Trump’s Nightmare Triangle

By Dr Khairi Janbek

For all intents and purposes, US President Donald Trump is presenting himself as the arbiter of Arab-Israeli relations, and/or Arab-Israeli conflict and showing his presence as the patron for the time being, of the Gaza agreement. Therefore, no one, including Israel will be allowed to make him look bad in this multi-phased accord.

Most likely, his intention to reign in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and rejecting the Israeli rejection of the West Bank, boils down to keeping the Arabs on board in terms of money and influence for the success of his Gaza plan, as well as keeping his hopes alive for the Abrahamic Accords especially the red apple, Saudi-Israeli normalization.

Indeed Trump’s ambiguous stand of rejecting a Palestinian state while at the same time, rejecting Israeli annexation, either means giving the positive nod to Tel Aviv to create facts on the ground and create de facto annexation without the fanfare, and start the gradual population transfer, if we take Gaza as a precedence for his words, to Jordan and probably also to the wider Arab world, or, it could also be, that the future of the West Bank is intended to be united to the East Bank of River Jordan.

In the mean time, the world press talks about the continuous shuttle diplomacy of high-ranking Washington officials to Israel, and Trump’s warnings to Netanyahu, veiled as well explicit not to attempt to jeopardize the Gaza peace, to the extent of saying that Israel would lose all US support.

But what about the other side of this presumed potential rift? Netanyahu after two years of war, has nothing to show for it to the Israelis except barbarism, murder and destruction, in addition to gaining the status of becoming a fullyfledged international war criminal.

The war which he declared to finish off Hamas is increasingly controlled by the American plans, now, face a big failure with him reluctantly having to put up with. However it does not necessarily mean there are no other parties in his government, whose messianic fervour does not override the risk of losing American support, which indeed means, Netanyahu is now stuck between the rock and the hard place.

Indeed one cannot predict his longevity as the prime minister for Israel, but all what can be said is that, the alternative to him, is neither likely to be more peace loving, or more liberal in political outlook.

Dr Janbek is a Jordanian writer based in Paris, France

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If You Screw Up The Gaza Deal, Trump Will ‘Screw’ You, US Official Warns Bibi

A senior American official has issued a stark warning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if he allows the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas to collapse, he will face severe consequences from US President Donald Trump, Israel’s Channel 12 reported.

Speaking in Hebrew on Channel 12, Axios correspondent said the US official warned him that Netanyahu is “walking a very thin tightrope with President Trump. If he keeps this up, he’ll end up screwing up the deal, and if he screws up the deal, Donald Trump will screw him.”

The comments come amid rising tensions between Washington and Tel Aviv over moves by Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, to advance legislation tied to the annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank.

According to the report, US Vice President JD Vance, who concluded a diplomatic visit to Israel earlier on Thursday, was taken aback after learning that the Knesset had given preliminary approval to two non-binding annexation-related bills the previous day.

Speaking to reporters at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport before his departure, Vance criticised the vote, saying: “If this was a political stunt, it’s a very foolish one. I personally take offence to it.”

Israeli move angered Trump

An Israeli official told Channel 12 that Netanyahu had been warned several days earlier about the strong backlash such a move would provoke but did nothing to stop the vote from going ahead.

The Israeli Knesset approved both annexation-related bills in a preliminary reading, with three more votes required before they can become law.

The legislation advanced despite open opposition from President Trump, who said last month that he “would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.”

The vote also coincided with Vance’s visit to Israel, part of a wider US diplomatic effort to preserve the Gaza ceasefire that took effect on October 10 according to TRTWorld.

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America ‘Force Arms’ Netanyahu on Gaza

The Americans, both the Biden and Trump administrations, gave the Israelis two years to destroy Hamas in Gaza.  This is what the leader of the Palestinian National Initiative Dr Mustapha Al Barghouti started by saying. So for them the time was up came 7 October, 2025.

He maintained that it was because they couldn’t finish the job, the White House acted swiftly, stating enough is enough, the war on Gaza must end. What he said its true because today, the quest to end the war on the enclave and let the aid trucks in is an American initiative, who are almost dragging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forward who doesn’t want to end the war.

In a sharp analysis, the Palestinian politician said the Americans, especially President Donald Trump came to realize that the Israelis were not going to destroy Hamas despite the mass destruction of the Gaza Strip through mass weapons supplied by the United States. And that this is when the Trump administration decided to act and enforce the present, albeit fragile ceasefire between Tel Aviv and Hamas and according to him, ending the bloody, destructive, heinous war on Gaza.

But it was not for the lack of trying. When Trump entered the White House in January 2025, he then tried to sell the Rivieria Gaza idea to the region but he finally realized the Palestinian people of Gaza couldn’t be driven out of their homeland, even if it was just temporarily as he claimed and that there was going to be no way of parcelling them out to other countries.

Dr Barghouti pointed out Trump tried very hard talking to states like Indonesia, in the Arab world and those in Africa, seeking all sorts of pressure to persuade them to take the Gazans. But after much diplomatic chitchat, he realized the Palestinians weren’t for moving despite the fact that 250,000 of them were killed and/or injured at the hands of the Israeli army and the horrific mass destruction of their homeland.

This proves that the idea the Palestinian population can be ethnically cleansed – much talk about that in the past two years of the genocide – was a non-starter and that 1948 when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven off their land by Israeli militias and terror gangs was not going to be repeated. Dr Barghouti added the last onslaught on Gaza has proved that ethnic cleansing has become a “closed chapter”. 

