While Israel rains bombs and tank shells on Gaza in preparation for yet another round of ethnic cleansing, the Trump administration is busy presenting itself as a peace-broker. Outside the far-right, the UN and most of the world now openly acknowledges that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Yet no power with the military capability to make Israel stand down — least of all those claiming to support Palestinian freedom — is moving to stop it. Instead, Washington is doubling down on protecting Israel and ensuring what it calls “stability” on its terms.

Meanwhile, as the death toll in Gaza continues mounting, two parallel deals have emerged. On Suwayda, the U.S., Jordan, and Syria’s transitional government have announced a roadmap to restore “stability” after bloody Druze-Bedouin clashes. Simultaneously, the U.S. is pushing Israel and Syria into a security agreement that would demilitarize southern Syria. The eerie synchronicity is not coincidence. Both tracks are designed to safeguard Israel while the rubble of Gaza is eyed for Donald Trump’s grotesque Mar-a-Lago on the Med beachfront resort scheme.

For Syrians, these deals are not negotiated from a position of strength but imposed under duress. After fourteen years of war waged by Assad’s regime, the country is economically and militarily still on its knees. Infrastructure destroyed, millions still displaced, institutions shattered — Syrians are working round the clock to rebuild, but the task ahead is dizzyingly massive. Taking advantage of this weakness, in steps Israel, emboldened by U.S. protection and Trump’s indulgence.

Since Assad was ousted, Israeli forces have repeatedly launched raids, killings, kidnappings, and airstrikes in Syria. These are justified with the familiar fig leaves of “protecting minorities” or “fighting terror.” In Suwayda, where Druze separatists even called on Netanyahu to intervene, Israel was granted a ready-made pretext for deeper involvement. Now Syrians are effectively instructed to accept a stabilization pact drawn up in Tel Aviv and Washington, or face the alternative: more Israeli incursions, possibly full-scale war which Syria has no military capacity to resist.

Any Syrian military response to Israeli aggression, however wholly legitimate, would automatically be rebranded as “terrorism,” using President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s previous history as justification, becoming the pretext for a far wider offensive. The playbook Israel uses in Gaza is ready for the same use in southern Syria.

This is the War on Terror narrative, reheated and served once more. Resistance is terrorism; dissent is extremism; only absolute submission and unquestioning support counts as stability and grants freedom from the suspicion of terrorist sympathies. Variations of the same story have been deployed to justify the crushing of Palestinians and of Syrians, Egyptians, and others demanding freedom from tyranny, for decades, with the Muslim Brotherhood used as a useful figleaf by generations of dictators.

And the script is no longer limited to the Middle East or non-Western nations. Trump has now re-imported it to the United States. His latest move: declaring “Antifa” to be a terrorist organization. Except there is no Antifa organization—only the principle of anti-fascism. By branding anti-fascists as terrorists, Trump is using the same logic that Israel uses against Palestinians, and the same rationale Putin, Assad, Mubarak, Sisi and so many others have used : resistance to authoritarianism is criminalized, delegitimized, erased.

The pattern is global: whether Palestinians, Syrians, Russians, Chinese, Iranians, or now Americans protesting in the streets, opposition is painted as “terrorism.” Authoritarians and their enablers keep the monopoly on violence while everyone else is told to stay quiet or be crushed.

Nothing demonstrates the depravity of this worldview more than the latest plan for Gaza. Even as international legal bodies confirm Israel is committing genocide, Trump and his advisers are discussing turning the Strip into a luxury resort. Gaza’s dead are not mourned, they’re collateral damage for a development scheme. Genocide is a real-estate opportunity.

Meanwhile, the very governments that claim to defend Palestinian rights look away. No sanctions. No enforcement of the “rules-based order.” Just silence, or worse, complicity.
And as always, the only thing that moves Washington is Israel’s security — with Trump defining “security” as guaranteeing Netanyahu’s freedom to act without consequence, from Gaza to Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, or anywhere else he damn well chooses.

Link the dots and the picture is clear. The Suwayda pact is about preventing Israel from being sucked into costly unilateral action. The Syria-Israel security deal ensures Israel’s northern flank is calm while it focuses on Gaza. The Gaza resort plan turns annihilation into profit. All roads lead to one priority: Israel’s stability, whatever the cost to Palestinians, Syrians, or anyone else.

Palestinians know what is at stake: their freedom is forever postponed, their survival treated as optional. Syrians and others are also being railroaded into acquiescing to deals that protect Israel first and their own sovereignty last. And Americans are now learning the same lesson at home, where being anti-fascist is enough to earn the label of “terrorist.”

This global normalization of authoritarian impunity is, of course, nothing to do with real stability which can come only from its polar opposite - justice, peace and freedom. This is, perhaps, the inevitable metastasis of the War on Terror - a war of terror against dissent and liberty. Fascism redux.

By Ruth Riegler