Middle East Press On: Gaza Ceasefire, Two State Solution, Colonial Violence: New Age Islam's Selection, 10 October 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
10 October 2025
What Trump’s Gaza Plan Means For The Two-State Solution
Gaza Ceasefire: Between Political Declaration And Field Reality
Our Greatest Prize Is For The People Of Gaza To Reclaim Their Lives
In Paris, A Meeting That Will Protect Israel’s Colonial Violence
Urgent Next Steps For Palestine At The UN: Time To Invoke ‘Uniting For Peace’
After The Prisoner Exchange, Over 11,000 Palestinian Hostages Will Remain
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What Trump’s Gaza Plan Means For The Two-State Solution
Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg
October 09, 2025
Donald Trump’s peace plan is focused on Gaza, but it includes a vague reference to Palestinian statehood. The plan went through a number of iterations, taking into account input from the various parties. Point 19 of the edited version of the plan, as released by the White House, states: “While Gaza redevelopment advances and when the PA reform program is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.” Notice that it says that conditions “may finally be in place” for a “pathway to Palestinian statehood.”
To reassure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even further, point 20 states the US, not the UN or other mediators, “will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous coexistence.”
These conditions the plan attaches to peace moves beyond Gaza were clearly some of the edits that Netanyahu insisted on to accept the plan. The White House acquiesced to get the deal through. Still, this is significant because, after many years of rejecting even such remote and vague references, Netanyahu is changing course. It is also the first time that Trump, in his second term, has expressed public support for a Palestinian state.
This administration resisted moves to advance the two-state solution for many months, reversing established US policy that had, for 50 years, supported this approach. Consecutive administrations actively engaged with Arabs and Israelis in an effort to make it happen. But this year, the US reversed course and fought efforts made by the international community, led by Saudi Arabia and France, to implement that solution. The administration went as far as sending demarches to scores of countries to dissuade them from joining this movement, threatening retaliation against those states that recognized the state of Palestine.
So even those tepid references to a Palestinian state in the most recent version of the Gaza plan are significant, as they signal that the US is not going to resist international efforts to make it happen. It appears that the recognition of Palestine by the US could be used by American interlocutors as leverage in their negotiations with both sides of the conflict. Eventually, it has to happen because a two-state solution is the only sustainable pathway toward peace, stability and shared prosperity in the Middle East. It is also the surest way to defuse tensions and defeat extremism and terrorism in the region.
The momentum toward the realization of a two-state solution appears to be unstoppable. The Gaza genocide has finally persuaded the doubters of the heavy price of reluctance and hesitation. Too many countries have waited too long to grant the Palestinians what is their due in the form of an independent and viable state.
But they are waiting no more. One after the other, they announced this much-delayed decision at the UN General Assembly last month. There are now nearly 160 nations that recognize the state of Palestine, about 82 percent of the UN’s membership. The remaining countries are most likely waiting for a message from the US to do so.
In the Americas, only the US and Panama remain outside the global consensus. Similarly, in Africa, 52 states out of 54 have recognized Palestine as a state. In Asia, only Japan, South Korea and Myanmar remain, although Japan has indicated it may do so soon. The bulk of the resistance, about 15 states, is in those European nations still tormented by their roles in perpetrating the Holocaust. Others are run by far-right parties that have much in common with the far right in power in Israel. However, popular pressure is mounting on these laggards to join the unstoppable momentum of Palestinian statehood.
The New York Declaration and the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution marked the high points of this year’s UNGA, which coincided with the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the world organization.
The question of Palestine dominated the early years of the UN, as it does now, and there was clear conviction among the participants that this last vestige of colonialism has to end with the same compromise envisioned in the UN Partition Plan of 1947 by realizing a state for the Palestinians to live side by side in peace and security with Israel. The conference served as a catalyst for more than a dozen countries to grant full de jure recognition to the state of Palestine.
The Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, led by Saudi Arabia, France, Norway, the Arab League and the EU, has generated so much interest that almost every nation in the world has joined. The New York Declaration, which was endorsed by the UNGA, includes a clear pathway to full Palestinian statehood. The alliance has several working groups on political, economic, security and governance issues for participating countries to develop working plans.
The current Israeli government is in clear opposition to these moves. In panic, it has hastily adopted a plan to establish large settlements dissecting the West Bank, with the purpose of making a Palestinian state difficult to achieve. Under the guidance of its most extremist ministers, it has unleashed violent settlers to burn and terrorize Palestinian villages. Its minister of finance, another right-wing fanatic, has withheld hundreds of millions of dollars accrued to the Palestinian Authority from customs revenues in order to starve Palestinian institution of funds.
In response, the Emergency Coalition for the Financial Sustainability of the Palestinian Authority was announced on Sept. 27, following the UN conference and the announcement of the Trump plan. Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and the UK announced the launch of the new grouping to deal with the urgent and unprecedented financial crisis confronting the PA.
The immediate purpose is to “stabilize the PA’s finances and preserve its ability to govern, provide essential services, and maintain security, all of which are indispensable to regional stability and to preserving the two-state solution,” according to a statement released by the coalition, which was formed in the belief that short-term aid alone is not sufficient. What is needed is a sustainable, predictable and coordinated funding mechanism, working with international financial institutions and key partners to mobilize resources, support ongoing governance and economic reforms, and ensure full transparency and accountability.
Trump’s peace plan for Gaza is a good start, but the work of the global alliance is needed now more than ever to continue the march toward the realization of a sovereign and viable Palestinian state.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2618306
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Gaza Ceasefire: Between Political Declaration And Field Reality
by Peiman Salehi
October 9, 2025
The ceasefire announced on 9 October 2025 appears to mark a turning point after two years of exhausting military and humanitarian devastation in Gaza. Yet, upon closer examination, it raises more questions than it answers.
According to official statements, the “first phase” of the deal includes halting hostilities, the exchange of prisoners and hostages, and a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces from certain parts of Gaza (Al Jazeera). If verified and implemented in good faith, these steps could reduce the short-term costs of war. But the political architecture of the agreement the mechanisms of enforcement, monitoring, and its linkage to unresolved files such as governance, reconstruction, and the future of Gaza’s security will determine whether this ceasefire can survive beyond the declaration stage.
Experience offers little reason for optimism. The United States has repeatedly stepped back from its own commitments in recent years: unilaterally withdrawing from the JCPOA, ignoring post-agreement obligations, and paving the way for the reactivation of UN sanctions under the so-called “snapback mechanism”( Government). When the self-proclaimed guardian of a “rules-based order” behaves selectively toward international agreements, confidence in political guarantees for Gaza’s ceasefire remains understandably thin.
Inside Israel, domestic political logic hardly aligns with the discipline required for precise implementation. Prime Minister Netanyahu, cornered by public discontent, a fragile coalition, and ongoing legal troubles, faces incentives to prioritise optics over substance. Similar dynamics have played out before: after brief calm along the Lebanese border last year(Atlantic Council), the cycle of escalation resumed quickly. Without a transparent monitoring framework and tangible costs for violations, the risk of relapse remains high.
The core question, therefore, is whether this ceasefire is the beginning of a sustainable political process or merely a tactical pause for repositioning. Two conditions will shape the answer. First, step-by-step verification: the release of hostages and easing of humanitarian restrictions must follow a measurable timeline under impartial supervision. Otherwise, mistrust will regenerate instantly. Second, clarifying Gaza’s governance structure: unless a viable formula is reached among Palestinian actors for administering the Strip, the ceasefire will remain a “crisis deferral”, not a resolution.
The debate over Hamas’s disarmament illustrates the same structural tension. Some mediators assume that reducing Hamas’s military capacity guarantees stability. But history since 1948 shows that the roots of conflict are not merely military; they lie in occupation, inequality, and identity-based grievances ( The Guardian ). Rapid disarmament without a credible governance framework or human security guarantees may create a power vacuum, reproducing cycles of domination and instability. Sustainable security is a product of political architecture, not simply the absence of weapons.
