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[Prefatory Note: The interview below is a slightly modified version of what was published in CounterPunch on October 9, 2025. It was conducted a few days before that date, that is, prior to the conditional acceptance of the Trump 20 Point Peace Plan by Hamas and Israel. At present, the ceasefire, hostage/prisoner exchange/Israeli partial military withdrawal to an agreed line in Gaza, and the opening of a corridor that will be used for the desperate need of food, fuel, drinkable water, and electricity to be delivered under international auspices and subject to minimal Israeli interference.
The Trump framework is complicated although many crucial details are left unspecified. It should be viewed as a US/Israel negotiated plan with the Palestinians making no public input and given 72 hours to accept such an ultimatum or face an unrestricted Israeli renewal of the genocide.
Can Part II of the 20 points be implemented, assuming the agreed steps in Part I are taken with minimum friction? Should it be? Can pressures make the framework less a completion of the settler colonial undertaking and less reliant on extra-regional leadership (Trump’s self-anointed role as Chair of the Board of Peace, and Blair as among the heads of state who will be its other members overseeing the committee of Palestinian technocrats assigned in Point 9 responsibility for governance on the ground, but subordinate to the Board of Peace?]
The Trump Gaza Plan & the Politics of Coercion
Image by mohammed al bardawil.
In this interview, international legal scholar Richard Falk breaks down Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan. He discusses its coercive nature and the politics of the West at the expense of Palestinian agency and describes the Israeli and Hamas political psychology, as they both face pressure in adhering to or rejecting the plan. This all shows the fragility of dialogue when the continuation of settler-colonialism is at play in pursuit of an imperial grand strategy.
Daniel Falcone: Could you comment on Israel and Hamas and their motivations within the “Trump Plan?”
Richard Falk: Israel and Hamas have reasons to fulfill the first stages of the Trump Plan and share strong pressures to allow it to collapse thereafter. Netanyahu faces analogous pressures from his ultra-right coalition partners (led by Smotrich and Ben Gvir who voted on October 9 to carry to completionf the Gaza City operation to destroy Hamas resistance and avoid signs of weakness by accepting a diplomatic compromise seemingly forced upon Israel by Trump’s coercive threat diplomacy.
Hamas also faces pressures, some relating to its acceptance of a plan heavily weighted in Israel’s favor and devised without its participation in a diplomatic process in conformity to the colonial playbook. The absence of Palestine in the shaping of the plan has problematic implications that bear on Hamas’ future role in Gaza and as an independent political force that has led Palestinian resistance efforts during the past 20 years. This plan is tainted by its perverse impression of rewarding the perpetrators of genocide while punishing victims. It makes no pretense of either procedural or substantive balance with its minimal contributions to the realization of Palestinian rights as put forth in the Plan as virtual acts of charity conferred by the perpetrator and its main complicit supporter.
Despite these drawbacks both Israel and Hamas have pragmatic reasons for adherence. On the Israeli side, after the release of all Israeli hostages by Hamas, there is no longer any need for exhibiting constraint in the future should Israel decide it no longer sufficiently benefits from the plan. By accepting the Trump deal, Netanyahu might also believe that his legitimacy is restored. Israel’s pariah status acquired by its lawless behavior since the October 7 attack will be soon overcome, and this accords a major incentive to Israel to stick with the Plan and not be seen as responsible for its collapse.
Israel might also believe in giving diplomacy a try since Arab states and Muslim majority societies, like Turkey and Malaysia have expressed strong support, adding to the political momentum in favor of the Plan, although if some governments a few days ago have revealed reservations and even skepticism in recent days. Israel has political and economic incentives for Israel to do its part in bringing the violence to an end. Such considerations will undoubtedly be downplayed internally by Israel. To do otherwise would reveal Israel’s growing vulnerability arising from its acute economic precariousness and the related impact of growing informal and formal international hostility and civil society activism. So long as Trump believes the Plan was his brilliant contribution to peacemaking, Israel will probably be reluctant to antagonize the White House by taking responsibility for the collapse of the 20 Point Plan even in the course of Part II especially if the ceasefire phases have been implemented without undue friction.
Reverse considerations are at play on the Hamas side. Giving in to this one-sided Plan, and its ‘negotiation’ by way of an ultimatum, is suggestive of Hamas being squeezed between a rock and a hard place. The surviving population of Gaza quite understandably seeks an end to Israeli violence no matter how high the political costs associated with giving up their resistance. Such a posture is based on a survival-first ethos that involves at least the provisional acceptance of a colonialist governance scheme and a related willingness to allow the restoration of Gaza to become one more success story featuring astronomical profits in the history of disaster capitalism.
Such a Plan deprives Gazans, and Palestinians generally, of any influence in guiding the restoration process and parallel governance arrangements, or reaping the benefits of the economic benefits of their own large offshore natural gas deposits. How a post-genocide Gaza is rebuilt has crucial identity and heritage implications. Choices as to whether to recreate a traditional architectural and residential character or go with international styles of modernism as in Doha or Dubai is of great relevance to restoring the civilizational identity of Gaza as a Palestinian community. determining whether it remains an Arab city or becomes a Western city.
