bus, the family discovered that Murad wasn’t among them. Minutes later, they received confirmation from the Red Cross that he had been deported to Egypt.
As the cousin shared the news, the elderly mother broke into tears and random screams in her wheelchair. As her daughters helped her into the car, one of them tried to console her. “He went to Egypt to study! He’ll be back later,” she said. The mother moved her hand in an apparent refusal to hear, continuing to weep.
Meters away, the older brother of Abdallah Barham, 40, one of the prisoners set to be released, had just learned that he, too, had been deported. The brother was in Ramallah by 7 a.m. to wait for Abdallah, who had served 18 years of his life sentence in Israeli prison.
“The family and the entire village are waiting in Kufr Qadoum to celebrate his release,” he explained. “And the Shabak came yesterday and warned us not to celebrate.”
“Our younger brother and our mother died during his period of imprisonment,” he continued. “And our father has been waiting for this day for the past 18 years. The feeling is tragic.” ………………………………………………………………………………..
At the end of the prisoner exchange, between 9,000 and 10,000 Palestinians will remain behind bars, including around 5,000 Palestinians who are being held without charge or trial, and without clear release dates, under Israel’s system of “administrative detention.”……………………………….
Donald Trump speaks before the Knesset, Sharm al-Sheikh summit
……………………………………. In his speech, Trump said it was a “historic dawn of a new Middle East” and the beginning of a “grand concord and lasting harmony for Israel.” Trump praised Netanyahu, whom he called “hard to deal with.” The U.S. President also lauded special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whom he said was “called in” to draft the plan for the end of the war, all with a wave of applause by the Knesset members. Trump also thanked the Arab and Muslim countries that participated in his plan for the end of the war, which did not receive any applause from the Knesset.
During Trump’s speech, Palestinian Knesset member Ayman Odeh and left-wing anti-Zionist Knesset member Ofer Kasif raised signs calling for the recognition of Palestine as a state, and were forcibly removed from the hall
…………………………………………………………… Israel and Hamas still have to negotiate terms for the definitive end to the war based on Trump’s plan. This includes the body meant to rule over the Strip, which Hamas and Palestinian factions insist must be an independent Palestinian body of technocrats. In contrast, Trump’s plan would include a “board of peace” headed by Trump himself that would be in charge of running Gaza.
Another point to be negotiated is the disarmament of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions. Palestinian factions, including Hamas, insist that they would lay down their arms upon the establishment of a Palestinian state, while Trump’s plan would see the resistance movement’s disarmament and makes no mention of Palestinian statehood. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/palestinians-freed-from-israeli-prison-denied-reunion-with-families-as-trump-claims-a-forever-peace/
Israeli Soldiers Torched Food, Homes, and a Critical Sewage Treatment Plant in the Wake of Ceasefire Announcement
Soldiers called the mass arson of Gaza City their “final touches.”
Drop Site, Younis Tirawi and Yaniv Cogan, Oct 13, 2025
In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s announcement on Thursday that both Hamas and Israel had signed off on an agreement to stop the fighting, the Israeli military launched an arson spree, setting fire to civilian infrastructure, including the destruction of an essential sanitation plant in Gaza City. After publication, the Israel Defense Forces told Drop Site it “is aware of the incident and it is being reviewed.”
The destruction of Palestinian structures following the departure of soldiers who had used them as temporary bases has been a hallmark of Israel’s approach to Gaza for two years. In July, Israeli reporter Yuval Abraham collected testimonies from soldiers describing a myriad of arson methods. “Every Arab house we entered had olive oil […] We poured the oil on the sofas, on anything flammable in the apartment, and then we ignited [it] or threw in a smoke grenade. This was a common practice,” one of them described.
The agreement came after months of a concerted effort to render Gaza uninhabitable by destroying residences and civilian infrastructure, culminating in the ground invasion of Gaza City and the leveling of several high rises in Gaza City. In September, Israeli government minister Gila Gamliel told Channel 7 News, “We have already completely annihilated 75% of the entire [Gaza] Strip. There remains 25%, which, as you know, it too…we are now taking over [the city of] Gaza—there will be nothing left there that would really [have] the potential to be habitable.”
The scope of the arson perpetrated in Gaza City on the night of October 9th and early morning of October 10—Thursday night into Friday, just after the ceasefire was agreed to but before Israel’s cabinet approved it—was broader than at any other time Drop Site has tracked during the assault on the strip. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The Torching of Gaza City’s Sewage Treatment Plant: “[One] last memory”……………………………………………………………………………………………
Mass Arson Campaign Around Sheikh Radwan Market, Gaza City……………………………………………………………………………………………..
Burning Homes Across Gaza City Israeli troops also shared photos of torched houses in other locations accompanied by captions musing about the arson. One soldier dubbed the burning of several buildings the “finishing touches.”……………………………………………………………………………………..
As the ceasefire takes hold, Gaza has already been rendered largely uninhabitable. One Israeli colonel recently bragged to the Israeli media, “We are leaving behind us only dust. There’s nothing here.” For officials like Gamliel, who have expressed satisfaction with the level of destruction in Gaza, the upshot is clear:
“Look at the hypocrisy of all European countries. They constantly go ‘starvation, starvation’ Well…? Open [your] doors! Why, when it was about Ukraine, it was fine, when it was about Syria, it was fine. When it comes to the Palestinians, they want to perpetuate this conflict structurally.
