“The announcement that Israel and Hamas have agreed to President Donald Trump’s plan to end the two-year war in Gaza could be the biggest diplomatic achievement of his second term,” declares the Washington Post’s editorial board. “Indeed, if the deal holds, Trump can legitimately bolster his claim to be a peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.”
On the ground, things do not appear peaceful. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 10 Palestinians have been killed and 49 injured over the past day.
“Every time there is supposed to be a ceasefire, Israel intensifies its attacks to do as much damage until the last moment,” notes Assal Rad on Twitter. “Every, single, time.”
Can Israel be trusted to follow through with the deal? Earlier this year, the world watched it break the prior agreement and return to its genocidal assault.
“As soon as a ceasefire deal is signed, nobody bothers with the details,” Gazan political activist Muhammad Shehada told Democracy Now. “Gaza disappears, and it’s back to this slow, latent, invisible violence of starvation and engaging people in a permanent state of non-life.”
In a statement, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) celebrated the agreement, but pointed out that further action is obviously needed.
“The BDS movement welcomes, with immense relief, the news that a ceasefire agreement has been reached,” it reads. “A ceasefire, however, is only the most important first step to end the genocide against the 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. Without massive pressure, this will constitute a continuation of a less visible form of genocide that Israel and the US hope will provoke less regional and global outrage, boycotts and sanctions. The famine, the repercussions of the annihilation of Gaza will not end. An end to the occupation, apartheid, and denial of our refugees’ rights have yet to be won. Solidarity is more needed than ever, and it begins with ending complicity and serious accountability–both moral and legal obligations.”
“The tide has turned and there must be no going back. Make no mistake, our people power is precisely what has brought us here,” the statement continues. “The recent wave of sanctions, from Spain to Türkyie, from Malaysia to Colombia, from Slovenia to Antigua and Barbuda, and many more, have been reached because of your pressure on your governments. Israel is more globally isolated than ever before, as even its internationally-wanted Prime Minister has recently admitted. This ceasefire must be understood as his desperate attempt to save genocidal Israel from this isolation, while allowing it to save its 77-year-old regime of settler-colonial oppression.”
If that’s the goal, it’s hard to believe Netanyahu will succeed.
Israel is now a global pariah, and its influence on U.S. politics is being discussed publicly for the first time. Even Republicans are beginning to sour on the special relationship. “My people are starting to hate Israel,” Trump reportedly told a donor in July. Just two months later, Netanyahu bombed U.S. ally Qatar.
Trita Parsi says the attack “made the White House recognize that Israel’s recklessness was increasingly becoming an American problem.”
It’s unclear whether the Trump administration will maintain any pressure on Israel, but it’s difficult to imagine international pressure dissipating.
“I think we’re now at a fork in the road, a continuation of this process,” said Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani on Democracy Now. “While it’s very welcome, of course, that the genocide may be coming to an end and is at least now paused, this is a renewed Oslo process with an even lower political ceiling. And the key issue now is there is massive global momentum for a different paradigm, in which Palestinian rights, in which Israeli accountability for its actions replaces these meaningless, endless negotiations about nothing that result in nothing.”
“I think that momentum also helps explain why we have this agreement finally, one that the Biden administration systematically refused to implement, but that Trump was able to force Israel to accept with a single phone call,” he continued. “Maintaining and intensifying that momentum is absolutely essential to ensure that the genocide does not resume in full force, that ethnic cleansing remains off the agenda, and that the real political issues can finally be addressed in line with international law and Palestinian rights.”
Muhammad Hadeidah, a Palestinian living in a displacement camp west of Khan Younis, expressed joy over the development.
“When I heard the news last night, I asked some people to confirm, and they said that an agreement had been reached,” he told Mondoweiss. “All I think about is returning to my neighborhood east of Khan Younis. I want to start collecting my belongings and return home, even if the home isn’t there anymore.”
“We have had enough of the daily killings,” he continued. “We lost everyone. We lost everything. We have nothing now except our souls and what remains of our families. We want to hug them and tell each other that this stops now. The war is over and won’t start up again.”
Newsom signs Israel censorship bill
Last month, we published an article on AB 715, a controversial bill that recently passed in California. It would create an “antisemitism coordinator” to monitor educational curriculum in the state.
The legislation is ostensibly aimed at combating antisemitism, but critics say it’s designed to stifle criticisms of Israel. It would allow Israel supporters to file unsupported complaints of antisemitism with the state’s Department of Education.
