A near-term peace for Israel-Gaza?

Thomas Meyer wrote a couple of weeks ago:

No one can say whether the hastily announced end of the war in the Middle East was once again only a bluff or whether there soon could be a further escalation. Or whether there really will be a turning point because Iran has been successfully prevented from building nuclear weapons. Nothing is certain with Trump.¹

This has been very little to indicate that the “nothing is certain” part of Trump’s diplomatic style has any notable conscious strategy of ambiguity behind it. He just changes his mind all the time, depending on what reality-TV impulse is striking him at the moment.

But it seems like wishful thinking to assume that “Iran has been successfully prevented from building nuclear weapons.” On the contrary, the “twelve-day war” in which Israel and the US attacked Iran has given the Iranian government maximum incentive to acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible. Dick Cheney and George W. Bush worked hard to do away with the international nuclear-arms-limitation arrangements. Obama partially reversed it, Trump 1.0 trashed it, Bide did little to restore it, and now Trump and Netanyahu have taken a big new step to wreck it further.

At this writing, we’re trying to see if Trump 2.0 can get Netanyahu to agree to a new ceasefire which Netanyahu himself will break in his usual pattern.

Sultan Barakat and former Israeli diplomat and current Haaretz columnist Alon Pinkas discuss the current precarious situation here²:

Pinkas served from 2000 to 2004 as the Israeli Consul General in New York and had positions as a senior foreign policy advisor to the Israeli government.

The Iranian historian and genocide scholar Omer Bartov in this interview discusses the ongoing genocide Israel is committing in Gaza³:

Bartov describes the current situation this way:

Q: The Israeli government says that it does its utmost to avoid civilian casualties while fighting an enemy which uses civilians as shields. Is that an argument that in your opinion is as valid today as it was 18 months ago?

Bartov: Absolutely not. It's absolutely not true. And not only that, to say that there is fighting, that there's a war going on in Gaza itself is a misnomer. There is no war. There are a few guerilla units that come out every once in a while and fire an RPG rocket or shoot some sniper fire, but there is no real fighting. And the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] is saying it itself. It's admitting that, when you have, as your screen says, close to 58,000 people dead, of whom between 60 and 70% are civilians, half of them children, at least.

And some estimates bring it up 100,000 with an estimated 130,000 wounded, many of them severely mutilated. Then one cannot say that the IDF is doing everything it can to prevent such losses. The IDF is involved right now in completely flattening Gaza and the Minister of Defense just today, Minister Katz, said that the plan of of Israel with the IDF, of course, is to concentrate people in a so-called humanitarian town, which would look everything like a concentration camp over the ruins of the city of Rafa that has been entirely flattened. [starts at 4:30 in the video]

Drop Site News has a report of 07/08/2025 that discusses the military proficiency of the guerrilla fighters on the Palestinians side in Gaza in more detail than we often hear about them.⁴

And Israel’s leading Cassandra voice has a sobering take on the moment⁵:

1. Mayer, Thomas (2025): Trump, der Bulldozer der Nato. Der Standard 24.06.2025. <https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000275237/trump-der-bulldozer-der-nato> (Accessed: 2025-08-07). My translation to English.

2. Analysts warn Israel’s Rafah plan signals systematic Palestinian displacement. Al Jazeera English YouTube channel 07/08/2025. (Accessed: 2025-08-07).

3. "The IDF is involved, right now, in completely flattening Gaza" Omer Bartov interview. DW News YouTube channel 08.07.2025. (Accessed: 2025-08-07).

4. Netanyahu and Trump Meet in DC as Qassam Ambush Stuns Israeli Forces. Drop Site News YouTube channel 07/08/2025.

5. Trump gives Israel "carte blanche" for Gaza atrocities: Gideon Levy. Al Jazeera English YouTube channel 07/08/2025. (Accessed: 2025-08-07).