Now, just for your information: one million and seven hundred thousand inside the Gaza Strip are defined as UNRWA refugees. Meaning, once they get out of there, they are not coming back! Because as refugees, this is not the place where they actually have the right of basic belonging.” https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-idf-soldiers-set-fire-food-homes-sewage-treatment-plan-after-ceasefire-announced
Worlds Extinguished: Hostage Returns, Central Casting and the Gaza Ceasefire
14 October 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/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 theUkraine 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.
Israeli Defense Minister Says IDF Will Destroy Gaza Tunnels Once Hamas Releases Israeli Captives
by Dave DeCamp | October 12, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/10/12/israeli-defense-minister-says-idf-will-destroy-gaza-tunnels-once-hamas-releases-israeli-captives/
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday that the Israeli military would destroy tunnels in Gaza after the remaining Israeli captives are released by Hamas, which is expected to happen on Monday.
“Israel’s great challenge after the phase of returning the hostages will be the destruction of all of Hamas’s terror tunnels in Gaza, directly by the IDF and through the international mechanism to be established under the leadership and supervision of the United States,” Katz wrote on X.
“This is the primary significance of implementing the agreed-upon principle of demilitarizing Gaza and neutralizing Hamas of its weapons. I have instructed the IDF to prepare for carrying out the mission,” he added.
According to the outline of the Gaza ceasefire proposal released by the White House, all “military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt,” and there will be a “process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors.” But the details of how those steps will be taken, including who will be doing it, are unclear. A senior Hamas official has also said that Hamas won’t disarm unless it can hand its weapons to a Palestinian state.
So far, Israel and Hamas have just entered the first phase of the ceasefire deal, which involves the release of the Israeli hostages in exchange for thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, the IDF pulling back to an agreed-upon line, and Israel allowing more aid to enter Gaza. Details on implementing the rest of the agreement still need to be worked out in negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
Katz’s comments come as many are concerned Israel will restart its genocidal war once Hamas releases the Israeli captives. Also on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military “campaign is not over,” though he could be referring to other areas where Israel is at war or potential escalations elsewhere in the region.
“And I want to say: Everywhere we fought – we won. But in the same breath, I must tell you: The campaign is not over. There are still very great security challenges ahead of us,” Netanyahu said, according to a statement from his office. “Some of our enemies are trying to rebuild themselves to attack us again. And as we say – ‘We’re on it.’”
According to a report from Israel Hayom, the US has given Israel a guarantee that it would back Israeli military action if it determined Hamas violated the deal in a way that “poses a security threat.” The report said the understanding “constitutes a side agreement” between the US and Israel.
The US gave Israel a similar side deal for the November 2024 Lebanon ceasefire agreement, which Israel continues to violate on a near-daily basis.
Israeli Government Votes to Implement Trump Peace Plan for Gaza as Hamas Pledges to Uphold It
Juan Cole, 10/10/2025, https://www.juancole.com/2025/10/government-implement-implementation.html
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – According to the Israeli newspaper Arab 48 , the Israeli government on Friday approved the ceasefire in Gaza and the hostage exchange, and agreed to begin withdrawing troops from the west of the Strip. The approval came after the arrival of President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and their meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The ceasefire was expected to go immediately into effect, with the Israeli military beginning its withdrawal from Gaza, to be followed by the exchange of hostages between Hamas and Israel over the next three days.
The extreme-right Religious Zionism and Jewish Power blocs, led by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir respectively, voted against the agreement. Ordinarily, Netanyahu would need these votes for a majority in the 120-member Knesset or Israeli parliament, where his coalition has 64 seats. In this instance, however, the other Israeli parties, mostly center-right, had wanted this sort of agreement all along, and so they supported the sitting government from its left.
Orit Strook, Minister of Settlements and National Missions, also from Religious Zionism, said she was disappointed that Netanyahu had not explained to President Trump that Gaza is an inalienable part of Israel. (It isn’t.)
Smotrich expressed “Mixed feelings on a complex morning.” He spoke of his joy about the release of the remaining hostages, even though he had earlier repeatedly said that achieving the release of the hostages was not a high priority.
Smotrich defended his earlier obstructionism on the grounds that he had opposed “partial deals” that would have prevented the occupation of Gaza and the elimination of Hamas. In fact, of course, he opposed all deals and wanted to empty Gaza of its indigenous Palestinians, or the ones still left alive after two years of intensive bombing of civilian apartment buildings and infrastructure. Smotrich had also obstructed the delivery of aid to Gaza’s civilian population. He also opposed the release of 250 Palestinian hostages taken over the years by Israel, warning that they would go on to spill Jewish blood. Large numbers of the some 10,000 Palestinians kidnapped by Israel have never been so much as charged with committing violence, much less convicted. He pledged to go on striving to “eradicate” Hamas. Some ceasefire.
Conflicting reports are issuing from high Trump administration officials about whether 200 American troops would be sent to Gaza as observers of the ceasefire, with some confirming it and others denying it.
Hamas affirmed that they were committed to a deal that would end the two-year-long conflict.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency said that it has enough food aid ready to go into Gaza to last for three months. The Israeli government has attempted to ban UNRWA, formed by the United Nations to help Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes by the Israelis, from operating in the occupied Palestinian territories, and has blocked most food aid since April. Gaza cannot feed itself, especially after the Israelis destroyed 80% of Gaza’s farmland. Nevertheless, UNRWA still has 12,000 workers in Gaza ready to swing into action to relieve the Israeli-imposed famine.