Economically, if implemented, the ceasefire could temporarily ease the “war premium” on energy and maritime insurance markets, lowering transport costs through the Red Sea and Eastern Mediterranean. Yet this effect is fragile; any field-level setback could reverse it overnight. The real opportunity lies in reconstruction. Qatar, Turkey and China possess both the financial and technical capacity to launch multi-national infrastructure projects, but without transparency, security guarantees, and a credible local governance roadmap, serious investors will price the risk too high. An economy of peace can only exist when a politics of peace is institutionalised.
For Iran, this juncture represents both an opportunity and a test. The opportunity lies in moving from a cycle of confrontation to one of constructive influence through reconstruction diplomacy, infrastructure engineering, energy cooperation, and coordination with Asian capital. The test, however, is strategic restraint: any premature move without a clear cost-benefit assessment could drag Tehran into operational frictions within the ceasefire framework. A realistic policy means focusing on human security, economic engagement, and coordination with guarantors (Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey), while maintaining deterrence lines against potential breaches.
Within Israel, the ceasefire may mark not the end of crisis but the start of a new political battle. Netanyahu could use the truce to claim credit for freeing hostages and easing international pressure, restoring part of his lost legitimacy. Yet the far-right bloc sees any tangible concession as a political cost. On the Palestinian side, Hamas must demonstrate real humanitarian and governance gains to retain public legitimacy. In this context, third-party mediation and credible oversight become decisive: without clear implementation benchmarks, both sides will “win the blame game” while the ceasefire itself loses.
Ultimately, this truce remains a peace on paper a political announcement with real potential but heavy risks. If the release of hostages, facilitation of aid, and troop redeployment proceed under verifiable timelines and impartial supervision, a transition from crisis management to transition management becomes possible. But if Washington again allows a gap between declaration and enforcement, or if Tel Aviv clings to hard-security logic over institutional peacebuilding, this ceasefire will likely become another episode of crisis delay rather than crisis resolution.
History’s memory is clear: peace without justice and legitimate governance does not last and one-sided disarmament brings neither stability nor security, only a new shape to an old crisis.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251009-gaza-ceasefire-between-political-declaration-and-field-reality/
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Our Greatest Prize Is For The People Of Gaza To Reclaim Their Lives
by Muhammad Jamil
October 9, 2025
The ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip has entered its third year. Yet many Western governments, especially the European Union members, still refuse to formally acknowledge it. Instead, they continue their economic and security partnerships with Israel, supplying the weapons that have devastated the Palestinian people.
From the very first day of this extermination campaign, Western officials and their media outlets rushed to adopt the Israeli narrative. When civilians were targeted, massacres committed, and schools and hospitals bombed, they framed it as “legitimate military action.” When children were killed, their bodies torn apart, and entire families erased from the civil registry, they were omitted from news bulletins and newspaper headlines. And when the victims turned into numbers, those numbers were cast into doubt, because they came from Gaza’s own Ministry of Health.
Every effort was made, and continues to be made, to portray the occupier as the victim, to insist that 7 October 2023 was when the story began. But the truth which cannot be ignored is that this story began more than a century ago, when Balfour; who neither owned the land nor had the right to give it away, promised a homeland in Palestine to those who did not deserve it. The British Mandate that followed merely carried out that pledge. Since then, the Palestinian people have moved from one catastrophe to the next. Today, we are witnessing a massacre that has entered its third year; a horror unprecedented in modern history.
The West and its media have deliberately ignored the Palestinians’ century-long ordeal, instead amplifying Israel’s biblical framing: portraying the people of Gaza as “the Amalekites of our time,” deserving of death because they allegedly beheaded children, burned them in ovens, and raped women. These grotesque lies, quickly disproven, were nonetheless repeated endlessly to legitimise the genocide.
