Our Wednesday News Analysis | Will Gaza Surrender? Ramzy Baroud and Robert Inlakesh Discuss Trump’s Plan on FloodGate

Ramzy Baroud and Robert Inlakesh in conversation for the FloodGate podcast. (Thumbnail: Palestine Chronicle)

"Baroud pointed out that the same Arab governments now backing Trump’s proposal are the ones enforcing the siege or hosting US military bases used to bomb Gaza.

“They are applying pressure on Hamas while claiming to mediate. It’s a diplomatic coup meant to shift blame — so that if Palestinians reject surrender, the genocide becomes their fault.”

The discussion linked this strategy to the ‘Greater Israel’ project, which, Inlakesh argued, is not about borders but about ensuring Arab regimes remain fragmented and dependent."

In the latest episode of Palestine Chronicle’s FloodGate podcast, Palestinian journalist and author Ramzy Baroud speaks with analyst Robert Inlakesh about the latest political maneuvers surrounding the Gaza war — from Donald Trump’s “peace plan” to the New York Declaration and the broader diplomatic efforts aimed at pressuring the Palestinian Resistance to surrender.

The conversation exposes the colonial logic behind the proposed agreements, the complicity of Arab and Western governments, and the historical continuity of resistance in Gaza. Together, Baroud and Inlakesh argue that Israel’s war is not just military but existential — and that Palestinians’ steadfastness remains the decisive factor against total erasure.

A Blueprint for Surrender

Baroud and Inlakesh opened their discussion by unpacking the so-called Trump peace plan, which, according to Inlakesh, reads more like a surrender agreement than a ceasefire proposal.

“The New York Declaration calls for a Palestinian state — but a completely demilitarized one,” Inlakesh explained. “The only country in the world that is completely demilitarized would be this Palestinian state they’re talking about.”...

Read more: Will Gaza Surrender? Ramzy Baroud and Robert Inlakesh Discuss Trump’s Plan on FloodGate

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THIS WAR OF REVENGE HAS LASTED TWO NIGHTMARE YEARS. THERE’S ONLY ONE HOPE FOR PEACE: ISRAEL RECOGNISING PALESTINE

Source The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/07/war-peace-israel-recognising-palestine-donald-trump-gaza

By Raja Shehadeh
Published October 7, 2025

Donald Trump’s proposals are in play, but here in the West Bank, we live in fear that the devastation of Gaza is coming our way

A Palestinian boy inspects a car damaged by settlers in Wadi Tiran, the West Bank, November 2023. Photograph: Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

"Israel must choose between perpetual war or living in peace.

" ...the war in Gaza has led to significant changes in the way Israel is perceived worldwide.

The fact that the country came into being through the violent displacement of Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba has become better understood.

So many misconceptions about Israel’s foundation propagated over the past 77 years are being exposed.

This has also led to a significant shift in the willingness to platform Palestinian voices in spaces that were previously closed to them."

Being an eternal optimist, I hoped that the events of 7 October 2023 – Hamas’s attack on southern Israel and breaking of the Israeli siege of Gaza – might precipitate a reappraisal of Israeli strategy towards the Palestinians. I hoped Israeli leaders would come to realise the futility of protecting their country by building walls, however impregnable.

Instead, the attack had the opposite effect. It led to a war of revenge that has now lasted for close to two years, killing more than 65,000 Palestinians and causing the widespread devastation of Gaza, including destroying 92% of its residential buildings. Initially, I was shocked by this, and the dehumanisation of the people of Gaza, which immediately came from Israeli leaders – Yoav Gallant, who was the defence minister at the time of the attack, justified the war by declaring: “We are fighting human animals and are acting accordingly.”

I should not have been surprised. For many years, the army has been using similar tactics and language against Palestinians. In April 1983, the Israeli army chief of staff Rafael Eitan likened Palestinians in the West Bank to “drugged cockroaches in a bottle”. Throughout the years of Israeli occupation, house demolitions have also been used as a supposed deterrence as well as shooting innocent people caught in army raids. The walls and checkpoints restricting contact between Israelis and Palestinians pushed the two sides further apart, making it possible to demonise each other even further. Even the ethnic cleansing which Israel is attempting in Gaza is not without precedent. In the 1948 Palestine war, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled or fled from their homes, and Israel’s military carried out dozens of massacres targeting them...

Read more: This war of revenge has lasted two nightmare years. There’s only one hope for peace: Israel recognising Palestine

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BETWEEN A REVOLUTION AND A WHISPER

Source: +972 Magazine
https://www.972mag.com/between-a-revolution-and-a-whisper/

By Thawra Abukhdeir
Published October 6, 2025

For Palestinians in Israel, self-censorship has long been a survival mechanism, our silence is the condition of our citizenship. However, upon encountering solidarity abroad, I realized that my body had forgotten what it felt like to speak freely.

A Palestinian flag hangs on a building in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on June 20, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Sometimes I imagine what it would look like if every Palestinian descended on Israel’s streets in the exact numbers we see at demonstrations abroad. The image that immediately comes to mind is not chanting crowds but mass shootings by Israeli soldiers and police. During Gaza’s 2018 Great March of Return, thousands peacefully protested near the Israeli border fence and were met with live fire: hundreds killed, tens of thousands injured.

And though some may disapprove, part of that work entails cooperating with Israeli Jews who are willing to leverage their bodies and privilege to fight against ethnic cleansing, genocide, and fascism. That partnership does not erase the power imbalance; it simply reflects the urgency of struggle in a place where survival is not theoretical.

But the difference between existence in the diaspora and here in Palestine is more than just our need to act with caution. From afar, pro-Palestine activists enjoy the feeling of moral clarity that distance affords. Those working to end occupation and apartheid inside Palestine and Israel must survive and resist at once. There is little room for debate about the “most ideal” version of Palestine’s future while checkpoints and demolitions multiply.

"Abroad, Palestinians and allies can amplify our collective voice, press governments, and expand what feels politically possible.

That memory remains part of the Palestinian collective consciousness."

In Amsterdam this summer, I joined a Palestine solidarity march almost by accident. I had been walking through the city center when I turned a corner and found the street alive with chants, flags, and shoulders wrapped in keffiyehs. Someone asked where I was from. When I said “Palestine,” louder than I intended, the crowd answered back: “Free Palestine!” For a brief moment, I realized my body had forgotten what it feels like not to whisper.

Freedom of expression is not just a principle. It’s something you feel in your pulse, your posture, the way your chest expands when you realize you don’t have to measure every word. It’s physical, and once you’ve known it, the absence is unbearable.

At home, as a Palestinian in Jerusalem and Haifa, I trained myself to be silent. Expressing Palestinian identity can carry material costs: a police summons, disciplinary action at work or university, interrogation over a Facebook post, open-ended detention without charge, or worse. That pressure works its way into the body...

Read more: Between a revolution and a whisper