Preening at the NATO Summit Tuesday, President Donald Trump appeared thrilled with the ceasefire he brokered between Iran and Israel. But as he crows about world peace, maybe it’s time to remind people that Israel is still waging its war in Gaza.
It hasn’t been in the headlines this week, but mass casualties are still ongoing. On June 23, the very day Trump declared, on his Truth Social account and in all caps, “CONGRATULATIONS WORLD IT’S TIME FOR PEACE,” 41 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, many of them children waiting for food at Israeli-controlled distribution points.
This was no outlier. The month of June started with reports of 179 Palestinians killed as they approached an aid distribution center in Rafah. So things have been going, while Trump was auditioning for his Nobel Peace Prize.
Trump prides himself on being tough, even with Benjamin Netanyahu. And indeed he was this week. He told Netanyahu to stop bombing Iran, and for the most part, the Israeli prime minister has obeyed.
Yet that toughness has been conspicuously absent when it comes to Gaza. Since Israel on March 18 unilaterally broke a ceasefire it had signed—and one that the United States, Qatar, and Egypt had guaranteed—Palestinian civilians have continued to be killed daily.
Like the Iran ceasefire, the road map to peace in Gaza is clear. End the Israeli aggression in Gaza, and lift the unauthorized siege on two million Palestinians.
Trump’s own negotiators know what is needed: Israel must end its 20-month-long war and accept the Arab peace plan. That plan, endorsed by the Arab League summit in Cairo, calls for a technocratic Palestinian committee—appointed by presidential decree—to govern Gaza, followed by elections in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has supported the Egyptian-initiated plan, has already laid out a comprehensive reform program in a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The reform plan calls for presidential and legislative elections in the occupied Palestinian territories (the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza) within a year. Already, such elections have taken place several times since the U.S.-sponsored Palestinian-Israeli Declaration of Principles (known as the Oslo Accords) were signed at the White House on September 13, 1993.
France and Saudi Arabia have agreed to sponsor a U.N. conference in New York to advance a new Israeli-Palestinian political process. Macron, in meetings with Palestinian and Israeli civil society activists, has pledged to do everything in his power to advance international recognition of Palestine. Unfortunately, the conference in Paris, scheduled for June 17-20, was overshadowed by Israel’s June 12 attack on Iran and had to be delayed. One possibility is to hold it during the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September 2025.
Now that a ceasefire between the U.S., Israel, and Iran is in place, and assuming it holds, the international community must turn its focus to Gaza. Trump should insist that Netanyahu immediately allow full humanitarian access to all areas of Gaza via the various U.N. agencies and reputable international organizations. The current Israeli policy of forcing displaced Palestinians to walk miles in order to reach crowded Israeli-guarded distribution zones has become a deadly trap, leading to hundreds of avoidable deaths at the hands of trigger-happy soldiers—and possibly foreign mercenaries.
Trump must make it clear: The era of broken agreements, delays, and rhetorical games is over. Israel can recover its hostages, but Palestinians must be assured this will happen in the context of a broader agreement that ends the war and pulls Israeli forces out of Gaza.
The world is weary of this one-sided narrative, framed endlessly by Israel, that its army’s goal is simply a matter of “self-defense,” while Palestinian civilians remain defenseless. Israeli leaders, soldiers, and officers must understand that war crimes against civilians are not acceptable. Without accountability and deterrence, Israel’s military machine will continue to operate with impunity.
What Israel and the U.S. did to Iran was a violation of international law. So is what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank—with Washington and other capitals complicit in violations of the Geneva Conventions. The laws of war clearly prohibit targeting civilians, journalists, medical personnel, and critical infrastructure. Yet Israel has barred international journalists from entering Gaza since October 7 and has killed more than 200 Palestinian journalists. This censorship is not just repression; it is fear. Fear that Israeli war crimes will be exposed.
Families of Israeli hostages are right about one thing: Only President Trump has the leverage to end this senseless, vengeful war. If he could orchestrate a ceasefire with Iran, why can’t he do the same in Gaza?
For Trump, Netanyahu, and a few other leaders, the nuclear weapons issue is much more important than Palestinian suffering and a genuine peace in the Middle East.
But if the U.S. president really wants to be a peacemaker, there’s no better way than ending the senseless revenge war and working on bringing a genuine peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. As he did in pressing for the current ceasefire, President Trump needs to continue his efforts by pressuring the Israelis to end the war on Gaza and bring about a free state of Palestine next to a safe state of Israel.
The post It’s Calm Now in the Middle East? Hundreds Are Still Dying in Gaza. appeared first on New Republic.