About the Author
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment
Chris Hedges: Trump’s Sham Peace Plan
October 11, 2025, By Chris Hedges ScheerPost , https://scheerpost.com/2025/10/11/chris-hedges-trumps-sham-peace-plan/
There is no shortage of failed peace plans in occupied Palestine, all of them incorporating detailed phases and timelines, going back to the presidency of Jimmy Carter. They end the same way. Israel gets what it wants initially — in the latest case the release of the remaining Israeli hostages — while it ignores and violates every other phase until it resumes its attacks on the Palestinian people.
It is a sadistic game. A merry-go-round of death. This ceasefire, like those of the past, is a commercial break. A moment when the condemned man is allowed to smoke a cigarette before being gunned down in a fusillade of bullets.
Once Israeli hostages are released, the genocide will continue. I do not know how soon. Let’s hope the mass slaughter is delayed for at least a few weeks. But a pause in the genocide is the best we can anticipate. Israel is on the cusp of emptying Gaza, which has been all but obliterated under two years of relentless bombing. It is not about to be stopped. This is the culmination of the Zionist dream. The United States, which has given Israel a staggering $22 billion in military aid since Oct, 7, 2023, will not shut down its pipeline, the only tool that might halt the genocide.
Israel, as it always does, will blame Hamas and the Palestinians for failing to abide by the agreement, most probably a refusal — true or not — to disarm, as the proposal demands. Washington, condemning Hamas’s supposed violation, will give Israel the green light to continue its genocide to create Trump’s fantasy of a Gaza Riviera and “special economic zone” with its “voluntary”relocation of Palestinians in exchange for digital tokens.
Of the myriads of peace plans over the decades, the current one is the least serious. Aside from a demand that Hamas release the hostages within 72-hours after the ceasefire begins, it lacks specifics and imposed timetables. It is filled with caveats that allow Israel to abrogate the agreement. And that is the point. It is not designed to be a viable path to peace, which most Israeli leaders understand. Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, established by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to serve as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and champion messianic Zionism, instructed its readers not to be concerned about the Trump plan because it is only “rhetoric.”
Israel, in one example from the proposal, will “not return to areas that have been withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements the agreement.”
Who decides if Hamas has “fully implemented” the agreement? Israel. Does anyone believe in Israel’s good faith? Can Israel be trusted as an objective arbitrator of the agreement? If Hamas — demonized as a terrorist group — objects, will anyone listen?
How is it possible that a peace proposal ignores the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion, which reiterated that Israel’s occupation is illegal and must end?
How can it fail to mention the Palestinian’s right to self-determination?
Why are Palestinians, who have a right under international law to armed struggle against an occupying power, expected to disarm while Israel, the illegally occupying force, is not?
By what authority can the U.S. establish a “temporary transitional government,” — Trump’s and Tony Blair’s so-called “Board of Peace” — sidelining the Palestinian right to self-determination?
Who gave the U.S. the authority to send to Gaza an “International Stabilization Force,” a polite term for foreign occupation?
How are Palestinians supposed to reconcile themselves to the acceptance of an Israeli “security barrier” on Gaza’s borders, confirmation that the occupation will continue?
How can any proposal ignore the slow-motion genocide and annexation of the West Bank?
Why is Israel, which has destroyed Gaza, not required to pay reparations?
What are Palestinians supposed to make of the demand in the proposal for a “deradicalized” Gazan population? How is this expected to be accomplished? Re-education camps? Wholesale censorship? The rewriting of the school curriculum? Arresting offending Imams in mosques?
And what about addressing the incendiary rhetoric routinely employed by Israeli leaders who describe Palestinians as “human animals” and their children as “little snakes”?
“All of Gaza and every child in Gaza, should starve to death,” the Israeli rabbi Ronen Shaulov announced. “I don’t have mercy for those who, in a few years, will grow up and won’t have mercy for us. Only a stupid fifth column, a hater of Israel has mercy for future terrorists, even though today they are still young and hungry. I hope, may they starve to death, and if anyone has a problem with what I’ve said, that’s their problem.”
Israeli violations of peace agreements have historical precedents.
The Camp David Accords, signed in 1978 by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin — without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — led to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt.
Subsequent phases of the Camp David Accords, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never implemented.
The 1993 Oslo Accords, signed in 1993, saw the PLO recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people. Yet, what ensued was the disempowerment of the PLO and its transformation into a colonial police force. Oslo II, signed in 1995, detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state. But it too was stillborn. It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” were to be delayed until “final” status talks. By then, Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were scheduled to have been completed. Governing authority was poised to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. Instead, the West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority had limited authority in Areas A and B while Israel controlled all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.
The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands that Jewish settlers seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law — was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat. This instantly alienated many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees. As a consequence, many Palestinians abandoned the PLO in favor of Hamas. Edward Said called the Oslo Accords “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians.”
The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank when the Oslo agreement was signed. Their numbers today have increased to at least 700,000.
