Is the Gaza Ceasefire a Step Towards A Lasting Peace in Southwest Asia?

by: Harley Schlanger

President, The LaRouche Organization

Nov. 21, 2025 (EIRNS)—Gideon Levy, an award winning journalist writing for Israel’s Haaretz, has been a powerful voice of conscience for many years, but especially during the past two-plus years following Hamas’ murderous attack on October 7 and the continuous genocidal retaliation conducted by Israel. Levy was a former aide and spokesman for Shimon Peres from 1978 to 1982, who then went to work as a deputy editor at Haaretz. He published in 2004 a book of his essays on the brutal treatment of the Palestinians, “Twilight Zone—Life and Death Under the Israeli Occupation,” which expresses his disdain for the methods employed by Israel allegedly to protect its citizens.

Given his history of harsh criticism for Netanyahu and the defenders of ethnic cleansing in his cabinet, it was surprising to read his relatively optimistic column of November 29, “The ’Blessed Curse” Redefining Israel: Global Limits, Gaza Shift and a New Order." He writes about what he sees as positive potential arising from developments on the ground resulting from the Trump Peace Plan, announced on September 29, which was followed by a U.N. Security Council vote on November 17. There were 13 votes for the plan, with two abstentions—Russia and China.

REASON FOR HOPE

In that column, Levy opens by writing that “it’s been a long time since we have had such a change that is likely to augur hope.” He then offers the reasons why one can be hopeful:

“The Israelis and the Palestinians are undergoing an accelerated internationalization of the conflict; the United Nations Security Council has approved a resolution that points in the right direction; Israel is being returned to its true dimensions at an encouraging speed and the fate of the Palestinians is increasingly being removed from its exclusive control. It’s hard to ask for more. What was presented in Israel as a series of humiliating defeats is actually a collection of encouraging developments.”

His main contention is that the intervention of the international community has changed the previously desperate situation facing the Palestinian population, by offering Israel a chance to give up its arrogant belief that as a military superpower, it can do what it wants to the Palestinians, while trampling on international law, and engaging in murderous attacks on its neighbors as a routine practice.

“The superpower (the U.S.) has returned to being a superpower and its client state has returned to its natural place. The state of affairs in which it was hard to know who was in whose pocket, the blurring of roles between the superpower and its client state, which lasted for decades, has come to an end. This is good news for Israel….The megalomania is dead, the state’s delusions of grandeur, of omnipotence, is finished,” he concludes.

Levy has been a persistent, articulate critic of the murderous attacks on the Palestinians of the Netanyahu regime, and has communicated his profound disappointment that the actions of the regime have been supported by the vast majority of the population, following the October 7 attack. Does the Trump Peace Plan, with numerous loopholes and unanswered questions, have a chance at succeeding, as long as Netanyahu maintains any influence, and the agreement is dependent on Donald Trump maintaining his concentration to see it through? His doubts peek through the column in the end:

“Attacks whenever something happens that isn’t to its liking, blatant cease-fire violations, assassinations and acts of terror: Israel not only believes that all is permitted to it, it is also convinced that it is permitted to no one else. This mindset has corrupted it, and perhaps now it will end. An Israel that is more modest in its ambitions and less armed with offensive weapons may have a chance of being more accepted in the region.”

The key word here is “perhaps”!

The U.N. Security Council resolution establishes an International Stabilization Force (ISF), to protect the fragile ceasefire, and places the power to enforce the terms of the agreement in a Board of Peace, with President Trump at its head. While it does mention in passing a “Palestinian state,” it leaves Israel controlling 58% of Gaza, and assigns to the multinational ISF the task of carrying out the disarming of Hamas. Since the plan was agreed upon, there have been more than 300 Palestinians killed, and the “Greater Israel” settler vigilantes engage in daily assaults on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Levy is, of course aware of this. His hopes for a change in the thinking of the general population probably reflects a belief in a change reflected in the global rejection of Zionist genocide.

WILL THE WEST LISTEN TO THE GLOBAL MAJORITY?

After two years of toleration of western complicity in genocide, the intimidated “peace movement” internationally took center stage. The voices of opposition from the Global South eventually found resonance to their pleas, which included large demonstrations throughout major cities in Europe, which occurred in spite of efforts to silence the opposition coming from state security services, especially in the U.K., Germany and the U.S. The single most important example of the growing resistance to Zionist arrogance came from young Jews, including in the U.S., who took to the streets, and found surprising support from a faction of Trump’s MAGA movement, which denounced continuing U.S. military and financial support for Netanyahu as intolerable, and a violation of Trump’s “America First” promises.

This crystallized following the assassination of young conservative leader Charlie Kirk, which brought to wide public awareness that he was moving away from blind support for Israel; and in the election of a young activist, Zohran Mamdani, as Mayor of New York City, who received at least one-third of the votes of the city’s large Jewish population, despite desperate efforts by the Zionist Lobby, spearheaded by the Anti-Defamation League, to define him as an “anti-Semite.” Mamdani is a Muslim, but made clear that he was not against Jews, but the Zionist fanatics cheering on the genocidal assaults against Palestinians.

The Schiller Institute’s International Peace Coalition has been mobilizing support for two issues which can move the peace process forward. The first is its advocacy of the Oasis Plan of Lyndon LaRouche, a major infrastructure project which would provide vast quantities of fresh, desalinated water for all peoples in Southwest Asia. Cooperation in this mutually beneficial project offers a real incentive that goes beyond political agreement expressed by signatures on a treaty.

Second would be Israel freeing political prisoner Marwan Barghouti, who has been imprisoned for 22 years on bogus charges of terrorist activity. Barghouti has broad support among Palestinian factions and has won the trust of pro-peace Israelis.

These two measures would go a long way toward realizing the hopes expressed by Gideon Levy for consolidating a new geometry of peace for Southwest Asia.