On Monday, December 29, the genocidal fascists Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netan-Nazi (aka Netanyahu) met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to discuss the next phase of Trump's so-called "peace plan" in Gaza, and the overall situation in the Middle East.
But the "peace" promised for the Palestinian people is a peace full of freezing to death in flooded tents, hunger, and the drumbeat of random air strikes by the Israeli army killing civilians. It is a "peace" of continued suffering and subjugation.
As it became clear throughout this press conference, the future of the Palestinian people as envisioned by Trump and Netanyahu is one of ethnic cleansing and all-out genocide in one form or another.
While we don’t know what was discussed or debated behind closed doors, their public press conference made three ominous things very clear:
ONE: Maintaining Israel as a heavily armed bastion of support for U.S. imperialism in the strategic region of the Middle East.
During the press conference, Trump repeatedly praised Netanyahu, declaring their relations "could not be better." Netanyahu in turn said that Israel has "never had a friend" like Trump in the White House, that he has “achieved remarkable things in the Middle East.” Netanyahu gushed about Trump and announced that Israel was giving him the country's highest civilian honor, awarding him the Israel Prize (which has never been given to a non-Israeli).
This wasn't just sick personal adoration among genocidal fascists, this was a reflection of the fact that both are deeply committed to maintaining their very tight strategic alliance. As the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian said in his social media message REVOLUTION #35: Ending Apartheid as Part of Ending All Oppression—South Africa is Not a “Model.”:
Maintaining Israel as a “western-oriented” state is of decisive importance for the U.S. imperialists, and in turn the Zionist (Jewish supremacist) nature of Israel is of critical importance in maintaining Israel as this bastion of support for U.S. dominance, especially in opposition to the influence of Iran—and beyond that Russia, and increasingly China—in this strategic region.
Trump and Netan-Nazi do have differences. Trump is aiming to both bolster Israel as its attack dog in the Middle East while also keeping it on a chain—putting some limits on Netanyahu so as to expand and maintain relations with other powers in the Middle East. Netanyahu has not publicly criticized these limits, even as that's putting all kinds of pressure on him and what the fascists grouped around him see as their necessity.1 A full discussion of this is beyond the scope of this article, but it was clear in this press conference that in this public setting, Trump went out of his way not to go there.
Trump Turns Reality Upside Down to Justify Israeli Genocide
In addition, Trump echoed one of Israel's bullshit justifications for the last two plus years of genocide. Trump said that if it weren't for Netanyahu's strength and resolve, “you wouldn’t have Israel any longer. Israel would not exist.”
This not only turns reality upside down, it is a justification for two years of all-out slaughter of the Palestinian people. For Israeli bombings, shootings and forced starvation, and the destruction of the entire infrastructure of Gaza, from homes to hospitals, universities, farms, bakeries, churches and mosques. For slaughter that has led to the killing of at least 71,386 Palestinian people, including over 20,000 children! For bombings that have led to the injury of at least 171,264 and millions terrorized, displaced, and traumatized.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas—the reactionary Islamic fundamentalist organization that was governing Gaza—launched an attack on Israel, which killed nearly 1,200 people. Hamas also kidnapped 251. This included the targeting of civilians, which is a war crime.
But as reactionary and horrific as this attack was, it did not represent some kind of existential threat to Israel, and came nowhere close to the suffering that Israel has imposed for generations on the Palestinian people. Nor is it the case that, as Trump said, Gaza has "been a mess for centuries."
As Bob Avakian wrote on October 20, 2023:
This is not the 1930s and World War 2, when the Nazis, as the ruling power in Germany, carried out horrific atrocities against and mass murder of millions of Jews. The situation today is not one where Palestinians are herding helpless Jews into concentration camps and subjecting them to genocide. The actual situation is the opposite of that.
Israel is a nuclear-armed military power, heavily supplied and supported by the dominant imperialist power in the world, the U.S. Israel has, for generations, imposed apartheid oppression on the Palestinians, denying them basic rights. And, especially with regard to the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children, Israel has denied them even the means to live beyond the most minimal and desperate existence.
To once again emphasize some basic and crucial facts: Israel is a country that, with the backing of major imperialist powers, was founded as a racist, Jewish supremacist state, 75 years ago, on the basis of horrific ethnic cleansing—with mass killing, rape, and destruction of whole villages of the Palestinians, driving masses of Palestinians off of their lands and incorporating that land into the expanding territory that became the state of Israel (which had never existed before World War 2). And now Israel, with the full backing of the U.S. imperialists, is openly carrying out genocide against the Palestinians.
TWO: Continuing Israel’s Genocide
Palestinians return to destroyed buildings in the northern Gaza Strip, January 2, 2026. Photo: AP/Jehad Alshrafi
On October 11 last year, Trump brokered a "peace plan" between Israel and Hamas, based on gangster threats of the all-out extermination of Hamas. But since the ceasefire began, Israel has violated it nearly 900 times! Israel has killed over 400 Palestinians and wounded more than 1,000. They have prevented adequate food and urgently needed humanitarian aid from coming into Gaza, including tents and portable shelters. And Israel has seized more and more Palestinian territory.
Even while Netanyahu and Trump were meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Israel banned some 37 international aid organizations from operating in Gaza. This is a death sentence for many already suffering, with Palestinians in Gaza losing access to food, medical care, water, and other lifesaving support.