The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo “a sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”
Israel unilaterally broke the last two-month-long ceasefire on March 18 of this year when it launched surprise airstrikes on Gaza. Netanyahu’s office claimed that the resumption of the military campaign was in response to Hamas’s refusal to release hostages, its rejection of proposals to extend the cease-fire and its efforts to rearm. Israel killed more than 400 people in the initial overnight assault and injured over 500, slaughtering and wounding people as they slept. The attack scuttled the second stage of the agreement, which would have seen Hamas release the remaining living male hostages, both civilians and soldiers, for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and the establishment of a permanent ceasefire along with the eventual lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Israel has carried out murderous assaults on Gaza for decades, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” No peace accord or ceasefire agreement has ever gotten in the way. This one will be no exception.
This bloody saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged: the dispossession and erasure of Palestinians from their land.
The only peace Israel intends to offer the Palestinians is the peace of the grave.
The Israeli media is reporting on a ‘secret clause’ in the Gaza ceasefire deal that no one is talking about.
Hebrew-language Israeli media reports say there is a “secret clause” buried in the Gaza ceasefire agreement that would allow Israel to resume the war. Palestinians worry this is the pretext Netanyahu needs to get out of completing the deal.
By Qassam Muaddi October 10, 2025 https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/the-israeli-media-is-reporting-on-a-secret-clause-in-the-gaza-ceasefire-deal-that-no-one-is-talking-about/
The ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas could collapse due to an alleged “secret clause” in the agreement that would allow Israel to resume the war, according to reports in the Arab and Hebrew-language Israeli media. That so-called clause would reportedly be “activated” in the event that Hamas is unable to locate all the Israeli captives within the 72-hour window allotted to the Palestinian resistance group during the first part of the deal’s implementation.
On Friday, Al Jazeera’s Palestine Bureau Chief Walid al-Omary pointed out on the network’s live broadcast that the second article of the deal concerning the release of Israeli captives included a phrase in the Hebrew version about an undisclosed annex. According to al-Omary, if Hamas fails to release all Israeli captives, dead and alive, a “secret clause in appendix B” would be “activated.”
Israel’s Kan TV was the first to report on the clause, which was subsequently covered by other Israeli media outlets. According to Kan, an unnamed source who had been exposed to the content of the secret clause said that it was “jumbles of words.” Israel’s Channel 13 also reported that an Israeli court dismissed a petition to disclose the “secret contents” of the deal, citing security considerations.
Although the alleged clause implies punitive consequences on Hamas in the event of failing to meet the 72-hour deadline, Hamas official Osama Hamdan said in an interview hours after the deal was first announced that the time needed to find, gather, and release Israeli captives would depend on “field conditions.” Hamdan added that locating the captives might take longer. U.S. President Donald Trump also admitted that finding the dead bodies of Israeli captives might take longer than anticipated.
Hamas has officially denied the existence of such a clause. A Hamas official told Al Jazeera that “the reported rumors concerning the presence of ‘secret clauses’ in the agreement to end the war on Gaza are completely untrue.”
The potential existence of such a secret clause has reinforced already-existing Palestinian concerns that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would seek to find a way to sabotage the deal. Already in March, Israel broke the first ceasefire after the release of all civilian Israeli captives in the first phase of the deal. Last July, Hamas accepted a proposed deal following talks through Egyptian and Qatari mediators, while Netanyahu completely ignored it as mediators waited for Israel’s response.
Moreover, the lack of any additional terms within the deal for the end of the war, known as Trump’s “20-Point Plan,” has contributed to the spread of such reports in Arab media outlets. Issues relating to disarmament, Gaza’s postwar administration, and Israel’s withdrawal have all been relegated until after the prisoner exchange.
Israeli media reported late on Thursday that talks ended over the names and numbers of Palestinian prisoners and detainees set to be released as part of the deal. Israel had reportedly vetoed the names of Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, and the secretary general of the PFLP Ahmad Saadat. Another Israeli veto was placed on the names of 14 out of the 303 Palestinians serving life sentences, because they are Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship. The final lists of agreed-on names haven’t yet been made public.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army began its withdrawal from Gaza City and other parts of the Strip. The Israeli army would remain in control of 53% of the strip, excluding urban areas.
Meanwhile, Palestinians have started to return to Gaza City following the entry of the ceasefire into effect on Friday. This comes after almost a month of Israel’s largest offensive yet on Gaza City, which included three army divisions and the detonation of hundreds of remotely controlled and outdated armored personnel carriers packed with explosives in civilian neighborhoods. Before the announcement of the ceasefire, on Thursday, Israel had pushed around 900,000 Palestinians out of Gaza City.
Israel’s war on Gaza, which Israel announced following Hamas’s October 7 attack, has killed over 66,000 Palestinians, a third of whom were children. The war displaced almost 2 million Palestinians and destroyed both the health and education systems. The war has been recognized as a genocide by the UN.
What we know about the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire and what comes next
The ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas includes halting military actions, an Israeli withdrawal, increased humanitarian aid, and a prisoner swap. But it doesn’t guarantee an end to the war or that Israel won’t resume the genocide.
By Qassam Muaddi October 9, 2025, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/what-we-know-about-the-first-phase-of-the-gaza-ceasefire-and-what-comes-next/
Two days after the Israeli war on Gaza entered its third year, Palestinians across the Gaza Strip burst into celebration on Thursday morning after U.S. President Trump announced that a ceasefire deal had been reached between Israel and Hamas.
The announcement came following four days of talks in Sharm al-Sheikh in Egypt, which included a Hamas negotiating team headed by its political chief, Khalil al-Hayyeh, whom Israel attempted to assassinate last month in an airstrike on Doha, Qatar. The Israeli negotiating team was headed by Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer. The ceasefire talks had been renewed after Trump announced his plan to end the war in Gaza in late September.