Only weeks ago, after famine claimed the lives of women, children, the sick, and the elderly, a slight shift began to appear in some Western governments and media outlets. In Britain and France, for instance, the horrors had become impossible to ignore. Calls for an end to the war grew louder. Newspapers that had once echoed Israel’s propaganda began publishing reports and photographs of starvation and devastation, urging Netanyahu to be restrained.
But this soft change came far too late. It came after the genocide had already been enabled. It was not a moral awakening, but a reaction to mounting public pressure and the flood of international reports documenting the atrocities in painstaking detail. Even now, while shedding crocodile tears and issuing calls for a ceasefire, these same governments continue to arm Israel. Their so-called “sanctions” are token gestures that carry no weight, no real pressure to halt the crimes.
Had this been a genuine shift of principle, a true awakening of conscience, these governments and their media would have taken a firm stand to stop the massacre. Instead, we heard empty words, noise that faded as quickly as it rose, while the lies continued. Their behaviour makes it clear: they are not trying to save what remains of Gaza, a land, but to save Israel itself from the grip of a messianic, blood-soaked leader who has turned it into a pariah state.
October 7th, 2023 marked a dividing line between two orders: one governed by international law, built on the sacrifices of nations and the principle that the right to life is inviolable, and another crafted by the occupier and its backers, who have placed Israel above the law, granting it the authority to decide who deserves to live and who must die.
The so-called international order and all its institutions have been dealt a mortal blow. No attempt to revive them will succeed without restoring justice to the victims for whom these very institutions were meant to exist. How can this system be revived when it lies buried beneath the rubble with more than 70,000 human beings?
For two long years of genocide, no one has managed to stop the atrocities. The world’s contribution has been limited to statements, appeals, and wishes for the bloodshed to end. Only a handful of states took meaningful action, severing relations, imposing sanctions, or filing genocide cases before the International Court of Justice, but their efforts were far from enough. Had 140 nations joined them, the picture today would be different.
The Palestinians have been left alone to face a feral beast that uses every weapon of death, destruction, and starvation. Day after day, Israel escalates its crimes, recently launching an intensive bombardment of Gaza, one of the world’s oldest cities, flattening entire neighbourhoods as its tanks advance to satisfy Netanyahu’s obsession with an illusion of total victory.
The ongoing genocide in Gaza has stripped bare the international community’s hypocrisy, exposing its paralysis in the face of Israeli arrogance and Western colonial complicity led by the United States. It has also laid bare the moral decay of the Arab and Islamic regimes, their shameful submission, and in some cases, their betrayal through political, media, economic, and even military support for Israel amidst the carnage.
While people across the West and much of the world rise up daily in protest, most Arab and Muslim populations are forbidden from expressing even the smallest act of solidarity. In some places, even displaying a Palestinian flag is treated as a crime. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has itself pursued activists showing peaceful solidarity with Gaza, silencing and suppressing all forms of protest.
As for the Israeli society that the West so loves to mourn, it openly celebrates genocide. Even those labelled as “leftists” have shown no collective moral sensitivity. The nation has fallen under the grip of a religious current driven by messianic zeal for a “Greater Israel.” Calls for annexing the West Bank, demolishing Al-Aqsa Mosque, and building the Temple grow louder by the day, and dreams of expansion beyond historic Palestine have become part of the political agenda. The recent protests within Israel are not for justice or peace but they are attempts to pressure Netanyahu into accepting a prisoner exchange deal, to save soldiers’ lives, and to rescue a collapsing economy. As the war drags on, Israel’s isolation deepens.
Now, as we await the crucial hours ahead, we pray for the ceasefire agreement to take effect. This is the hope we have been having for more than two years. We also hope there will be guarantees to prevent Netanyahu from manipulating this truce, so that it may lay the groundwork for a lasting end to the cycle of killing and destruction. There is a sense of cautious consensus that this time may be different: Donald Trump, after all, is seeking a Nobel Peace Prize to be announced this Friday. Let him have his trophy.
But our greatest prize, however, is for the people of Gaza to reclaim their lives.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251009-our-greatest-prize-is-for-the-people-of-gaza-to-reclaim-their-lives/
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In Paris, A Meeting That Will Protect Israel’s Colonial Violence
by Ramona Wadi
October 9, 2025
Today, diplomats from Europe and the Middle East will meet in France to discuss the transition in Gaza. While the meeting endorses the US plan for Gaza, or perhaps one should say Israel because there is no security for Palestinians in ongoing colonialism and genocide, Israeli officials are maintaining that the meeting in Paris will undermine US negotiation efforts.
The US announced the agreement for the first phase of the ceasefire, which will see an exchange of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners, as well as a partial withdrawal of the Israeli military.
In France, diplomats will be discussing transitional governance for Gaza, humanitarian aid and reconstruction, an international stabilisation force and disarming Hamas. Predictably, the meeting will also seek ways to strengthen the Palestinian Authority and its security services. To summarise the above, Western and Middle Eastern diplomats will be seeking ways to maintain the previous status quo in a territory marked by Israel’s genocide, with no recognition as to what contributed to these two years of genocide.
Let us also not forget Israel has managed to normalise genocide to the point that it is now also part of ‘the conflict’ spectrum. It follows a twisted logic that, since the 1948 Nakba and even before, the Zionist forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, torture and massacres of Palestinians across colonised Palestine were deemed conflict by the UN. Israel’s genocide in Gaza unleashed all the previous atrocities accompanied by unbridled military force, supported by the West. Which part of genocide will the West now deem as falling far from the wide umbrella designated as conflict? The colonial discourse supporting Israel’s security narrative must be dissected and exposed for what it is and what it achieved against the Palestinian people.
Palestinians in Gaza have suffered devastating losses. The diplomatic efforts render these losses inconsequential by eliminating Palestinian input. Symbolic recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state, as well as the two-state paradigm, will underpin these discussions. But Palestine does not belong to world leaders to dispose of it as they deem fit for Israel’s colonial expansion.
The two-state paradigm is obsolete. If the West, like UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, maintain there is no plan B, they can look at genocide, which was given two years to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. Decolonisation, which is what many Palestinians have called for, would not have included genocide, but the UN is averse to dismantling the Zionist colonial structure which it helped to create. This is why it allowed genocide, and why world leaders are keen to return to the diplomatic safety of the two-state paradigm which has proved to be perilous for the Palestinian people.
The least the Paris meeting should achieve is recognition of the Palestinian people’s legitimate anti-colonial struggle. Israel is not the victim here; it has never been. Any attempt to marginalise Palestinians from politics through the two-state discourse, especially after witnessing what obsolete paradigms can reap in colonial politics, enables the extension of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251009-in-paris-a-meeting-that-will-protect-israels-colonial-violence/
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Urgent Next Steps For Palestine At The UN: Time To Invoke ‘Uniting For Peace’
By Nicolas J. S. Davies
October 9, 2025
As US President Donald Trump surely intended, his “20-point Gaza plan” succeeded in upstaging calls by many other world leaders at the UN General Assembly for concrete, coordinated UN-led measures to force Israel to end its criminal genocide in Gaza and the illegal occupation of Palestine.
Trump’s White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 29 coincided with the last day of the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York, where Trump had met with eight Arab and Muslim leaders at the UN and won their support for a proposed plan for Gaza. In a textbook bait-and-switch, Trump then allowed the Israelis to significantly alter his plan before he unveiled it to the world at his meeting with Netanyahu, but pretended it was the same plan that the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and other countries had endorsed.
Trump’s plan is based on cornering Hamas into a series of steps it has not agreed to: freeing all the Israeli prisoners in Gaza without a full Israeli withdrawal; surrendering its weapons and its role in Palestinian politics and handing Gaza over to a new phase of Israeli occupation. Gaza would be governed by a “board” headed by Trump and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who not only invaded Iraq alongside the US in 2003 but, at the same time, masterminded a dirty war against Hamas that led to the isolation and blockade of Gaza and, ultimately, to the current crisis.
