Hamas has been weakened but not destroyed despite Trump’s claims of lasting peace in Gaza
Eternal peace. It has a ring to it, right? A noble aspiration, Trumpian in its ambition.
And utterly impossible, especially in the Middle East.
The Israeli hostages are home and for that President Trump deserves praise and respect. He made it happen, by bullying, arm-twisting, by sheer force of personality.
True, the stars were aligned. The terrorist group Hamas had vastly overplayed its hand with the vile attack on a music festival and Israeli settlements on October 7, 2023, in which they killed 1,200 civilians and took 251 hostages.
Hamas expected the Arab world to rise in support. Instead, Iran-backed Hezbollah reluctantly (knowing the consequences) lobbed a few rockets into Israel from their southern Lebanon stronghold and the Houthis in Yemen loosed off a few more. But nothing Israel’s powerful military couldn’t cope with.
Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf states viewed the Hamas outrage with grim distaste, which left the cowardly gang of murderers and rapists isolated and vulnerable.
On the Israeli side, Binyamin Netanyahu, weakened by personal scandal and in thrall to Right-wing zealots in his coalition government, was fighting for his political life – and to stay out of jail.
He ordered the destruction of Gaza. The Strip was razed, apartment block by apartment block, until today it looks like Hiroshima after the Americans dropped “Little Boy” in the first attack using an atomic bomb.
Estimates put the Gaza death toll at 67,000 civilians, perhaps more – nearly 70 per cent of them women and children – as the Israel Defence Force wantonly pounded the enclave.
And so, here we are. President Trump flies to Israel, telling reporters mid-air: “I’m good at solving wars. I’m good at making peace. And it’s an honour.”
Though not, of course, the honour he sought: the Nobel Peace Prize, which instead went to a brave opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, who stood up to Venezuela’s brutal dictator Hugo Chavez. With admirable grace, she dedicated the prize to Trump.
“The war is over,” crowed Trump as he landed in Israel. He is to chair the Board of Peace, which will seek to iron out the details of a lasting settlement. He may be joined in that endeavour by our former Prime Minister, Sir Tony Blair.
The guns are silent but only the delusional would equate that with the war being over. Hamas has not been destroyed – witness the fighters with their Kalashnikovs during the handover of the 20 hostages still living.
However, they have been weakened and are said to be fighting it out with criminal gangs for control of what remains of the territory in Gaza.
But Hamas are the least of the problems. Netanyahu, with his indiscriminate bombardment, has succeeded in creating a generation of Palestinians who will never forgive him, or Israel.
Freed from the imminent threat of death raining from the sky, they have returned to their homes to find only rubble. Where will we live? they are asking themselves. How are we to feed ourselves, except through the charity offered by aid agencies? How can we earn a living, now that our cities lie in ruins?
Their fate might well rest in refugee camps in Egypt or Jordan or Syria, where they will be forgotten while the rebuilding of Gaza goes on in Trump’s image. Shiny beachfront condos, upmarket hotels, designer stores on wide avenues, none of which the dispossessed Gazans will have access to.
The resentment will fester and grow, especially in refugee camps. Hamas, or something like it, will re-arm and exploit this breeding ground for a new conflict, probably years down the road.
And meanwhile, another conflict takes shape in the West Bank. Jews, often American Zionists, living in illegal settlements and emboldened by Trump’s unwavering support for Netanyahu, have stepped up their harassment of Palestinians there, burning their olive trees, their cars, their homes.
Trump has endorsed Israel’s rights in the land that Jews call Judea and Samaria and regard as Greater Israel. This could prove to be the next battleground, more complicated than the Gaza Strip, less easy to level, given the presence of so many Israelis.
So, is the war over? “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” Plato said.
He might have been speaking of the 67,00 who perished in Gaza. Those spared live to fight another day.
*****
Legendary Mirror editor Mike Molloy tells some wonderful funny stories in his memoir The Happy Hack, including this one…
Fergus Cashin, film critic for the Daily Sketch, was doing the rounds in Soho, no doubt on the lookout for a story.
He called in at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, where a blind saxophonist called Roland Kirk was beginning his set.
Cashin ignored the music and conversed loudly with friends at another table. Afterwards, Ronnie Scott scolded Cashin for his bad manners, adding: “After all, he is blind.”
Chastened, Cashin asked to apologise to Kirk in person and when he came over, offered to buy him a drink.
“Sure,” said Kirk, “I’ll have one of my specials.”
“What’s that?” inquired Cashin.
“A long glass filled with three shots of vodka, two of grenadine and a triple brandy on ice.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Cashin, “No wonder you’re blind.”
*****
To the Royal Academy to see an exhibition of paintings comparing the bleak, raw canvases of Anselm Kiefer with the work of Van Gogh (lots of sunflowers; Van Gogh’s are vibrant, Kiefer’s dead).
On the way back we crossed the Mall and St James’s Park, and were struck by the number of Spanish tourists hanging around for the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. Certainly scores, probably hundreds of them, many young.
Could these possibly be the same Spaniards who squirted Brits with water pistols on the Ramblas in Barcelona, and brandished banners saying, “Tourists go home” in Mallorca in protest at mass tourism?
In any case, after fighting my way through the hordes, I begin to see their point.
*****
Come on, when was the last time you laughed at something on the telly, I mean actually guffawed?
No, I can’t remember either. Now actor and stand-up comedian Alan Davies has revealed what the hell happened to the humour.
It is pruned almost before it sees the light of day – by the very people who think it up. The process, he told Cheltenham Literature Festival, is called self-editing.
Comedy writers, he said, find many obstacles placed in their path as they try to create work for television. And they end up telling themselves: “Oh, don’t put that in, that won’t get through.”
Davies added: “If you go through an independent production company, who will be very keen to get commissions from broadcasters, then that first stage of filtering the ideas in your work begins quite early on.”
Which only confirms my view that TV companies are run by right-thinking idiots.
It’s a joke, isn’t it? Am I allowed to say that?
*****
All men of a certain age (or at least those with a scintilla of taste) carried a torch for Diane Keaton.
She might have worked in Hollywood but she was a real person. Beautiful but somehow attainable; brainy and with a style that was hers alone.
Remember the shirt and tie, the waistcoat and baggy trousers she wore in Annie Hall? Taken from her own wardrobe.
She often looked as if she was itching to tell you a joke. And when she smiled, it reached her eyes.
Annie Hall won her an Oscar and she more than held her own acting with Al Pacino in The Godfather trilogy.
I’m sorry she has left us at 79. It seems like the end of something special.
RICHARD DISMORE
15 October 2025