The known details of the deal include only the first phase of a ceasefire, which includes a halt to military operations, the withdrawal of Israeli forces to an agreed line inside Gaza, the entry of humanitarian aid into the Strip, and an exchange of prisoners that would see the release of all Israeli captives in Gaza.
According to the Trump plan’s map, Israel would withdraw its forces in an initial phase up to a line that starts from the northern Gaza governorate cities of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia. The line extends east of Gaza City, through the Bureij refugee camp in the central governorate, and east of Deir al-Balah. It then continues to the town of Khuza’a, east of Khan Younis, and ends in the east of Rafah.
Shortly after the deal was announced on Thursday, the Israeli Army Radio reported that the Israeli army began to withdraw its forces from Gaza City and its surroundings, where Israel has been conducting a large-scale invasion, forcing up to 900,000 Palestinians to flee the city.
Palestinian prisoners
The announced deal also includes the release of 20 living Israeli captives in exchange for the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners serving high sentences, in addition to 1,700 Palestinians who were detained in the Gaza Strip throughout the war.
Israeli reports indicated that the negotiations over the names of Palestinian prisoners to be released were still ongoing in the final hours before the deal was announced. Hamas and the other Palestinian factions insisted on releasing the 303 Palestinians who are serving life sentences for their involvement in attacks that led to the death of Israelis. Israel, on the other hand, only agreed to discuss 289 names, as the remaining 14 are citizens of Israel, and refuses to recognize them as Palestinians, considering them an internal Israeli issue.
In addition, Israel held its veto on several high-ranking names among Palestinian prisoners, namely Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, the secretary general of the PFLP, Ahmad Saadat, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Hamed, whom the Palestinian factions insisted on. The final list of Palestinian prisoners set to be released has not been made public yet. However, the Qatar-based al-Araby TV quoted sources as saying that negotiations over the names of prisoners have ended, and that both sides have made concessions.
Currently, Israel holds some 11,000 Palestinians in its prisons, a third of whom are administrative detainees, held without charge or trial. About 400 of them are minors.
Humanitarian aid
According to the deal, Israel would also allow the entry of 400 trucks carrying humanitarian aid per day for the first few days, with the quantity later increasing to 600 trucks per day. Before the war, the daily rate of trucks entering Gaza was 500-600 trucks per day, which is considered the minimum required quantity, according to international organizations. The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Tom Feltcher, said on Thursday that the entry of humanitarian aid into the Strip requires several entry points and security guarantees
The deal also stipulates that Palestinians would be allowed to return to Gaza City and areas of northern Gaza, which have been forcibly depopulated by Israeli forces in recent months. Israel had already displaced the residents of those areas in the final months of 2024 in a large-scale offensive known as “the Generals’ Plan.”
During the offensive, Israeli forces destroyed most residential blocks and buildings, leaving nowhere for Palestinians to return. In late January 2025, as Israel cleared the way back to the area as part of the first ceasefire deal, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returned to the north in a historic return march.
After the ceasefire went into effect, some people tried to return to north Gaza via al-Rashid Street along the coast, but Israeli tanks positioned nearby fired tank shells at the displaced. At least a million Palestinians continue to be crowded in the narrow coastal Mawasi area in Khan Younis, and in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
Political responses
The deal has not been signed yet. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, held a cabinet meeting late on Thursday to approve the deal. Netanyahu’s account on X shared a post past midnight local time with photos of the cabinet meeting, which was also attended by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and the son-in-law of President Trump, Jared Kushner.
Trump said in a statement to the press from the White House that he will travel to the Middle East and that Israeli captives will be released on Monday or Tuesday. Trump also admitted that around 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. Hamas’s politburo member, Usama Hamdan, said the release of Israeli captives will begin on Monday.
Meanwhile, Israeli bombings continued in Gaza, even after the announcement of the ceasefire deal. The spokesperson of the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza, Muhammad al-Mughir, told AFP that since the announcement of the deal, Israeli strikes have targeted several areas in the Strip, especially in the north. Al-Mughir added that Civil Defense teams are having difficulties in reaching survivors due to the damage to roads and the continuous flights of Israeli warplanes in the area.
In Israel, hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich voiced their opposition to the deal, stating that they would oppose it in the cabinet, but without pulling out of the government coalition, which the pair have threatened to do in the past.
Hamas, for its part, announced the end of the war in a statement read by its politburo chief, Khalil al-Hayyeh. The Hamas official said that the ceasefire deal was reached “thanks to the perseverance of our people,” adding that “despite the enemy’s attempts to break the agreements, our efforts continued seriously and responsibly in negotiations, and our only goal has been halting the aggression and saving the blood of our people.”
During al-Hayyeh’s live statement, Israeli warplanes bombed and destroyed a large residential building in the center of Gaza City. According to the Palestinian Civil Defense, approximately 40 people, including children, are still missing under the rubble.
Next steps
The deal doesn’t include any clauses on the definitive end of the war, the disarmament of Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions, the postwar administration of Gaza, or reconstruction. All of these issues have been relegated to the second phase of the negotiations, which are set to begin immediately after the ceasefire officially takes effect, according to Hamas.
Although U.S. President Trump has repeatedly expressed his will to end the war as a pathway for peace in the Middle East, there is no written guarantee that Israel will not break the ceasefire and resume its bombing of Gaza after the release of its captives, as it did last March
Gaza Deal Requires A Permanent End To Israel’s War on Gaza.