Under Trump’s plan, Israel would agree to end its genocidal assault on Gaza and partially withdraw its forces, but nothing in his plan would prevent it from re-launching the genocide once the Israeli prisoners in Gaza were safely back in Israel. It would also retain control of Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt, allowing it to keep restricting the entry of food, medicine and rebuilding materials.
In response to Trump’s proposal, Hamas agreed to release all its Israeli prisoners in return for an Israeli release of Palestinian prisoners, but only after a permanent Israeli ceasefire and withdrawal from Gaza. Prime Minister Netanyahu said publicly that Israel will not withdraw its forces from Gaza until Hamas and other Palestinian forces have been removed from power and disarmed, while Hamas insists it will not disarm until the occupation of Palestine ends and its fighters can hand over their weapons to the new armed forces of the sovereign nation of Palestine.
Hamas also responded that it has no authority to act as the sole negotiator in talks on the future of Palestine. It said Palestine must be governed by Palestinians, not Trump or Blair, and that its future must be negotiated between representatives of all Palestinian factions.
So Trump’s plan is rife with conditions that one side or the other will not agree to, and it seems unlikely to end the genocide. However, in any case, it is clearly designed to perpetuate, not to end, Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. As the Progressive International said in a statement on October 7:
“Far from paving a path to peace, it offers a blueprint for the further colonization and subjugation of the Palestinian people – the culmination of decades of dispossession and destruction that reached its dark zenith in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
The current negotiations may collapse quickly or drag on for weeks or months, but the UN and the world’s governments should not sit idly by as passive observers. The UN should urgently prepare to take the concrete steps that leaders from around the world called for at the General Assembly in September, to give force to UN General Assembly resolutions calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the unrestricted restoration of life-saving humanitarian aid, and a final end to the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine.
In July 2025, the UN General Assembly organized a “High-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution.” The Conference was chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, and its goal was “not only to reaffirm international consensus on the peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine but to catalyze concrete, time-bound and coordinated international action toward the implementation of the two-State solution.”
The Conference produced a lengthy “New York Declaration,” which was endorsed by the General Assembly in a resolution on September 12, by a vote of 142 to 10, with 12 abstentions.
However, this was a plan for the “day after,” which, by itself, failed to bring that day any closer, because it deliberately avoided taking the “concrete, time-bound and coordinated international action” that the Conference’s mandate had explicitly called for.
The declaration was based on the deliberations of 8 working groups, co-chaired by representatives of 15 different countries, the Arab League and the European Union, which each drew up plans for the aftermath of a hypothetical permanent ceasefire in Gaza, with topics like “Humanitarian Action and Reconstruction” and “Security for Israelis and Palestinians.”
Three round-tables at the July conference, chaired by former Irish President, Mary Robinson, former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid bin Ra’ad of Jordan, agreed that the General Assembly’s first step should be the international recognition of the State of Palestine.
UN recognition requires the approval of both the General Assembly and the UN Security Council. However, with such a large majority of countries supporting recognition, and the United States abusing its veto to sideline the Security Council, the General Assembly can call an Emergency Special Session (ESS) to act alone under the “Uniting for Peace” principle, to officially recognize Palestine and welcome it as a full UN member.
Instead, while several Western countries finally recognized Palestine, bringing the total number that has recognized its independent statehood to 157, the declaration was endorsed in a regular session of the General Assembly that lacked the power to grant formal UN recognition.
However, the most serious omission from the July 2025 Conference and the September 12 resolution was that they failed to take concrete, coordinated UN action to impose a ceasefire in Gaza, the vital first step to get to the “day after” that the working groups at the conference were tasked with planning for. Trump took advantage of that omission to propose an end to the genocide in Gaza on terms that would perpetuate the Israeli occupation instead of ending it.
