Date: Thursday, 16 January 2025
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/haaretz-trump-forced-netanyahu-to
https://theduran.com/haaretz-trump-forced-netanyahu-to-accept-gaza-hostages
Haaretz: Trump Forced Netanyahu to Accept Gaza Hostages-Ceasefire Deal
15 January 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
On January 15th, CNBC headlined “Israel and Hamas reach Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal”, and reported that,
Israel and Hamas reached a deal Wednesday for a ceasefire and the release of hostages, a major breakthrough in their 15-month war, which has wreaked destruction and inflamed tensions across the region.
An Israeli official briefed on the talks confirmed the deal to NBC News. The long-awaited agreement followed Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani’s meeting with Hamas negotiators and, separately, with Israeli negotiators.
News of the deal prompted joyful demonstrations in the streets in both Israel and Gaza late Wednesday, local time.
It also makes passing reference to the incoming U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, saying that Trump’s appointed Special Envoy to the Middle East “Steve Witkoff has been a critical component of it, and he has been involved in it from day one.”
A January 13th Haaretz news-report, “Trump's Mideast Envoy Forced Netanyahu to Accept a Gaza Plan He Repeatedly Rejected”, indicated that Witkoff had basically shoved aside the Biden team (Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, etc.) who, all along, have been backing Netanyahu’s plan to add Gaza to Israel, and that whereas until now Biden has been doing Netanyahu’s bidding on the entire Gaza matter, Netanyahu is now doing Trump’s bidding on it. What’s basically at issue in the Haaretz report (though unmentioned there) is the termination, at long last, of Netanyahu’s demand that Gaza become taken over as being a new part of Israel, so that if any of the 2.3 million Gazans will survive, they’ll be ruled by Israel’s Government. Until now, Trump has stood against the “two-state” solution (i.e., against Palestinians having their own land instead of being controlled by Israel). But shockingly, Trump’s envoy appears to be working FOR a two-state solution. If so, Netanyahu is being rejected by the U.S. Government, which (till now) has been his only foreign backer.
As Haaretz notes, “Witkoff has forced Israel to accept a plan that Netanyahu had repeatedly rejected over the past half year.” The actual reason why Netanyahu had been rejecting it is that if it had been accepted, then Netanyahu’s goal of extending Israel’s rule to Gaza would be made virtually impossible — as the January 15th ceasefire-and-hostages deal will almost certainly mean.
The deal, which isn’t yet complete, was announced by CNN under the headline, “What’s in the Hamas-Israel ceasefire and hostage release deal”, and it says:
Phase one is expected to start at some point Sunday and last for 6 weeks. This phase will feature a ceasefire, a withdrawal of Israeli troops, a swap of hostages and prisoners and an influx of humanitarian aid into Gaza. US hostages held in Gaza will be released in that first phase, US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday.
The second and third phases are less developed, and the details will be decided during the first phase, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said in a briefing Wednesday.
“We will continue to do everything we can, everything possible together with our partners, to ensure that this deal is implemented as it’s agreed,” he said, noting that mediators had spent 411 days working on the agreement terms. “And this deal will bring us peace, hopefully, at the end of it. I believe that it all depends on the parties of the agreement acting in good faith in that agreement in order to ensure that no collapse happening to that deal.”
Hamas hailed the deal on Wednesday as a “crucial turning point.” Israel’s cabinet must still vote to approve the deal before it goes into effect.
Here’s a closer look at what’s in the current ceasefire deal and the steps ahead.
Ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal and aid …
The Israeli military would begin withdrawing from population centers during the first phase, but would remain along the Gaza-Egypt border, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, an Israeli official said Wednesday. Israel would also maintain a buffer zone inside Gaza along the border with Israel, the size of which has been one of the final sticking points in the negotiations.
The deal is expected to allow Palestinian civilians to return to their homes across Gaza, including in the devastated north. There would be a massive influx of humanitarian aid into the strip, where residents have long faced dire humanitarian conditions, Al Thani said.
Gaza’s wounded will also be allowed to leave the enclave to receive treatment, while aid will be allowed into the Strip with hospitals and bakeries undergoing repairs, he said.
Which hostages and prisoners will be released
As part of that first phase, Hamas and its allied militant groups will release 33 hostages in the first phase, including civilian and female soldiers, children, the elderly and the sick in exchange for an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners, Al Thani said. …
Second and third phases to be negotiated
The second and third phases of the ceasefire still have to be negotiated during the first phrase. Those negotiations would begin on the 16th day of the implementation of the deal, according to an Israeli official. …
If anything like all that happens, then the global outrage against Israel would be so enormous if Israel at the end of this ‘ceasefire’ would RESUME its extermination of the Gazans, so that, very likely, the war in Gaza would not resume — Israel’s genocide against the Gazans will be left incomplete.
On January 15th, Caitlin Johnstone headlined “Thoughts On The Ceasefire Deal”, and opened by noting that,
Israel and Hamas have reportedly agreed to a ceasefire and hostage deal, which is scheduled to take effect January 19. The deal as written is apparently virtually identical to the one Hamas agreed to last May, which Netanyahu then sabotaged with the complicity of the Biden administration.
Biden, for at least the past six months, has been cooperating with Netanyahu’s plan to exterminate the Gazans and to repopulate Gaza by Israelis, so that probably additional hundreds of thousands — if not perhaps a million — of Gazans have been slaughtered and starved to death by Israel during that time; but, now, because of what Witkoff has brokered, there’s a reasonable chance that the worst of that genocide (or attempted genocide) is finally in the past.
If this is truly the case, then Trump will be far worthier of winning a Nobel Peace Prize than such former recipients of it as Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama were, but only subject to the following proviso: that, by the end of Trump’s second term, he won’t be continuing ANY of the wars (including the ones against Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela) that his predecessors (and prior Congresses) had started.
But, in any case, Trump won’t be able to succeed in the Gaza matter unless Netanyahu will fail in it. I shall admit here that I, personally, am shocked to say that perhaps the first U.S. President to turn against Israel will be Israel’s most unstintingly ardent foreign proponent till now, Donald Trump. But only time wiill tell what type of President Trump will be.
PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding — what the ‘news’-media ignore if they can, and deny if they must. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