And he added Trump and his team led by Steve Witkoff and Gerard Kushner became aware of that, and that is when it was decided to push for a ceasefire to save Israel from itself. Barghouti putted this way: Trump realized many countries of the world were turning against Israel because of its murderous actions on Gaza and its mass displacement and starvation of the people of the enclave and to let Netanyahu have his own way by refusing to stop the war would be detrimental to US interests in the region.

Thus when Israel tried to re-start the war on Gaza last Monday – and a week into the ceasefire – when two of its soldiers were killed in Rafah through lone fighters and which Hamas immediately disavowed, the Trump administration played down the incident in the interest of maintaining the ceasefire accord reached at the beginning of October, 2025.

Trump first dispatched Witkoff and Kushner to Israel with Vice-president JD Vance who followed on a two-day visit in an effort to keep tempers low. Their visit to Israel today is sending a message that the US administration wants the ceasefire to be followed through in the interest of Trump’s 20-point peace plan for the Middle East.

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Trump and The Oil Jar  

By Rashad Abu Dawood 

 A long time ago when our mom wanted to send us to sleep she would always tell us the story of the ‘oil jar’.

She would start by saying: Should I tell you about the oil jar? We’d say in one voice: Yes, tell us. She would repeat: Should I tell you it or not…the story of the oil can and we would plead again: Yes. But every time, the affirmation would sink lower as we would yawn incessantly till we fell sleep.

https://www.addustour.com/articles/1521982

As we grew up we found there was no story to tell, she would repeat the oil jar tale so that we forget and go to sleep. I remember the story as I follow the news on the Trump’s mysterious 20-point plan on Gaza; there is no point among the 20 that are clear except the one on the handover of the hostages. The rest need astrologers and psychologists to decipher.

And there are others that say the plan is a “Trumpian trap” coordinated with Benjamin Netanyahu to free the hostages from the grip of Hamas while there there is no exact date for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, no time detail for the entry of aid to the enclave to help the starving people and most important there are no guarantees to the Palestinian side that everything would be ok.

The only guarantee is that of Trump; there is no UN, no Russia, no China, the biggest powers on the international scene. There is no Security Council whose Article 7 emphasizes the use of military force against the party that opposes the execution of the agreement.

Unfortunately, the US president is not a man of his word. He says something and says the exact opposite the same day and even in the same sentence. This what is the meaning of “peace through strength?” We understand that peace is derived through negotiations; And what about the meaning of “Hamas must agree are face the gates of hell”.

Gaza has experienced: Trump has not kept to his promises for when the US hostage Eidan Alexander was released last May Trump praised the Hamas step, regarding it as a goodwill gesture towards the US. He saw the release as a “historic day” on the way to end the barbaric war on Gaza.

But what happened to this historic day as described by the US president? The Netanyahu government become a wild beast with the Israeli army killing on average 100 Palestinians a day and with those injured double that number not to say anything about the starvation of tens of thousands.

The Israeli army increased its force on the enclave, invaded Gaza City and today it controls 80 percent of the enclave. We have no choice but to pretend that we believe in Trump and see what’s going to happen next and have to wait to see the outcome of his statements as the fairytale about the oil jar.

This opinion was written by originally written in Arabic.

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Netanyahu, Sparta and Israeli Isolation

By Ali Saadeh

In a rare contrast to his arrogant, narcissistic personality, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel is being increasingly isolated in the international community, as more and more countries either suspend military cooperation, are reviewing arms deals with it, and/or in the process of imposing diplomatic, political, and economic relations with Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu has already acknowledged that “a diplomatic tsunami is on the way, [plainly speaking] isolation, and we will be forced to adapt, more and more, to an economy that, in certain aspects, has the characteristics of self-sufficiency.” He added: “We are Athens and Sparta,” in reference to the two ancient Greek cities.

Netanyahu chose Sparta, meaning isolation and self-absorption. “He chose Sparta specifically from among all the places in the world as it lived in ruins and under a harsh dictatorship, and finally was swallowed by its neighbors,” according to Yoav Limor, a military affairs analyst for Channel 12.

Benjamin Netanyahu was “successful” in his choice of Sparta, because today it has become clear to the world that he is leading the occupying state towards a fate similar to that of ancient Sparta, which built its existence on perpetual violence before eventually collapsing.

The Hebrew media focuses on the danger of the Israeli occupying state transforming itself into a society that thrives on violence and perpetual war, much like Sparta, which ultimately collapsed.

Of course, this comparison is not merely a historical image; it reflects a deep-seated fear that this occupying entity is in a state of true collapse and has entered a dangerous path that threatens its existence and long-term stability.

Some in Israel are even beginning to talk about the fact that Netanyahu may even possibly be the last prime minister of this occupation state.

Sparta turned to military rule after being forced to wage long wars with its neighbors, most notably Athens, fighting with it a devastating war that lasted a quarter of a century, known as the Peloponnesian War. Its influence, both real and moral, expanded over the neighboring Greek cities.

The occupying state appears to be on the verge of collapse under the leadership of Netanyahu and his government, which resembles a group of mentally ill people who have secretly escaped from a mental hospital under cover of darkness.

This opinion by Ali Saadeh was translated from the Arabic Al Sabeel website.

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