When murderous Islamic antisemites meet a genocidal army under orders from a war criminal it isn’t going to end well. And it hasn’t, no matter what the terms of the peace deal are, will or won’t become. The Palestinians are in a much worse place than before October 7th and it was fairly bleak even then. Bombed back to the Stone Age, tens of thousands dead and under foreign occupation, it couldn’t have got much worse, especially when Hamas and Netanyahu are not really interested in peace. Peace just something to kick around for a while to appease Donald Trump before one or other provokes the next lot of war crimes. Which will mean more suffering for the women and children of Palestine. Maybe there’s a need for Middle Eastern women’s and children’s battalions to keep the evil old men in check, to force them into doing something useful rather than thinking about who they’d like to oppress, arrest and kill next. How about disbanding the IDF, Hamas, Islamic Jihad? How about locking up the Taliban, and throwing Iran’s Ayatollahs and morality police in jail? How about getting rid of all the corrupt old farts in Israel, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi? How about fomenting another Arab Spring? Real change. Not this plastic peace which will change nothing, a PR stunt for Trump and the West, a marketing opportunity, a way to make money via an angle that may not be obvious yet but is all too plain to contemplate. The smoke and mirrors of capitalist fundamentalism. Gaza beach front hotels. Tourism. Peace through strength, peace under Netanyahu’s threats of further violence and lack of aid, without Palestinian justice, statehood, reparations or war crime trials. Meanwhile, the narcissist of narcissists, Donald John Trump has been slapping himself on the back and heaping on the self-praise claiming he’s “brought peace to the Middle East”, while lobbying for the Nobel Peace Prize. Peace through ego. Peace as a way of worshipping at the palace of the orange sun-king. World leaders ready to kiss his arse in public, in private their own agendas kept close ready for the day Trump is distracted by something else that appeals to the sense of himself as an Oscar winner in his own film. The rest of the world still seething in the knowledge that Netanyahu, bad actor, rogue state enabler, genocidal maniac will never stand trial at The Hague and neither will the leaders of Hamas, most of whom are dead. Martyred to a cause which no one with any power or influence in the region has deep down ever really given a fuck about: an independent Palestinian state. That said, whatever the motivation of today’s current crop of cynical politicians the world over, maybe you’ve got to give peace a chance. In the words of the great Lennonist, Happy Christmas, war is over. Maybe. Or, maybe not, based on the number of Palestinians still being killed.