Biweekly Brief – November 17, 2025
Israel pursues its agenda of territorial fragmentation and ethnic cleansing as Trump ‘peace plan’ falters
The US under the ‘America First’ president is not just threatening to invade oil-producing countries like Venezuela and Nigeria, but appears bent on expanding its physical footprint in the Middle East.
Shortly before the Nov. 10th visit to the White House by Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa who has been newly removed from the US global terrorist list, Reuters reported that US forces were planning to operate out of a Damascus airbase “to help enable a security pact Washington is brokering between Syria and Israel.”
Other sources cite the role the US intends to play in ensuring that funds and weapons for Hezbollah in Lebanon do not transit through Syria. Despite a year-old US-brokered ‘ceasefire,’ Lebanon has endured nearly daily attacks from Israel and according to Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon escalation to an all-out war with Hezbollah seems likely.
On Nov. 7 the US took over direct supervision of aid reaching Gaza from its reportedly “chaotic and indecisive” Civilian-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in Kiryat Gat in southern Israel. Various sources claim that Israel did not like being relegated to “more of a contractor role” and that US officials including those in the US Central Command and the CMCC have been briefed about “the lack of a clear path forward.” There are reportsthat the US is considering building a major military base along the border with Gaza.
Stumbling forward with Trump’s 20 Point Plan
The US, which has long opposed UN resolutions that criticize Israel for its violations of international law, is currently trying to induce the Security Council to pass a resolution giving the UN’s blessing to the so-called ‘Board of Peace’ (BoP) chaired by Trump. The draft resolution submitted on November 3 calls for member states to establish a “temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) in Gaza to deploy under unified command acceptable to the BoP, with forces contributed by participating States, in close consultation and cooperation with the Arab Republic of Egypt and the State of Israel, and to use all necessary measures to carry out its mandate consistent with international law, including international humanitarian law.” The main role of the ISF would be “ensuring the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip.” The only reference to Palestinian involvement is to a “Palestinian technocratic, apolitical committee of competent Palestinians from the Strip” which will be “responsible for day-to-day operations of Gaza’s civil service” under BoP supervision.
Israel, which has refused to allow any role in Gaza for the Palestinian Authority, would prefer no UN involvement and hence the ISF is not called a UN operation in the resolution. However eager some member states may be to get on the good side of the US, they have been reluctant to volunteer for the ISF if their role includes using armed force to disarm Hamas and other armed militias – though presumably, not those that Israel has been backing with weapons and funds. The head of the Israel-supported militia Al-Shabab has met with Jared Kushner at the CMCC and discussed how to deal with the 200 or so Hamas fighters who are believed to be trapped in tunnels under the destroyed city of Rafah.
On Nov. 12 Haaretz revealed that the draft proposal had been modified to make it more acceptable to member states. As well as referring to the proposal by Saudi Arabia and France for establishing a Palestinian state, the revision included a stipulation that Israel will eventually withdraw to a “security perimeter” in the Gaza Strip and that the Palestinian Authority would be put in charge of its governance once it had “satisfactorily” been reformed. The following day a third draft was submitted that made a reference to “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
Netanyahu could not have been pleased with these changes, but he must have been grateful for the formal letter Trump sent Israeli President Isaac Herzog requesting that he pardon Netanyahu of all criminal charges. In his letter Trump calls Netanyahu a “formidable and decisive War Time Prime Minister” who is “now leading Israeli into a time of peace, which includes my continued work with key Middle East leaders to add many additional countries to the world changing Abraham Accords.” Will Netanyahu and his far-right government be persuaded to assume the mantel of ‘peacemaking’ or will putting flesh on Trump’s skeletal peace plan prove as doomed as Biden’s $230 million floating pier and the deadly US-Israel Gaza Humanitarian Foundation?
The bogus ceasefire
There is currently no sign that Israel is prepared to give up its goal of total destruction and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers have claimed in a new documentary that they were encouraged to “shoot without restraint” in Gaza and systematically used Palestinians as “human shields.”
During the so-called ceasefire, Israel has destroyed more than 1,500 buildings within the zone delineated by its self-declared ‘yellow line’ and the number could be “significantly higher.” According to statistics gathered by the Government Media Office in Gaza, during the ceasefire’s first month (Oct. 10 -Nov. 10) Israeli forces killed at least 242 people, injured 622 and violated the ceasefire agreement at least 282 times. The slaughter continued on subsequent days. The Gaza Strip was free of military attacks on only six days of the first month of the ceasefire, as the war’s recorded death toll reached 69,182 (1out of 33 people), with 170,694 injuries. Over 500 bodies have been removed from the rubble as the National Committee for Missing Persons in the Genocide against Gaza appealed to the international community for help in unearthing a further 10,000 bodies believed buried below some 60 million tons of debris and unexploded ordnance.
Throughout that first month of ‘ceasefire’ an average of 171 aid trucks per day were permitted to enter, not the 600 per day stipulated by the truce agreement. Many carried cargos of snacks, crisps and soft drinks for sale in markets, while as many as 350 nutritious food items were denied entry by Israel and trucks carrying humanitarian aid faced long delays. It is unclear whether the US supervision of aid distribution will bring significant changes or if adequate shelter will be permitted to enter the Gaza Strip. According to Drop Site, only five percent of the promised 300,000 tents have been given entry and the Gaza Strip is now being engulfed in torrential rain mixed with sewage which has rendered nearly all existing tents “uninhabitable.”
