No wonder Israel’s prime minister was grinning. He had his fourth meeting this year with President Trump. He also got what he came for: permission to “finish the job”.

Trump wants agreement from Hamas in three or four days. Whether he gets it or not, Israel’s ultra-right ministers have already set 7 October as the deadline for Palestinians, not just Hamas, to leave Gaza or die. As Professor Chris Sidoti (co-author of the September 2025 report of the UN’s  Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory) says, Trump’s plan isn’t worth the paper it’s not written on.

What the Arab negotiators in Qatar wanted Hamas to agree on changed. Behind their backs, Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Netanyahu and his confidant Ron Dermer and edited the text, which had said Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza and a new authority will control it. The gang of four made Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza conditional on Hamas disarming, inserted an Israeli veto into the process, and stated that Israel’s occupation will continue “until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat”. That means forever.

Netanyahu has had more one-on-one meetings with Trump this year than any other leader. From each, he took home what he came for, or if not, did what he wanted anyway. As Israeli Opposition leader Yair Lapid observes, “Netanyahu says ‘yes’ when he’s in front of the cameras in Washington, then says ‘but’ when he returns and insists that this should not happen now.” He has three aims: to allow nothing to stand in the way of him staying in power, eliminate Hamas and the Palestinians, and have Israel control all the territory from the Nile to the Euphrates — the Bible’s Eretz Israel — encompassing Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Yemen, and Qatar.

Even Trump’s announced “peace plan” has gaps big enough for Netanyahu to drive a bulldozer through. Hamas must agree to leave and surrender their weapons and all the hostages before any Palestinian prisoners are released. No benchmarks, timelines, or dialogue provisions are set. US “aid” will continue through the Israel-controlled Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. No specifics about rehabilitation of Gaza, nor about a US or UN occupation force, the “Board of Peace”, or its leadership apart from, of all people, Tony Blair. No accountability for Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, nothing on the return of refugees, nothing for removing illegal settlers, nothing about Palestinian elections. And of course, no role for Hamas, whatever the Palestinians who voted for them in 2006 now want.

Governments, including Australia’s, that have listed Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorists are stuck with the consequences. Israel’s forces have committed far more terrorist acts since October 2023 — and long before — than have the Palestinians. The UN Charter (Article 2) affirms the equality of all member states, giving them no right to decide how any other should be governed. But international law is being distorted: the conditions imposed on the state of Palestine should equally apply to Israel. If Hamas is outlawed, political parties in Israel that support terrorism should also be banned. Democratic elections should give Palestinian residents in Gaza, the West Bank and in Israel too, their say. But that won’t happen.

Instead, Israel will go into propaganda overdrive for the anniversary of 7 October 2023, making predictable claims about civilisation and barbarism, democracy and terrorism. Israel should face the same charges as Hamas: indeed Professor Ben Saul ( UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-terrorism and Human Rights) told the NPC on 1 October that the Hamas attack provided a “gloves-off manual” for Israel’s anti-terror response, just as the 11 September 2001 attack did for the US “war on terror”. While this year’s anniversary of 9/11 passed with less notice than 7 October 2023 will attract, Israel and the US are linked, as they have long been in much else, to both terrorist events.

A compressed history suggests that Israel and the US are co-dependents.

The American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem is named after Christians who arrived there from Chicago in 1881 and were later joined in their charitable work by Swedish missionaries. The palace of an Ottoman Pasha and his four wives was soon sold to the Americans.

Jews from the diaspora arrived in Palestine in response to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which proposed “a national home for the Jewish people”. It stated, however, that nothing should prejudice the civil and religious rights of Palestine’s existing non-Jewish communities.

Those rights were aggressively eroded, however, as were Palestinians’ holdings of land. In a repeat of terra nullius, Israel was declared to be “a land without people for people without a land”. Bullet marks on some walls of the American Colony Hotel recall the violence of the Naqba — “catastrophe” — that followed the 1947 establishment of the state of Israel. Palestine has only just achieved recognition after decades of deprivation.

The influence of Israel on the US grew with post-war migration of talented Jews from Europe, many of whom achieved fame and fortune. Zionist ideals were shared by many Jewish and Christian Americans and attracted political support. In the Suez Crisis in 1956, when Israel wanted General Nasser to be punished for his support of the Palestinians in Gaza, the US refusal to support Britain and France showed Israel how dependent it was on America. The Zionist impetus behind US policy grew with Israel’s defeat of Arab forces in the 1967 Six-Day War. That aggravated resistance among the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as the emergence of oil politics across the Middle East and the rise of Al-Qaeda.

Terrorist attacks attributed to Al-Qaeda on US sites began well before 2001 with bombings in the World Trade Centre (1993) and Khobar Towers in Dhahran (1996). Saudi Arabian Government buildings in Riyadh were attacked (1996) and terrorists also threatened American diplomatic premises (1998). The USS Cole guided-missile destroyer was bombed in a suicide attack in Yemen (2000). But President Johnson had covered up the fatal, unprovoked attack by Israel on USS Liberty in international waters off Gaza in 1967. Johnson’s close advisers were almost all Jewish or pro-Israel, and Israel was seen as a strategic asset against Soviet-backed Arab states, according to Greg Felton (The Host and the Parasite: How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America, 2010).

The Zionist process, unresisted by successive presidents, led in the 1990s to the Project for the New American Century, driven by Jewish and pro-Israel Americans, which proposed enforcing US dominance of the Middle East after the fall of the Soviet Union. Seven targeted states, all enemies of Israel, have been attacked and devastated, except Iran. Even after PNAC’s demise, similar pro-Israel organisations’ influence on presidents, politicians, media and academia has increased, as has anti-Iran propaganda.

Does Israel run the US or is it the other way round? The answer that will emerge on 7 October is predictable. Two leaders want to stay in power and out of jail. One provides money and weapons, the other uses them, both exchange intelligence, and each reinforces political support for the other. Why would either give a damn about the Palestinians?

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.