It was opposed by a number of teachers’ unions and civil rights groups, but the effort was fast-tracked through the legislature and granted a last-minute waiver to proceed without committee approval.
“It is very disappointing that our CA legislators are ignoring objections to this bill from every major teachers union, from every educational association and significant concerns of constitutionality from the ACLU to ramrod through this terrible bill at the very end of the legislative session without full opportunity for public input and without meaningful dialogue with Palestinians,” Jewish Voice for Peace Action national board member Seth Morrison told Mondoweiss.
After it passed, activists called on Governor Gavin Newsom to veto the bill. This week he signed it into law.
“At a time when antisemitism and bigotry are rising nationwide and globally, these laws make clear: our schools must be places of learning, not hate,” said Newsom in a statement.
Politico notes that Newsom, who obviously has presidential aspirations, was “unswayed by opposition from the California Teachers Association, a major force in state politics.”
“He sided instead with the Jewish Legislative Caucus and leading Jewish organizations such as Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, which had made the measure their only legislative priority for the year,” explained Eric He at the website. “In pushing for the bill, the groups cited a surge in antisemitic incidents in California and members recounted their own experiences, particularly amid the turmoil in the Middle East following Hamas’ attack on Israel two years ago.”
Odds & Ends
📊 Inside the GOP’s generational divide on Israel
🧢 ‘They’re all liars’: Gazans react to Trump’s ‘peace’ proposal and potential ceasefire
💬 Two Years of Genocide: Trump’s war on free speech began with Gaza
🇵🇸 Hamas just accepted Trump’s ‘peace’ plan. Here’s what it didn’t accept.
🤔 Electronic Intifada: Kamala Harris still blaming Gaza protesters
💰 Responsible Statecraft: $21.7 billion in US military aid has fueled Israel’s war on Gaza
💸 Counterpunch: Outraged Taxpayers Charge U.S. Government Over Gaza Genocide at Inter-American Commission
📺 In These Times: In 2 Years of Gaza Genocide, Sunday Shows on NBC, ABC and CNN Have Not Featured a Single Palestinian Guest
🔏 The Guardian: A Gaza ceasefire deal could be Trump’s biggest diplomatic achievement – but the devil is in the detail
😬 The San Francisco Standard: Alameda County boldly votes to take a moral stance sometime in the future
🇺🇳 Common Dreams: Beware Trump’s Ceasefire Deal Absent Meaningful UN Action to Halt Israel’s Genocide
As many people have pointed out in various ways the Israeli definition of a ceasefire is one where they can kill or bomb whoever they want and nobody is supposed to respond. If someone does respond, then it becomes a violation of the ceasefire.
It is important to see the end of the mass slaughter, but virtually every Western government or official, along with a great many Western media outlets such as the NYT, are eager, desperately so, to whitewash the past two years as fast as possible, The NYT and its leading writers never admitted it was a genocidal war. They never admitted the suffering was intentionally inflicted by Israel. They want a neverending “ peace process” which Israel can slow walk as long as they want. People will lose interest and gradually, they hope, people start to forget what happened or just move on.
This has happened before on a smaller scale when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. They were heavily criticized for their bombing campaign and then for Sabra Shatila, but within a year or so people moved on and forgot. I think it will be tougher this time, but plan B for liberal Zionists has always been to make Netanyahu the scapegoat. Get rid of him and we are supposed to pretend everything will be fine.
I think this recent opinion piece in the New York Times should be added to Odds & Ends, in fact I think it’s a must read:
“Northern Ireland, Gaza and the Road to Peace”
On of the big sticking points in the ‘peace’ agreement is whether or not Hamas will/should disarm. But the essay points out that the same issue arose in Northern Ireland with the Irish Republican Army: back in the day many people spoke about it the same way people speak about Hamas now, and back then many people wanted the IRA to disarm first as a precondition to peace talks. But the IRA did eventually disarm – after it was given a seat at the table.
“Paramilitary disarmament was one of the last hard-won concessions of trust, not the first step.”
The last paragraph of the essay:
“The United States has done Israel no long-term favors by providing diplomatic impunity and a ceaseless flow of weapons. Palestinians are now enduring a degree of deadly dehumanization that utterly eclipses the violence of the Troubles. Their day of political reckoning has been delayed too long, and when it finally arrives, everyone will ask why it was so slow coming.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/opinion/northern-ireland-war-gaza-resolution.html