A looming partition?
According to a Nov. 11 piece in Reuters, six European officials believe that the Trump plan is faltering and “the yellow line looks set to become the de facto border indefinitely dividing Gaza.” The ‘yellow line’ cuts through eastern Gaza City and divides Jabaliya refugee camp in half. Crossing it can be lethal for Palestinians. It gives Israel total control of at least 53 percent of Gaza, and crams two million Palestinians into less than half of the tiny Strip.
Rather than pushing back against this possibility and sticking to Trump’s 20 point plan which called for Israel to withdraw eventually to a small ‘security’ perimeter, it appears that the US may have bought into the indefinite partition of Gaza. A Nov. 14th Guardian article describes a future in which Gaza will be divided into a ‘green zone’ controlled by Israel with the assistance of foreign forces where ‘development’ will take place and a ‘red zone’ presumably controlled by Hamas where no reconstruction will take place. The assumption is that Israel would be able to attack the ‘red zone’ whenever it felt like it (much as it is now doing in Lebanon and Syria) and could deny it access to basic necessities.
The article also states that the US plan for ‘Alternative Safe Communities’ has been dropped. This Kushner-and-Witkoff-endorsed plan, which was opposed by Muslim, Arab and several European countries, had called for building housing for Shin Bet-vetted Palestinians within the Israel-controlled yellow zone which would become the ‘new Gaza.’ The Israeli military had insisted that Palestinians living within these communities would not be able to cross the yellow line to the destitute Gaza, further fragmenting the Palestinian territory. It is not clear how this is different from the green/red zone plan.
Dehumanization in life and death
While the return of the bodies of Israeli hostages has been a prime focus of the western media, the fact that Israel has long refused to hand over to their families over 2,000 dead loved ones from the West Bank and Gaza - holding many of them in the notorious ‘Cemetery of Numbers’ - has rarely received media attention. So has the grisly information that has emerged about the mutilated condition of many of the 300 unidentified bodies that have been returned by Israel, and the torture of Palestinians in prison.
Renowned British surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah has described seeing photos that suggest there has been organ harvesting from Palestinian bodies, a practice that is not new in Israel and which Israel had acknowledged happened in the 1990s. The mainstream press has refused to touch the story.
On bodies and in personal testimony there has been plentiful evidence of the systematic torture inflicted on Palestinians, many of whom may soon be subjected to a death penalty law which has passed its first readingin the Knesset. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has documented harrowing testimony it has collected from released detainees attesting to “an organized and systematic practice of sexual torture, including rape, forced filming, sexual assault using objects and dogs, in addition to deliberate psychological humiliation aimed at crushing human dignity and erasing individual identity entirely.” In its August 2024 report ‘Welcome to Hell’ the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem calls the Israeli prison system “a Network of Torture Camps.” The ghastly conditions in the underground Rakefet prison where detainees never see sunlight, have inadequate food, no visits, and frequent beatings were described in the Nov. 8 Guardian.
The Guardian also interviewed Nasser Abu Srour from Aida Camp in Bethlehem, who was incarcerated for 32 years and then sent directly to Cairo after his release in the first stage of the Trump deal. He talked about how prison conditions had severely declined under the supervision of the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. His remarkable book The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on Hope and Freedom has been nominated for various prizes.
Israel has recently been roiled by a scandal caused by the leak by Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi of a video graphically depicting the torture and rape of a Palestinian in the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility. A Washington Post piece, reprinted in the Boston Globe, focuses on the “public brawl” over the case and whether there is a ‘’right to rape’ with Israeli soldiers always being considered heroes who are immune from prosecution as many Israelis claim. According to the Israeli publication +972 Magazine the case demonstrates “that morality itself has lost all meaning in a genocidal society.”
The West Bank: “a situation of confinement without being officially incarcerated”
That is how a taxi driver describes what life is like in the West Bank which is being strangled by nearly a thousand manned and facial recognition-equipped checkpoints, gates which open and close erratically, earth mounds and other roadblocks that further fragment the small territory and steal time and the capacity to earn a living from Palestinians.
Add to this the acceleration of vicious settler attacks, often under the protection of the army. In October alone there were at least 264 attacks, the most ever recorded according to the UN, and soldiers have increasingly barred Palestinians from harvesting their olives by declaring their fields ‘closed military zones.’ Over a thousand West Bank Palestinians have been killed by the army and settlers in the last two years, a fifth of them children, and forced displacement is intensifying, especially in East Jerusalem, rural areas and refugee camps. According to the UN, “since January 2025, the Israeli forces’ operation in refugee camps in the northern West Bank has generated what has become the longest and largest displacement crisis in the West Bank since 1967.”
Where is the international outrage? Rather than moving towards meaningful sanctions, the global community is standing passively by while Israel mounts a major propaganda campaign to salvage its image in the US. They are receiving ample assistance from US marketing firms. And after the Trump administration put sanctions on the leading Palestinian civil society groups Al Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, YouTube obligingly erased their accounts that featured some 700 videos highlighting Israel’s human rights violations.
Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine