Trump's sham 'peace plan' for Palestine is a year old, more than 1,500 have been killed in Gaza since
Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and US president Donald Trump (right). Trump’s Knesset address a year ago endorsed Netanyahu’s claim that he had 'won' and committed to working with him to make Israel 'stronger, and bigger and better than it’s ever been before'. File photo: AP/Alex Brandon
Twelve days ago, five Palestinian civilians were killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza. They included three women and one child. Last Friday, three Israeli drone attacks killed seven people, two of whom were women and one a child.
A year ago a peace was formally announced, but here we are, six days into year four of Israel’s continuing Western-sponsored genocide.
There have been many shameful days in the history of American foreign policy, but one was this time last year when President Donald Trump visited Israel and Egypt to promote his ‘comprehensive’ peace plan. Many thought it a sham; the last year has proven it so.
At least 1,480 civilians have been killed in Gaza since then, 320 of them children. More than 5,000 have been seriously injured. Four Israeli soldiers were killed; independent sources say the IDF mounted 4,000 attacks on Gaza over that time. Numerous sources have verified that Israel targeted aid convoys and humanitarian buffer zones, significantly increasing the number of fatalities.
The 1,480 killed may appear unremarkable against the c.80,000 (with thousands more under the 60 million tonnes of rubble) slaughtered over the first two years of the genocide. Official data suggests otherwise.
In the eight years before 2023, the number of Palestinians killed each year in Gaza was a fraction of the total killed in the 12 months since Trump announced his ‘comprehensive’ peace. In fact, the number killed in the last year is twice the total number of Palestinians that Israel killed between 2015 and 2022.
Israel is actively degrading life for the 2.1 million Palestinians who survive. It has tightened its control over 65% of Gaza, herding the indigenous people into the remaining 35%. 80% of Gaza’s buildings have been destroyed: most of its schools and its hospitals cannot function.
Most of the institutional West latched onto Trump’s plan; even Palestine’s greatest European ally, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez, chose to be in Sharm el-Sheikh for its official unveiling. That was the second element of the day’s pageantry; one that Trump’s earlier address to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, rendered meaningless.
The eulogistic tone of all those who spoke would have embarrassed many, but not Trump. Knesset speaker Amir Ohana went back two-and-a-half millennia to compare him to Cyrus the Great.
Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Yair Lapid were no less fulsome; Lapid reminded the world why Israel’s rights, found in the Book of Genesis, are non-negotiable: "And I will give you, and your descendants after you, the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession”.
Israel, expecting a peace plan centred on its interests, was not to be disappointed! Trump’s own speech took over an hour to deliver. Palestine and its people were mentioned only once, when, without a hint of irony, he said that provided they committed to peace, Palestinians might expect "a return to the basics of life".
Their cause is hopeless as long as America is in control.
Trump and his team of advisers' real ambition was clear; his cabal of son-in-law Jared Kushner, acolyte Steve Witkoff, and global diplomatic wizard Tony Blair made little effort to camouflage it. Team Trump wants to transform Gaza’s rubble into an economic boom for the US, its western and Arab allies and the Trump family.
There was one truth in Trump’s remarks: that since Israel’s foundation, the US had partnered with it "through thick and thin…through glory and heartache". This has been different, though. Never before has that support directly facilitated the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians.
Since its foundation in 1948, Israel has received more than $300 billion in military and financial aid from the US, averaging about $3.2bn a year; over the last three years, it has received $32bn, or about $10.6bn annually.
When Joe Biden, in October 2023, promised "unprecedented" levels of support, he sparked a genocide that is as much America’s as it is Israel’s. We shouldn’t forget that Joe Biden, a self-declared zionist, his vice president Kamala Harris and secretary of state Anthony Blinken formed an unprecedented phalanx of support for Israel.
Trump’s strongly pro-Israel first term suggested no change when he regained office in 2024; in truth, the only difference between him and Biden has been style. Trump’s Knesset address a year ago endorsed Netanyahu’s claim that he had "won" and committed to working with him to make Israel "stronger, and bigger and better than it’s ever been before".
Proceedings in Israel’s parliament on October 13, 2025, showed the West was prepared to praise and reward settler-colonial Israel for its brutal subjugation of the Palestinians. Only Trump could have described the genocide as a "victory" for Israel.
Only Trump could have touted a peace plan that was so obviously centred on wealth-creation for Israel, its allies and his own family. Only Trump could have declared the rebuilding of Gaza for the benefit of monied Western and Arab nations and private interests a "comprehensive peace".
Some nations refused to join his peace board, but few analysed the plan or highlighted its malign intent. America’s president made no effort to hide its ambition.
It would breathe life into the zionist idyll of greater Israel, but the transformation would do more than deliver that political outcome; it would create a regional economic powerhouse that would enrich his Arab allies and, of course, his own family. Trump and those backing him see no irony in backing the zionist determination to build greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates while criminalising those who support Palestine by chanting "from the river to the sea".
Israel is inherently expansionist; without that fundamental being challenged, nothing will change. Trump’s address to the Knesset and his faux peace plan, formalised a year ago, represent a chilling exposition of contemporary Western colonialism.
In the Knesset, a US president greenlit the ultimate zionist ambition. Largely courtesy of the United States, the institutional West’s disinterest in the truth remains intact as the genocide continues.
- Fintan Drury’s book, (Merrion Press), is available in all bookshops for €18.99
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