Patrick Lawrence: Keep the Champagne Corked

We must allow for the possibility of success of Trump’s 20-point peace plan in Gaza, of course. But at writing I simply cannot see it.

President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Sept. 29 during a phone call with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani about the U.S. peace plan for Gaza. (White House / Daniel Torok)

By Patrick Lawrence
The Floutist

As I read of the ceasefire Israel and the Hamas government in Gaza formally accepted in the early hours of Thursday, my mind went immediately to that memorable thought Hannah Arendt shared with Roger Errera, a French free-speech advocate, shortly before her death in 1975:

“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.”

How, I mean to say, can one possibly take Bibi Netanyahu at his word as he commits to putting into force the 20–point peace plan the Israeli prime minister and President Donald Trump made public with flimsy fanfare at the White House late last month? With bottomless cynicism and treachery, the Zionist regime has broken every ceasefire accord to which it has agreed for the past two decades, if not longer.

Noam Chomsky on this topic, in a video recorded earlier and posted Thursday on “X”:

“Starting in November 2005 an agreement was reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority then, not Hamas. Israel completely rejected it, and Hamas lived up to it, not a single rocket. Then came the January [2006] election [which Hamas won], and Israel intensified its attack with U.S. support. After that there were repeated attacks and ceasefire agreements.

Every ceasefire agreement is approximately like what I’ve read. Israel completely dismisses and disregards it and maintains the siege in violation of the ceasefire and increases the violence. Hamas lives up to it, and Israel officially accepts that, agrees to it, until some escalation of Israeli violence leads to Hamas reaction, and then another episode of ‘mowing the lawn.’ That’s been going on since November 2005.”

As I was considering this well-established pattern Thursday morning, I saw other videos on “X” that showed Palestinian children dancing for joy amid the rubble to which the Zionist terror machine has reduced their homes in Gaza.

Children in Gaza sing and dance in the streets to celebrate the announcement of the ceasefire and the end of the Israeli genocide. pic.twitter.com/hmf9WiUrb4

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 9, 2025

Hope, I reflected, is the cruelest of the three cardinal virtues. How often — in our responses to events, in our professions, in love and in other personal relations — does it turn out to betray us. I hope, for all of our sakes but especially for the sake of those children and their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and all others who have suffered with them these past two years — well, these past 77 — that the accord going into effect as I write this holds.

We must allow for the possibility of success, of course. But at writing I simply cannot see it.

As Thursday morning went on, Hamas prepared to release the remaining hostages it has held since the events of Oct. 7, 2023 — 22 of them alive by Israel’s count, the bodies of 26 others — and the Israelis were (reportedly) arranging for the release of 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in Israel’s prison gulag and 1,700 others taken captive since Oct. 7 of two years ago. This is the first phase of the 20–point Gaza Peace Plan Trump and Netanyahu announced on Sept. 29. In the next phase the Israeli Occupation Forces are to withdraw from Gaza to a perimeter along its inland edge but still inside the Strip.

What is our question? Will Israel hold to this accord, or at what point will the Zionists betray it? Let me suggest my view this way: I am not dancing in the streets of the once-was factory town wherein I currently reside, and I do not see much dancing in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Genoa, Madrid, Zaragoza, Athens, or any of the other big cities where hundreds of thousands have lately been demonstrating in behalf of the Palestinian cause.

[See: A Treacherous Israel Toys With a Deal on Gaza]

Tariq Kenney–Shawa, an analyst with the Palestinian research network Al Shabaka, put it this way on X:

“Some telling Israeli analysis that makes it clear that they don’t see this as much of a ceasefire, but rather a tactical pause through which to secure the release of hostages before retaining control of most of Gaza and implementing the ‘Lebanon model’ of continued bombings.”

History, as just reviewed, suggests this is so. There is simply no believing what the Zionists say about anything under the sun at this point. Does one, after all, ever take fanatics at their word? Ever given to rank opportunism in the cause of their rank ideology, Zionist Jews— which excludes very many right-thinking Jews — have long since sunk their own ship by way of credibility.

Events & Politics Don’t Line Up

More immediately to the point, events and politics do not line up on the side of the peace plan’s efficacy. The I.O.F. redoubled its aerial attacks on Gaza immediately after Bibi and Trump announced their “peace plan” early last week. There is video circulating on “X” as we speak showing Israeli tanks shelling the exposed population of neighborhoods in central Gaza hard by the Mediterranean beaches.

There is simply no on-the-ground indication of commitment to anything other than the no-commitment that has long defined what I refuse to call statecraft on the Israelis’ part.

What has stayed with me these past 10 days is the balance inside Netanyahu’s freak-show cabinet. Ben–Gvir, Smotrich, the crazed Orit Strook, et al.: These grotesques continue to insist that Gaza must be ethnic-cleansed at a minimum, and for them it is on up from there to the annihilation of all Palestinians. Netanyahu needs these people for his political survival and to avoid staying out of prison on multiple counts of corruption.

For the record, this is my initial analysis of the Netanyahu–Trump plan after it was made public. How I ask in it, did Bibi get his cabinet to come on board for this accord? As mentioned in that piece, the all-star best explanation I have read comes to us from John Whitbeck, the international attorney, now resident in Paris, with long experience on the Palestine question.

“Presumably,” he wrote his privately distributed blog just after the plan was announced,

“Netanyahu has, while still hoping that Hamas will reject this ultimatum, managed to convince these ministers of the sincerity of his insincerity in this instance.”

In this connection, Max Blumenthal pointed out not long before the plan was made public that Netanyahu was parading around Israel (and I think elsewhere, even in the U.S. if I am not mistaken) boasting openly that he has Trump completely under his control. There must be a reason for this, and I wonder now what it might be. In my view it is plausible to interpret these public displays as intended further to convince his cabinet of goons that he remained a reliable liar as Sept. 29 drew near, as if to say, I will go along with this but do not worry.

Caitlin Johnstone, allowing for the slim possibility that the Gaza Peace Plan will actually hold, posted a thought-provoking insight on “X” this morning:

“If a permanent ceasefire actually happens and actually holds without mass expulsions and further Palestinian subjugation, the only explanation I can think of is that the U.S. and Israel crunched the numbers and determined that the PR crisis from the genocide makes it unsustainable.”

Johnstone prompts me to consider developments over the past day or so against the background of events elsewhere. The Spanish Parliament just voted a complete arms embargo against the Zionist state. The other day Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s honorable president, announced that Bogotá is expelling the Israeli diplomatic legation and severing all relations with Israel. New polls in the United States indicate that two-thirds of American Jews now condemn Israel for war crimes; a lesser but still considerable percentage think “the Jewish state” is guilty of genocide. Greta Thunberg and the aid flotillas have captured the imaginations of millions.

Demonstrations erupted in over 100 cities around the world after Israel intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla. Here’s why protesters say they are standing with Gaza. pic.twitter.com/6u1lA5dxuf

— AJ+ (@ajplus) October 9, 2025

And then the demonstrations all over the Western world, mostly but not only in Europe. A quarter of a million in this that, and the other city among those listed above: The videos are very stirring. I have argued for some time — and I am not alone in this — that only force will stop the Zionists’ campaign of terror. It is all that is left. And as of this morning I count these immense displays of support for the Palestinian cause and condemnation of Israel a variety of force.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.

This article is from The Floutist.

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