So what is the ultimate significance of this agreement? In my view, if Israel complies with this agreement, it means a hell of a lot for the Palestinians because that would result in a permanent end to the war on Gaza, a permanent withdrawal from much, if not all of Gaza, and the provision of sufficient humanitarian aid uh to the people of Gaza along with the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. These are vitally important developments to be welcomed uh by all people of conscience for uh the people of Gaza.
Clearly uh the uh most lunatic members of Netanyahu’s cabinet are not being silent about this. They’re not agreeing to it.
I do remain suspicious on that basis just on the basis of Israel’s long and sorted history of violating ceasefire agreements about whether or not Netanyahu will comply with this agreement. even uh uh substantially let let alone uh completely.
Dimitri Lascaris, Oct 11, 2025
Hours before Israel’s genocide forces began withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, a reporter from Israel’s Kan News published a copy of the agreement between Hamas and Israel providing for a cessation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip.
In this episode of Reason2Resist, I analyze the terms of the agreement and conclude that it unambiguously requires Israel to end its war on Gaza and to withdraw permanently from most of the Gaza Strip.
I also examine the reactions of Netanyahu’s most extreme Ministers to the Gaza agreement, the reasons for which Donald Trump might finally force Israel to comply with the agreement, and the likely consequences if Israel violates it.
ED. Below I post extracts from this video
“As of now, no agreement has been reached regarding the list of prisoners and the circulating circulating lists concerning the prisoners intended for release …………….
whether the Israelis will release uh resistance leader Maran Barguti, who has been languishing in an Israeli dungeon for over 20 years on uh charges, trumped up charges uh of involvement in terrorist acts against Israelis. ……….
I’d like to note uh that Hamas officials have said repeatedly that the agreement provides for a permanent end to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza………there’s much more than that. Uh, paragraph two states, quote, “The war will immediately end upon the approval of the Israeli government.” Close quote. So, here we’re not talking about a suspension of the war. We’re not talking about a pause of the war. We’re not talking even about u a temporary ceasefire. It says the war will immediately end. ……….
upon approval of the agreement, all military operations will be suspended. So there they use the term suspended but and they do not use the word terminated. Uh so the use of the word suspended suggests that under certain circumstances military operations can be resumed……..
key statement. It says that the Israeli military quote will not return close to areas it has withdrawn from as per the attached map quote as long as Hamas fully implements the agreement………
So this agreement clearly envisions a permanent withdrawal from certain parts of the Gaza Strip although we don’t know uh exactly which parts as of yet. Uh and uh moreover, and this too is critically important, the agreement says nothing about the IDF’s withdrawal from parts of the Gaza Strip that it will continue to occupy after the initial withdrawal
the question of course is whether those assurances are worth anything and uh that of course remains to be seen.
So, in any case, and for the reasons I just cited, the agreement clearly envisions a permanent end to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and a permanent withdrawal from the vast majority of the Gaza Strip. So, if anyone claims that uh this agreement does not envision a permanent end to Israel’s war in Gaza or a permanent withdrawal, then either they’re lying or they simply haven’t reviewed this agreement carefully or at all. …..
I’m showing you on the screen here, the United Nations Relief Works Agency and other international agencies that are independent of Israel must be permitted to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.
This, of course, is important because the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, as it’s called, this beast that was established by Israel and the Americans several months ago, purportedly to deliver aid uh to the starving population of Gaza turned out to be nothing but a tool for the mass murder of Palestinians seeking desperately needed humanitarian assistance. GHF assassins murdered more than 2600 Palestinians at aid distribution points since GHF was established several months ago. The assassins also wounded more than 19,000 Palestinian civilians at these aid distribution points during those several months. So it is extremely important, needless to say, that independent humanitarian agencies assume responsibility for distributing aid to the people of Gaza
That agreement provided as follows. Israel would have to allow the entry of sufficient quantities of humanitarian aid, 600 trucks per day, of which 300 are for the north. Included in this were 50 fuel trucks, including the fuel necessary for operating the power plant, trade, and equipment needed for rubble removal, rehabilitation, and operation of hospitals, health centers, and bakeries in all areas of the Gaza Strip. …….
But let’s recall what happened under the January ceasefire agreement. From the time it was agreed, Israel’s genocide forces killed Palestinians on a near daily basis and substantially hindered the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. And in fact, this led to the suspension by Hamas of the release of hostages and uh uh ultimately the uh the release of the hostages was resumed. Uh but there was nearly a blowup of the agreement at that point in time the point came for Israel to withdraw at as it had undertaken to do under the January 19th agreement from Ratha.
Israel refused to withdraw, tore up the agreement and started starving the civilian populationof Gaza. um the flimsy excuse that Israel offered for its killing of Palestinians while the January 19 agreement was in effect, daily killing of Palestinians and uh its hindrance of humanitarian aid was that uh Hamas it alleged was violating the deal with delays in providing the names of hostages. ….
So what is the ultimate significance of this agreement? In my view, if Israel complies with this agreement, it means a hell of a lot for the Palestinians because that would result in a permanent end to the war on Gaza ….
Now, there’s one other aspect of this prisoner exchange agreement that is, in my view, particularly odious. namely paragraph 5G prohibits any public ceremonies or media coverage of the release of prisoners and hostages.