But despite all this, Trump hailed Netan-Nazi as a great “wartime leader,” who was "doing phenomenal work." Trump declared Israel was adhering “100 percent” to the ceasefire. “I’m not concerned about anything that Israel is doing,” Trump said.2 This wasn't said out of ignorance, but as a green light for Israel to continue its genocide—with the U.S. providing full political and military backing.
But Trump did threaten Hamas, which has largely been adhering to the ceasefire. He claimed Hamas had agreed to disarm (they haven’t3) and threatened there would be “hell to pay” if it didn’t disarm “in a very short period of time.” He also claimed there were other forces in the region eager to “wipe out Hamas.”
While Hamas is a reactionary organization that used its arms to target Israeli civilians, and has been a repressive force among Palestinians, you have to ask: why should Hamas be forced to disarm when Israel, an illegitimate apartheid terrorist state, is being re-armed to the tune of billions in advanced weaponry?
The U.S. and Israel's demand that Hamas disarm is part of enforcing the overall submission of the Palestinian people and a surrender of their basic rights.
Looming Threat of Return to All-Out Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza
Deadly Israeli attack on Gaza City causes panic and fear | Al Jazeera English
In another part of this press conference, Trump re-raised his outrageous “proposal” to ethnically cleanse all of Gaza (even though his so-called “peace plan” promised this wouldn’t happen). Trump welcomed a reporter’s claim that half of Gaza’s population wants to leave. “I heard that number today, half of Gaza would leave. I’ve always said it…I think it would be a great opportunity.”4
These threats are coming in the context of Trump and Netanyahu reportedly moving forward to phase two of Trump’s so-called “peace plan,” which is shaping up as the deadly combination of fascist genocide and business-as-usual imperialist plunder.
The goal: completely transforming Gaza and making it impossible to continue as a Palestinian territory.
So far, it has meant Israeli control of over half of Gaza. Over 90 percent of the population has been pushed into the other half—which American made bombs dropped by Israel have turned into a decimated wasteland, a hell-scape of ruin. At least 10,000 bodies lie under 68 million tons of rubble. The ground is toxic and littered with unexploded bombs. If the only options are living in freezing tents amid rubble, sewage and death, it may be that many people in Gaza do want to leave—despite knowing that, just as when Palestinian people were driven from their homeland in 1948, they may never be able to return.
Meanwhile, there are indications Israel may attempt to permanently occupy or seize control of much of Gaza. And the "plans" for the future of Gaza being floated out by the Trump fascists are, as we wrote before, an "imperialist predator’s vision of feasting—and profiting—off the broken bones, slaughtered children, and smoking ruins of the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza."
For an overview and background on Trump’s plan see revcom.us coverage HERE and HERE.
THREE: Trump Backs Israel’s Threats to Strike Iran
Israel is in the midst of a killing spree across the Middle East, now focused in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria.5 And recently it has been agitating for new attacks on Iran.
While Trump sought to rein Netanyahu in when it came to the West Bank and Syria, Trump joined in the bloodthirsty threats on Iran. “We’ll knock the hell out of them,”6 Trump threatened, if Iran rebuilds its missile program and/or its nuclear program—both of which the U.S. and Israel illegally attacked last year. More recently Trump threatened military intervention if Iran’s Islamic Republic used violence against rising protests against the regime.
An Openly Fascist Leap to Dominate Gaza and the Middle East, a Grave Danger for Humanity
Protests in Washington DC, Chicago and LA against the US bombing of Iran, June 22, 2025. Screenshot: x @anadoluagency
Trump and Netanyahu are depraved fascists responsible for rivers of blood and the slaughter of innocents. And even with profound and sharp differences about how to rule this system, Genocide Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party are no less responsible for the genocide of the Palestinian people.
But we have to go deeper to understand what is driving this, and where the interests of humanity lie. To draw again from Bob Avakian, this time from a social media message from last August, REVOLUTION #76: The Democratic Party Convention: Delegates chant “We Love Genocide!”:
But it is not just a matter of the depraved nature of these politicians—Democrat and Republican. Much more fundamentally, it is a matter of this system of capitalism-imperialism which requires people willing to commit these monstrous acts. Again from my message number Seventy-Four:
This system forces the people who rise to the top of it, and rule it, to be literally—without any exaggeration—cut-throat exploiters, murderous oppressors on a massive scale, and relentless plunderers of people and the environment, regardless of the suffering this causes for masses of human beings. For individual capitalists, and for the ruling classes of capitalist countries, if they do not beat out and beat down others, by whatever means, no matter how monstrous, they will go under. This cannot be “reformed away,” and it cannot be changed by changing the people who rule in this system—they will all be bound by the very nature, the “logic” and dynamics, and the demands of this system.
This can only be changed with a revolution—to overthrow and abolish this system, and replace it with a fundamentally different and much better system, which does not rest on, does not require, and aims to fully do away with ruthless exploitation and monstrous mass murder and destruction.
The basic principles and the practical guidelines for this system are laid out concretely in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have written. It is this fundamentally different system that we must be insisting on, and fighting for—accepting nothing less—if we really want to put an end to all the madness and unnecessary suffering that the masses of humanity are subjected to, in this country and throughout the world, and set out instead on the only possible and realistic road of emancipating all of humanity.
