By JAMES MARKIN

Since Trump’s emissaries finalized the deal between Netanyahu and various Palestinian armed groups, the situation in Gaza has been contradictory and confusing. On the one hand, Palestinians celebrated as they were able to leave hated refugee camps and return to their homes. On the other hand, the killing has not stopped and Israel has used the opportunity to launch a bombing campaign against Lebanon.

From a diplomatic perspective, there are two parts to the current situation. The U.S. and European imperialist blocs spent the months leading up to the opening of the UN in New York to negotiate a shared vision for “peace” in Gaza. This is nothing less than a plan for full colonization under the rule of the imperialist hatchet-man Tony Blair. Then Trump strong armed Israel into accepting a “ceasefire” agreement with Hamas that required them to withdraw and allow food into Gaza in exchange for a bilateral prisoner release. This ceasefire deal does not contain some of the more objectionable parts of the overall “Peace Plan,” such as the disarmament of Hamas or the creation of an international authority to rule over Gaza in their stead.

Israel never fully implemented their part of the deal, continuing bombardments that are explicitly prohibited by the agreement and not releasing aid into the strip, another clear requirement of the agreement. Indeed, Israel has not opened the Rafah crossing, another violation.

By Oct. 18, eight days after the “ceasefire” had gone into effect, the Gaza Media Office recorded 47 separate Israeli violations of the deal. This included the murder of an entire family of 11 Gazans on Oct. 17, whose crime was to cross the “yellow line,” an imaginary line drawn by the Israeli military and not published, which marks the borders of its current area of operations. Over the weekend of Oct. 18, after clashes in Rafah led to the deaths of two Israeli soldiers, Israel announced that  all humanitarian aid would be suspended and launched a series of brutal bombing attacks against the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. At least 40 people were killed, according to the Gaza health ministry.

On Oct. 28, in a single night, at least 104 Gazans were slaughtered in a wave of Israeli bomb attacks. By Nov. 3, the death toll in Gaza since the “ceasefire” was agreed to had reached at least 236. Killings by the IDF are especially bad along the “yellow line.”

While Trump’s longer Peace Plan calls for the IDF to ultimately withdraw to the borders of the Gaza Strip (minus a buffer zone), history suggests that the IDF might insist on remaining within this yellow line, essentially leaving half of the Gaza Strip under direct Israeli occupation. These fears have only become more real over the past few weeks as the IDF has begun to install yellow concrete markers showing where they believe the boundary to be.

While Hamas and its allied forces have still not agreed to the full Trump plan, they  agreed on Oct. 14 to allow a “temporary Palestinian committee” of independent technocrats to run the portions of the Gaza strip that Israel does not directly control. During the recent visits by Trump and Vance to Israel, they announced the formation of the Civil-Military Coordination Center, a U.S.-run international army command based in Israel. The plan is that the international force that is to occupy Gaza will be commanded by the CMC.

The specifics of how exactly the planned “disarmament” of Hamas by the international armed force will go is still unclear. However, it is clear that the ultimate aim of this policy is to turn Gaza into essentially a U.S. colony, under occupation by this U.S.-led international force. It is clear that if this comes to pass then the U.S. will have done what Israel could not do: eliminate armed resistance in the Gaza strip.

This is why the U.S. wants to keep the ceasefire deal alive: Both in order to maintain prestige for Donald Trump but also to enable the implementation of the plan for the international takeover of Gaza. The question remains whether Trump will maintain the pressure on Netanyahu that allowed the deal to be announced in the first place.

It is clear that Israel will not keep the letter of the deal either way. But major questions remain about the degree to which Israel actually intends to withdraw from the strip. It is clear that Israel has taken a beating diplomatically over the last year, and that the public attitude toward the Zionist regime amongst the working public of the country’s imperialist patrons is at an all time low. It is possible that they will try to only hold to the parts of the deal which benefit them, as they successfully did when it came to previous peace talks in the West Bank, large sections of which have now been de facto annexed. Whether their genocidal war will ultimately end up being a victory or a defeat will be determined by the terms agreed to at the end of this new negotiation process between the U.S., Arab states, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, other armed groups, and the state of Israel.

We have already seen the impact of the heroic wave of strikes carried out by the Italian workers as part of the “Blocchiamo Tutto” (Block Everything) movement against Italian support for Israel. Ultimately, workers need to keep up the pressure on the imperialist governments that rule over them through mass demonstrations, and where possible, strikes like in Italy.

Photo: Mahmoud Isleem / Anadolu