Hamas is internally split and a reality that qualifies its ‘conditional’ acceptance of the Trump Plan. It is ready to implement the prisoner exchange and ceasefire features but is so far holding out when it comes to an acceptance of a unilateral obligation to disarm fully and to endorse post-conflict governance that excludes Palestinian participation. Unlike Israel, Hamas has little to lose by a reasoned repudiation of Trump’s Israel-aligned diplomacy, especially if Israel seems intent on breaking the ceasefire in any event. Of course, a political weakness of the Palestine at present is the absence of authentic leadership selected by a referendum or competitive election in which Hamas is allowed to participate.
The future of the Trump Plan after the probable implementation of its initial phases is a matter of conjecture in a diplomatic atmosphere fraught with uncertainty. Hoping for the best at this stage seems to imply support for an immediate ceasefire of uncertain duration, return of the Israeli hostages/ release of Palestinian prisoners, and negotiations that include Hamas and are designed to determine the post-conflict political future of Gaza, which means above all, the maintenance of the ceasefire.
I refrain from using ‘war’ and ‘peace.’ First, the armed conflict in Gaza was asymmetrical in military capabilities as to make the violence resemble ‘a massacre’ more than ‘a war.’ Second, this alleged turn by the U.S. to threaten diplomacy by way of a ‘take it or leave it’ proposal is better regarded as a continuation of coercion by a threat and ultimatum than a search for peace based on international law. It is a short step away from warning Hamas that if it does not accept the proposal in 72 hours, the U.S. will support an Israeli decision to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza City.
Daniel Falcone: What would happen if the hostages were not released?
Richard Falk: If Israel resumes its military operations or breaches the ceasefire with respect to the delivery of aid, then efforts should be made to restore compliance with the plan. If Hamas refuses to release all the hostages without offering a persuasive explanation, then at this stage there seems a failure of the Trump approach that would lead Israel in all probability to resume its state violence renewing its intention to maintain
internal political life in Gaza and to confine, dispossess, and force Palestinians into another coerced departure.
Israel could limit its reaction to the partial release of the hostages by refusing to withdraw its troops or even redeploying them rather than repudiating the ceasefire. The U.S. reaction such Israeli would be significant, either by being persuaded to throw its weight in support of Israel’s return to genocidal battlefield tactics of conflict-resolution or by counseling a moderate tit-for-tat response — that purported to leave the ceasefire in place and called for further negotiations aimed at achieving the completion of all 20 points in the Trump plan. No matter what Hamas does by way of provocation in relation to the prisoner exchange or other aspects of the Plan, it gives Israel no legal or moral grounds for claiming impunity in relation to the crime of genocide.
Daniel Falcone: Could you remark on how this hardly changes the balance of power in Gaza. Any hope for a short respite in the conflict? Could the deal slow down the production of Greater Israel?
Richard Falk: If Hamas should agree to disarm, and some sort of Arab or Muslim majority stabilization force established order in Gaza during a transition period it would give U.S./Israel substantial control and create a situation where Palestinians on the ground would probably be forced to either leave, submit, or resist. This latter option would expose the Gaza population to harsh policing and lifestyle restrictions that may be unwelcome after years of enduring Israeli oppression either by direct occupation from 1967 to 2005 or the siege from 2007 to the present.
If Israel respected the military withdrawal provisions of the plan, the population of Gaza would at least be free from apartheid style repression that was initiated by the conquest of Palestinian Territories in the 1967 War. If normalization was accompanied by large-scale international aid in relation to construction, education, health, and culture, the daily life experience of Gazans would improve dramatically and objections to the Trump transition setup could wither away and even possibly marginalize Hamas if Palestinian sentiments turned from resistance and liberation to the benefits of normalization.
Israel might allow this normalization scenario to unfold in Gaza and concentrate its political efforts on overcoming its pariah status or shift its militarist attentions to a renewed of war with Iran. The first alternative could lead to many gains by way of prosperous relations with neighbors and the West. It could reaffirm its commitment to democracy and even dismantle its apartheid policies and practices, at first in pre-1967 Israel, but later in the West Bank where it would order the Israeli settlements to either withdraw from Palestine or make a credible adjustment to peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian governing institutions. This seems far-fetched and presupposes the radical reform of Zionist ideology or its abandonment, but nothing short of this can have any realistic chance of delivering a justice-driven future to these embattled two peoples. Algeria and South Africa both reversed courses and transformed into forms of democratic coexistence. Gaza would certainly benefit from a coexistence model instead of the visions for a Greater Israel.
The second alternative would divert attention from the Palestinian agenda, perhaps allowing Israel to extend West Bank control, but with keeping the country on an extended war footing and possibly straining relations with Washington. This would be a risky course of action for Israel as Trump and the Republicans are not eager to spend money on foreign wars and seek to add to their preferred profile as peacemakers, but it might happen anyway if those in the Israeli militarist circles pushing for a second war with Iran as part of Israeli regional stabilization ambitions.
The Zionist Movement has always been content with taking what it can in s present political context without giving up on seeking to come closer to its final goals nationally and regionally. This pattern of salami tactics goes back at least as far as the Balfour Declaration and continued with its acceptance of the UN Partition Plan of 1947, followed by ‘the Green Line’ armistice in the 1948 War, and in phases up to the present. A way of conceiving of the Trump Plan is another such step in the direction of achieving Greater Israel and having the side geopolitical benefit of whitewashing Israel and those governments and corporations complicit regarding responsibility for genocide during the last two years.
Daniel Falcone is a teacher, journalist, and PhD student in the World History program at St. John’s University in Jamaica, NY as well as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He resides in New York City. Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global law, Queen Mary University London, and Research Associate, Orfalea Center of Global Studies, UCSB.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 