Now, I can understand if Israel were demanding uh that there be no ceremonies involving uh the release uh at least
16:31ceremonies in the Gaza Strip uh involving the release of its PS.
16:37But uh there’s no conceivable justification for Israel demanding that there be no ceremonies or media coverage of the uh 2,000 or so Palestinians that are being released from its dungeons. Many of them, if not all of them, have been subjected to various levels and forms of torture and severe privation. Uh there’s uh no doubt that that will be apparent apparent from their appearance uh and upon their release uh from prison. They will be asked about this. Uh I’m sure that many of them will be anxious to tell the public and their fellow Palestinians what they endured under the brutalities of Israeli incarceration. Uh and essentially
this prohibition on ceremonies and media coverage of the release of Palestinian prisoners can only be designed to do two things. And that is first impede uh the delivery of the truth to the public about what was done to those prisoners in jail. Uh and secondly uh to prevent the Palestinians from uniting in what is an important victory uh for the resistance and you know sharing in a moment a desperately needed moment of uh national unity and relief and joy at the release of their brothers and sisters from Israeli dungeons.
Israeli genocidal regime does everything within its power to prevent the truth of what it is doing to the Palestinian people from reaching uh those of us living here in the West.
Uh finally, this agreement is important for what it does not say. It does not say uh unlike Trump’s 20point proposal that the resistance must disarm. And in fact, it says nothing about disarmament at all. Now, Western media continue to this very day to report without citing any credible identifiable sources that Hamas may be willing to agree to a complete or partial disarmament uh by, for example, a partial disarmament might involve uh Hamas giving up its missiles but retaining its uh small arms. Uh, however, Hamas has consistently and emphatically denied these reports.
Israel, remains armed to the teeth. If anybody should be required to disarm first, it should be the perpetrator of genocide and not its victims.
Now, returning to the one-pager, it also says nothing about the future governance of the Gaza Strip or the presence of foreign troops in Gaza or the departure of Hamas officials into exile…
The United States is sending 200 troops to Israel to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire deal in Gaza. US officials said Thursday. The official said US Central Command will establish a civil military coordination center in Israel to provide security and humanitarian support. The US troops will join soldiers from nations including Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates to provide oversight. The US troops are not intended to go into Gazo, one of the US officials said. So, uh, assuming we’re being told the truth….
The bottom line, my friends, is that the one-page agreement says nothing about the long-term issues confronting the Palestinian people, not even the uh reconstruction of Gaza and uh does not even contain an explicit commitment to negotiate the longer term and underlying issues. Uh and in particular, the agreement says nothing about a Palestinian state.
it also says nothing, not one word about the West Bank where Israel is also committing genocide, albeit at a lower level of intensity than in Gaza.
So what is the ultimate significance of this agreement? In my view, if Israel complies with this agreement, it means a hell of a lot for the Palestinians because that would result in a permanent end to the war on Gaza, a permanent withdrawal from much, if not all of Gaza, and the provision of sufficient humanitarian aid uh to the people of Gaza along with the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. These are vitally important developments to be welcomed uh by all people of conscience for uh the people of Gaza.
But at the same time, even if Israel complies fully with the deal, the core underlying injustices of the occupation will persist and no one would or should have the slightest faith in Israel to voluntarily address those injustices in a manner that is fair uh to the Palestinian people. Uh so even if Israel complies fully wit the deal, the core underlying problems will remain.
even worse, of course, Israel might simply flush the agreement down the toilet once it has its PS back.
When it comes to the question of whether Israel will comply, uh I think we can glean a lot from examining the reactions of the most lunatic ministers uh in Israel’s cabinet. Those who are typically referred to by the press as far although again any rational human being would regard every single member of Netanyahu’s uh cabinet as being far right. and in particular uh the arch war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
Now uh why do I say we can uh divine Israel’s true intentions from their reaction? Because if they the most lunatic members of his cabinet approve of the deal even grudgingly or if they are quiet about it uh then the most logical inference is that Netanyahu has given them private assurances that he’ll break the deal, resume the mass murder of Palestinians and reoccupy the Gaza trip.
So, this of course raises the question of how the lunatics uh have responded thus far. And here you’ll see an article that was published this morning at 3:32 a.m. by the Times of Israel. Uh Gaza ceasefire takes effect as the government approves deal to free the hostages. The subheading there, uh most far-right ministers vote against agreement to halt fighting with Hamas. Kushner and Witoff tell cabinet that IDF’s bravery, yes, the latte sipping baby killers are being lauded for their bravery by uh Kushner and Whitov. Uh but uh they commend Netanyahu’s difficult decisions and say that those decisions enabled the agreement.
Now the Times of Israel goes on and reports as follows. Netanyahu’s office announced the approval of the deal but did not immediately provide a vote tally though the agreement was opposed by national security minister Bengavir Negev Galilee and national resilience minister Yitsak was of and heritage minister am elyahu of the farright Otma Yahudate party. If I’m not mistaken, Eli Yahu was the uh the psychopathic lunatic who at some point during the genocide called for Israel to nuke Gaza.
