by EJAZ HAIDER
The plan cements Zionist occupation, institutionalises apartheid and legitimises genocide under the guise of diplomacy.
“One of the historic errors the US made — going back to the Carter administration — was the fiction of being an honest broker… I think what President Trump understood… was if the world knows nothing else, the world needs to know this: that America stands with Israel.”
— Mike Pence, former US vice president speaking to David Friedman, orthodox Jew and former US ambassador to the Zionist entity on Trinity Broadcasting Network
“In the last several decades, the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other… It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.”
— Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, speaking to heads of Jewish organisations in New York on March 27, 2018
“There is intelligence cooperation between Bahrain and Israel. Mossad is in Bahrain and they are present in the region… intelligence cooperation is part of our ongoing partnership between Bahrain and Israel and will continue.”
— Sheikh Abdullah bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, undersecretary at Bahrain’s foreign ministry, speaking at the Munich Security Conference
“In any future arrangement… Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan. This collides with the idea of sovereignty [for Palestinians]. What can you do? This truth I tell to our American friends, and I put the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel.”
— Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of the Zionist entity at a nationally televised conference in January 2024
UPFRONT
As I write these lines, the immediate conditions in US President Donald Trump’s so-called ‘peace plan’ for the Middle East are being negotiated in Cairo. There are two ways of analysing the 20 points: as a standalone document or a document that must be juxtaposed with historical developments that have plagued the land of Palestine since colonial powers declared it terra nullius to solve Europe’s ‘Jewish problem.’
In this space I propose to first look at Trump’s plan as it stands and then collocate it with factors that have served to elude real peace in Occupied Palestine. Those factors are important because, without addressing them, Trump might just be setting up the place for more instability. And it won’t be for the first time.
As we would see, what was hailed as his greatest foreign policy achievement in the previous tenure, the Abraham Accords, contributed in no uncertain way in creating the conditions that led to increased Zionist violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) and ultimately to the October 7 attack by Hamas.
Before we proceed further, let’s establish a simple fact: this is not a peace plan. In fact, it’s not even a plan. At best, it can be described as a framework or certain guidelines. Its first and foremost objective is to achieve a ceasefire.
That cannot be faulted in and of itself, given the devastation in Gaza and the ongoing genocide in the Strip. But it’s important to flag this point to temper expectations about what can be achieved through these 20 points.
Far from promising lasting peace, US President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza not only ignores the structural causes of the conflict in Palestine, it cements Zionist occupation, erases Palestinian sovereignty, institutionalises apartheid and legitimises genocide under the guise of diplomacy
The second fact is that this document does not address any of the structural, political, social, legal, economic and security issues for the Palestinians in Gaza or the OPTs, issues that have remained unaddressed since the colonial British Mandate.
UNPACKING THE PLAN
For a document that describes itself as a ‘peace plan’, it is surprisingly short on detail — granular specificities about timelines — and ambiguous over who gets to decide the timelines regarding multiple transitions or even how those transitions will take place.
Who is the overarching power? Trump at the head of a ‘Board of Peace’, the discredited and much-reviled Tony Blair representing Trump, or the apolitical Palestinian body assigned to run the municipal affairs in the Strip under an international transitional authority?
Dawn for more