ICAHD’s Jeff Halper responds to Trump’s Gaza plan presented at the White House

Here follows is a video I did immediately after the shameful and cynical White House performances by Trump & Netanyahu in which they presented their 21-point “plan” to end the genocide in Gaza and bring "peace to the Middle East" -- without the Palestinians. It was a stunning display of the neo-colonial, transactional world that Trump & Netanyahu represent, a world run by ignorance and absolute self-interest void of history, any notion of justice, contempt of International law or human rights, lacking all values except the quest for money and power.

How Trump treats the Palestinians resembles how he treats the victims of his own real estate "development" projects, his tenants in their tens of thousands, mainly poor, callously displaced from their homes and neighborhoods for the building of Trump Towers or one of his casinos. No “art of the deal” here. Like Trump's tenant-victims, the Palestinians are simply shut out of the process of determining their own future. The “deals” Trump makes in business are between rich people – landlords, landowners, banks, other real estate “developers,” politicians, contractors; in "Deal of the Century" affecting most of all the Palestinians, only between states: the US, Israel and the Arab regimes who care about the Palestinians about as much as Trump cares about the people he displaces. The Palestinians, like his tenants, have no rights or status. They are not parties, they do not deserve to be consulted, let alone be negotiated with. Simply a bunch of nothings to be pushed aside.

What we witnessed in the White House was a display of the degree to which Israel dictates American policy -- if Trump's and Witkoff's amateurish and sporadic dabbling can be called "policy." And the degree to which the Palestinians don’t matter. What we witnessed was nothing less than a set up: if Hamas does not agree to total surrender and abandoning the political struggle for which they paid so high a price, if the Palestinian Authority itself does not repudiate the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and accept the Judaization of their country, then the US will allow Israel "to finish the job."

In the video I explain how the 21 point "plan" represents nothing more than Israel getting its hostages back, walking away from its genocide and destruction and moving on to normalize Israel and its de facto annexation of the West Bank through the impending Abraham Accords.

I also try to unravel the confusion sowed by the four interconnected political processes underway that will lead to an internationally accepted Israeli apartheid regime over all historic Palestine:

(1) the Gaza “peace plan,” which ends Israel's pacification of Gaza, leaves it under permanent Israeli military control but relieves Israel of all responsibility for the death and destruction is caused;

(2) Trump’s “Vision for Peace,” his plan, presented in 2020, for "two states" comprising Israel AND all its settlements on 80-85% of Palestine and a Palestinian "state" on a series of disconnected enclaves, a semi-sovereign, non- viable "entity";

(3) The Abraham Accords which then seek to normalize the regime of two-state apartheid, with the complicity of the Arab and many Muslim states; and

(4) The international recognition of a "Palestinian state" we have just seen, who fail to specify that state's borders enable an Israeli apartheid regime to pass as a "two-state" solution. The international community never recognized the Bantustans established by apartheid South Africa to free 89% of South Africa for the white population exclusively. But as last week’s UN vote demonstrated, the international community WILL recognize the US/Israeli-created Palestinian Bantustan, thus feeding into the Abraham Accords, the death-knell of Palestinian aspirations.

There is little political space for struggle after normalization. We must keep our political focus on processes #2 & 3 in particular, Israel's endgame.

The video deals with the political implications of the 21-point plan, which constitutes the utter surrender of Hamas, close to Netanyahu's goal of "total victory”. On an immediate practical level, it would end Israel's military operations and so save Palestinian lives, which is of course a consideration as well. Talk about devil's deal!

Please share this if you find it useful. We need to magnify each other's critical voices since we have no access to the mainstream media.

Jeff Halper
Director, ICAHD

1 October 2025

Watch a recording of Jeff's statement here