by ANITA NAIDU
The headlines call it a ceasefire. The diplomats call it peace. But what’s being unveiled isn’t peace — it’s colonial revival.
Under the banner of reconstruction, Gaza’s future is being handed to a “Board of Peace” chaired by the very architects of perpetual war. A colonial council of overseers in new suits, governing through Palestinians kept under supervision. The vocabulary has changed; the hierarchy hasn’t.
Reconstruction as Recolonization
Empire’s genius has always been its ability to evolve its branding faster than its critics can decode it. Once, it conquered through armies. Now, it conquers through management. “Stabilization forces” replace occupation troops, and “special economic zones” stand in for open-air prisons.
The plan is textbook economic occupation dressed up as aid: rebuild what bombs destroyed, but rebuild it for control, not sovereignty. Rebuild it to be invested in, not lived in. Every brick becomes a bond. Every promise of peace becomes collateral for another round of extraction.
The Architecture of Obedience
When empire shifts from invasion to administration, it doesn’t loosen its grip — it professionalizes it. The machinery of global governance — from the UN to development banks — has perfected the art of outsourcing domination. Local faces, foreign terms. Indigenous hands, imperial blueprints.
The illusion is participation. Palestinians are “included” in
decisions already made elsewhere, and their autonomy is measured by how
well they comply with frameworks written by their occupiers.
It’s the same choreography every time: defer freedom indefinitely, call that restraint, and sell the delay as diplomacy.
Markets Over Justice
The applause isn’t for liberation — it’s for stability. For markets that can breathe again. For investors who can build again. The “peace process” is a portfolio strategy. War devastates; reconstruction monetizes; the cycle continues.
Empire kills, pauses, then rebrands the pause as moral progress. Each new “peace” agreement is just a maintenance plan for domination, administered by those fluent in the language of compassion.
Naming the Lie
What’s being celebrated today isn’t an end to occupation — it’s the outsourcing of it. Management replacing freedom. Oversight masquerading as care. Empire discovering that optics outperform armies.
And that is the real frontier: domination with softer branding.
Because peace without sovereignty is just management with better PR.
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