It was entirely predictable that Israel would reject and ignore the New York Declaration, and Prime Minister Netanyahu did just that in his General Assembly speech on September 26. After most of the delegates walked out and left Netanyahu ranting to a nearly empty hall, the Hague Group of countries, led by Colombia and South Africa, hosted a meeting with representatives of 34 countries to plan the coordinated, concrete action the UN must now take to end the genocide and the occupation.
As Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodriguez Parilla, told the General Assembly in his speech the next day, it should convene an Emergency Special Session “without further delay” to take concrete measures for Palestine, including a binding resolution on full UN membership.
If the General Assembly is serious about ending the genocide and the occupation, the Emergency Special Session must also debate and vote on an UN-led arms embargo, economic boycott and other concrete measures designed to force Israel to comply with international law, international court rulings and UN resolutions on Palestine.
The UN Human Rights Office in Geneva already has a database of 158 Israeli and multinational corporations that are complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation, so an international boycott of those companies could take effect immediately.
Israel is a small country, dependent on trade and economic relations with countries all over the world. If the large majority of countries that voted for the New York Declaration are ready to back their words and their votes with coordinated action, a UN-led trade boycott, divestment campaign and arms embargo can put enormous pressure on Israel to end its genocide in Gaza and its illegal occupation of Palestine. With full participation by enough countries, these steps could quickly make Israel’s position untenable.
Many speakers at the 2025 General Assembly called passionately for this kind of decisive action to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza and end the occupation. King Abdullah of Jordan asked, “How long will we be satisfied with condemnation after condemnation without concrete action?”
President Lula said that Brazil already has an arms embargo against Israel and has cut off all trade with its illegal settlements; Turkiye severed all trade links with Israel in August; Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof called for an arms embargo and the suspension of the EU’s trade agreement with Israel and Chadian Prime Minister, Allah-Maye Halina, declared, “Our duty from this moment on is to transform this strong declaration into concrete acts and make the Palestinian people’s hope a reality.”
The Hague Group of countries was formed by the Progressive International to support South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice and war crimes cases against Israeli officials at the International Criminal Court. In a meeting at Bogota in Colombia in July, twelve of those countries committed to an arms embargo and other concrete measures against the Israeli occupation. In his speech to the General Assembly on September 23, Colombian President Gustavo Petro called for an Emergency Special Session on Palestine and for a UN peacekeeping force to “defend Palestine.”
A previous Emergency Special Session in September 2024 demanded that Israel must end its post-1967 occupation of Palestine within a year. Israel’s refusal to even begin to do so and its defiant escalation of its genocide in Gaza, increasing repression in the other occupied territories and attacks on other countries provide all the grounds the General Assembly should need to take the concrete, coordinated measures that many countries are calling for.
Tragically, instead of applying the diplomatic and economic pressure it will take to secure a ceasefire and end the occupation, France, Saudi Arabia and their partners, instead, relied on dangling carrots in front of Israel, such as regional economic integration and recognition by Arab and Muslim countries, to try to seduce or bribe Israel into complying with international law and UN resolutions.
This was never going to work. The toothless New York Declaration, and now Trump’s new occupation plan for Gaza, have wasted irreplaceable, precious lost time for the besieged, starved, bombed people of Gaza, as more of them are killed, maimed and starved to death every day. The UN General Assembly must follow up on these flawed initiatives with decisive UN-led action to actually end the genocide and the occupation, by imposing economic sanctions, an arms embargo and other measures to diplomatically and economically isolate Israel.
There is nothing to prevent the UN General Assembly from quickly convening a new meeting of its Emergency Special Session (ESS) on Palestine. The ESS can finally take the “concrete, time-bound, coordinated international action” that the French- and Saudi-led initiative promised but failed to deliver – what Malaysian Foreign Minister, Mohamad Hasan, described to the General Assembly as “concrete action against the occupying force.”
Across the world, ordinary people are rising up to demand that their governments take action, while flotillas of activists set sail to breach the blockade of Gaza that their governments have failed to challenge.