Uh in any event, the Times of Israel article article goes on and says, “Far right leaders have been critical of the deal with Smootrich announcing on Thursday that religious Zionism would not vote in favor. Speaking with the Times of Israel, a party source said that it remained up in the air whether or not the far-right faction would bolt the government. Bengavir had also announced ahead of the cabinet meeting that Utma Yehudit would vote against the first phase of the deal in which Palestinian prisoners will be released in exchange for all four Israeli 48 Israeli hostages held in Gaza. So 48 I think refers obviously not only to the 20 living PS but also the remains of 28 uh other captives uh who died in captivity.
now uh what is my take uh on these revelations? I I do draw some encouragement from them. Clearly uh the uh most lunatic members of Netanyahu’s cabinet are not being silent about this. They’re not agreeing to it.
I do remain suspicious on that basis just on the basis of Israel’s long and sorted history of violating ceasefire agreements about whether or not Netanyahu will comply with this agreement. even uh uh substantially let let alone uh completely.
So uh let’s move on and uh let’s talk about the allimportant question of what the Trump is going to do to ensure Israel’s compliance. Now some are saying that Trump is serious this time about bringing an end to the war in Gaza because he desperately wants the Nobel Peace Prize. I understand that the winner of that peace prize is going to be announced today.
And let me say in passing that in a sane and decent world, the winner of 1that peace prize would be Francesca Albani, the extraordinarily brave, intelligent, and eloquent UN special rapaturur for the human rights situation in occupied Palestine. I’ve read reports that she’s been nominated. uh but frankly I don’t have much confidence in the Nobel committee to award the prize…
the main motivation that Trump has for doing this deal is because he wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize. I do recognize that he is extraordinarily narcissistic and a megalomaniac and I don’t doubt for one second that he wants this peace prize uh and that he’d love to have this peace prize.
But if he was so enamored of the Nobel Peace Prize, why did he allow Israel to tear up the agreement back in March and then begin to starve the civilian population of Gaza? …..
For example, um Donald Trump, I if I were him, I would be deeply concerned about the midterm elections. Uh right now, Donald Trump’s uh approval rating uh is very low. …
Uh he came into the White House and immediately began to involve America in new wars. uh and all of his rhetoric and all of the energies that he uh claimed to have invested in bringing an end to the Ukraine war have come to nowt. Donald Trump is now fully on board with the enterprise of uh Ukraine. He said as much with Ukraine trying to recapture all of its territory, which is a practical impossibility. There’s no indication whatsoever that Donald Trump is going to come anywhere close to doing what’s necessary to bringing that war to an end
so basically he has betrayed his base the president of peace. And uh if this genocide were to continue right up until the midterms, have no doubt about the fact that uh Netanyahu is capable of carrying this on for years to come. As long as there is a, you know, there are bullets in the guns of the Israeli military and bombs in the, you know, aircraft bays of the war planes supplied by the United States to the Israeli Air Force. uh they will continue to kill uh Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank, and then probably also in East Jerusalem, and within the 1948 boundaries of Israel itself.
Uh he’s basically uh you know using the United States Constitution as toilet paper running roughshot over the basic civil liberties of Americans uh you know engaging in outrageous overreach of the executive powers of the president. Uh so uh I think he must be quite concerned about this and to me that is probably the biggest point of pressure on Donald Trump to bring this slaughter to an end. his concern about the midterm elections. ….
And of course, the Zionist lobby must be very concerned……
also at the same time the United States, Germany and other Western military suppliers of Israel have been supplying Ukraine. And that is a conflict that has consumed even more munitions uh than Israel has consumed, I would imagine. So you’re looking at highly depleted weapon stocks, uh a demoralized and exhausted army, uh various forms of crisis within the Israeli military. Uh I would not at all be surprised if you know uh people within the Israeli military itself have secretly or perhaps not so secretly appealed to the Trump regime uh to bring this to an end. And there may be people, powerful and influential people in the Zionist lobby in the United States who are in contact with the uh Israeli military and understand the gravity of 1the situation who have been politely and quietly requesting that Donald Trump bring this to an end when it’s so obvious that Netanyahu himself uh was unwilling to do so. So again, I think this is likely to be much more important to Donald Trump than uh the Nobel Peace Prize.
Finally, let me offer a perspective on what will happen if Israel does does what it always has done and treats this agreement like toilet paper. Well, uh in my uh submission to you, my friends, uh that would put Israel in an even worse place than it is now. And it’s already in a very very dark place…..
think it will be much harder much harder for Netanyahu to uh to uh argue that the violence should be continue particularly violence directing civilians uh if these uh hostages have been returned or these PS have been returned to Israel. uh in a sense at a bare minimum what’s going to happen here in addition to the release of Palestinian prisoners which is in and of itself is very important and even if this is just a temporary pause in the bombing of the people of Gaza and even if the increase in humanitarian aid is substantial but temporary uh those are certainly good things important things vitally important things for the civilian population of Gaza
But uh I think that in effect by handing over the PS the resistance has situated itself more firmly on the moral high ground. And if we see a resumption now of the horrors that the Palestinians have endured for the past two years, um I think that you are going to see an even more rapid and precipitous decline in the standing of Israel in the West in the broader world. And it is already arguably the most detested so-called country on God’s green earth.
Uh so one way or another, this thing is coming to an end. This genocide will not succeed.
it’s just a question of when, not if. Perhaps now is the time. Perhaps we’re going to have to wait a little longer. But that day is coming and judgment day is coming for all the criminals who perpetrated this crime.
This is Demetri Lceris coming to you from Kalamat Greece on October 10th, 2025. https://reason2resist.substack.com/p/revealed-gaza-deal-requires-a-permanent?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2811845&post_id=175824008&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
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