In 98 AD, historian Tacitus depicted the Roman devastation of Britain with the phrase: “They make a desert and call it peace.” Nearly two millennia later, this harsh statement aptly describes the severe conditions imposed on Gaza’s Palestinian population by Israel and its imperialist supporters.
President Donald Trump’s so-called “peace agreement” for Gaza establishes an imperialist protectorate that crushes Palestinian rights while expanding American influence over the energy-rich Middle East. This was made clear by Trump’s address to the Israeli Knesset followed by a meeting of genocidal collaborators convened in Egypt by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Monday.
During an extended, disjointed speech, Trump delivered remarks reminiscent of Mafia boss Tony Soprano. He boasted to Israeli legislators about US military might bringing “peace,” urged clemency for the indicted war criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and declared the “historic dawn of a new Middle East” under American control had arrived. Trump openly celebrated the genocidal actions led by Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), telling the captivated audience that Netanyahu “would call me so many times” requesting arms and added the US supplied “so many that Israel became strong and powerful. That’s what led to peace.” He concluded, “We gave you all the weapons, and you used them well.”
The Zionist regime’s “successful” use of these weapons resulted in the deaths of at least 67,000 people, with actual figures likely far higher. The deliberate intent to exterminate Palestinians is well-documented by numerous UN reports and other international bodies, alongside arrest warrants issued against Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who infamously labeled Palestinians as “human animals.” Thousands more were killed or injured during months of bombing in Lebanon, while hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by far-right settlers and the IDF in the West Bank.
The spectacle reached a peak when an opposition Israeli lawmaker brandished a paper quietly demanding “recognize Palestine” and was immediately expelled, drawing Trump’s amused reply: “That’s very efficient.”
The arrangement imposed by American imperialism grants no rights to Gaza’s Palestinians—not even a hollow promise of a “Palestinian state.” Israel maintains a permanent occupation with control over Gaza’s borders and reserves the right to launch violent attacks at will. Given Israel’s track record over the last 50 years of systematically breaking ceasefires—from Camp David in 1978, Oslo in 1993, to last November’s brief “pause” in genocidal actions—this reality is inevitable rather than speculative.
The talk of “peace” promoted by Trump, European imperialist leaders, and the corporate media is deeply deceptive. Palestinians who endured two years of genocide now face life amid ruins. More than 300,000 returning residents to Gaza City confront heaps of rubble after Israel demolished three-quarters of the city’s structures.
Under the Orwellian “Board of Peace,” controlled by Trump and backed by unindicted war criminal Tony Blair, Palestinians in Gaza are stripped of all rights. They live at the mercy of imperialist powers and their Zionist enforcers, who guard the enclave’s borders and can unleash ethnic cleansing or mass murder at any moment.
The parallel between Trump’s plan to brutally suppress Palestinians in Gaza and his domestic “Operation Dictatorship” targeting working-class populations in major US cities reveals unrestrained imperial violence abroad is mirrored by moves toward authoritarian rule at home.
Far from paving the way for regional peace, this agreement lays the groundwork for more violent conflicts driven by imperialist plunder. Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar are increasingly integrated into a US-led alliance with Israel focused on overturning Iran’s bourgeois-clerical regime. Trump emphasized that “regime change” in Tehran remains central to his agenda, underscoring that the Gaza genocide provided an opening for the US and Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear program earlier this year. “We took a big cloud off the Middle East and off Israel,” he proudly proclaimed to applause.
Gaza figures prominently in the development of an India-Middle East-Europe trade corridor designed to exclude China and Russia amidst the intensifying scramble among global powers to dominate markets and resources. The swift participation of European imperialist leaders—Germany, France, and Britain—in the signing ceremony in Egypt confirms their commitment to the conflicts ahead under the guise of Gaza’s “reconstruction.”
Even if the deal endures, it offers no solution to the democratic or social demands of Palestinians and oppressed peoples across the region. The idea of a “two-state solution” is unrealistic, given that the current Israeli state arose from imperialist-backed slaughter and the illegal seizure of Palestinian and Syrian lands. Zionism’s strategy of securing a Jewish homeland as safe refuge has proven bankrupt, acknowledged increasingly even by many Jews worldwide. The Zionist regime can only survive through genocide and serving as a US imperialist outpost.
Any Palestinian state endorsed by imperialists and Arab autocrats would be worthless, as evidenced by Trump’s vow to “demilitarise” Gaza and place it under his personal US protectorate. Expanding settlements in the West Bank have severed the Palestinian Authority’s nominal territory from its proposed capital, East Jerusalem.
The signing event in Sharm el Sheikh starkly exposes the failings of regional bourgeois nationalist governments that claimed to oppose or offer alternatives to imperialism. Ultimately, all have sacrificed Palestinian rights to align with imperial powers, enabling the Gaza genocide and endorsing Trump’s sordid pact.
The deal was signed by Trump on behalf of the US, alongside leaders from Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar. Despite vocal condemnation of Israeli atrocities, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime continued supplying oil to Israel via Azerbaijan during the genocide and expanded influence in Syria by backing the US-backed overthrow of the Assad government. Qatar was placated with promises of US military base access and joined other Gulf states in investing nearly $5 billion in financial deals linked to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
No lasting democratic or social rights for the Middle East’s oppressed can be achieved through nationalistic programs—whether Arab, Iranian, Turkish, or Zionist. The desperate conditions faced by Palestinians and the impasse experienced by Israeli workers under Zionism tragically confirm this reality.
Decades of “peace” agreements, endorsed by Arab governments and Palestinian nationalist groups, have only laid the groundwork for further Israeli mass killings and repression.
Palestinians’ tragedy also stems from the lack of solidarity from the global working class due to the absence of a revolutionary movement in advanced nations. The only path toward securing the democratic and social rights of the Middle East’s long-suffering peoples and establishing genuine peaceful coexistence lies in the struggle for the Permanent Revolution. Workers from Arab, Jewish, Iranian, Turkish, and Kurdish backgrounds must unite to resist imperialist domination and forge the United Socialist States of the Middle East, integrated into a worldwide socialist federation. Their true allies are not the pro-imperialist, corrupt Zionist and Arab elites, but the working classes in North America and Europe’s imperial centers.
Building this alliance into an independent, political, and industrial force within the international working class—capable of overthrowing capitalism, the root of genocide, imperialist war, and colonial oppression—is feasible only through the revolutionary socialist program championed by the International Committee of the Fourth International and its daily publication, the World Socialist Web Site.
Original article: World Socialist Web Site
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