The Emergency Special Session of the UN General Assembly, meeting under the Uniting for Peace principle, can debate and pass binding resolutions on UN recognition of Palestine, a UN-led international arms embargo, economic boycott and disinvestment campaign, war crimes prosecutions, and other measures to diplomatically isolate Israel.
By responding to calls of conscience from their own people, voting for these measures at the UN and acting quickly to enforce them, the governments of the world have the collective power to end this genocide and the brutal, illegal occupation of Palestine that it is part of. Now, they must use it.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/urgent-next-steps-for-palestine-at-the-un-time-to-invoke-uniting-for-peace/
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After The Prisoner Exchange, over 11,000 Palestinian Hostages Will Remain
By Robert Inlakesh
October 9, 2025
While people around the world hold their breath in anticipation of the upcoming Gaza ceasefire and prisoner exchange, many commentators are hailing the “return of all the hostages”. Such rhetoric is in and of itself revealing of a double standard, whereby Palestinian hostages are not worth the same as Israelis.
So far, there have been two prisoner exchanges during the Gaza genocide, one in November of 2023 and the second earlier this month during the ceasefire that Israel violated in March.
During the first exchange, a batch of 39 female and child prisoners was released from Israeli detention. At the time, the Western corporate media refused to refer to the minors released as child detainees, instead referring to them as young people or, in some cases, teenagers. Yet, when Israelis under the age of 18 were being freed, they were immediately identified as children and covered obsessively.
Meanwhile, the abuses of Palestinian detainees were ignored almost entirely. Also, it went unmentioned that Israel arrested over 310 Palestinians in the West Bank, as it freed 240 as part of the truce-prisoner exchange. Not only did Israel violate the terms of this agreement, delaying their release for hours, but it later re-arrested many of those whom it had freed.
Similarly, when Hamas began releasing batches of Israeli captives for Palestinian ones, the release of the Israeli detainees was, in many cases, covered live. Predictably, displaying the same bias that was on show back in November of 2023, the Palestinians released were barely mentioned. On January 20, 2025, 90 female and child prisoners were released; again, the Western corporate media refused to cover the event as it did the release of a much smaller number of Israelis.
As of now, Palestine’s Wafa News states that the current data of Palestinian prisoner groups confirm that over 11,100 Palestinians are currently being held in the Israeli prison system, including 400 child prisoners. Almost all of these are from the occupied West Bank alone. Also, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society, Israel has arrested around 20,000 Palestinians from the West Bank since October 7, 2023, including students, scholars, journalists and medical workers.
As part of the Gaza ceasefire-prisoner exchange deal, 250 Palestinian detainees with life sentences will be freed and some 1,700 Gazans who were seized after October 7, 2023. These Palestinians from Gaza are not held in official Israeli prisons, but in torture detention facilities where they are subjected to round-the-clock torture and sexual violence at the hands of soldiers. The number of Palestinians seized from Gaza in the last two years is unknown, although the estimated figure is set at around 15,000 in total.
The Western corporate media and governments constantly express their concern over the potential abuses suffered by Israeli prisoners held in Gaza, yet never mention the Palestinians who are held by Israel without having committed any offense whatsoever.
Palestinian hostages have been subjected to gang rape, all kinds of sexual violence, torture, the amputation of limbs, humiliation rituals, starvation, the deprivation of water, and at least 78 Palestinian detainees have been murdered while under Israeli detention since October 7, 2023.
This means that more Palestinian hostages have been killed than Israelis, yet there is almost no coverage of this, as there is often no mention that the majority of Israeli captives who died in Gaza were killed by Israeli bombings.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the Palestinian hostages will not be returning to their families and will continue suffering under the brutal conditions of torture and starvation. No doubt, when the prisoner exchange occurs, if Israel chooses to honor it, then the Western corporate media will again display its racist double standards in the coming week.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/after-the-prisoner-exchange-over-11000-palestinian-hostages-will-remain/
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