DaysofPal- The peace plan that U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled in Washington this week was a parody of a peace plan. It was framed as a breakthrough and negotiated between an Israeli perpetrator and an American enabler, with no representation from the very people whose lives it aims to influence.
Trump sat beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, beaming as he thanked him for “agreeing” to a plan that he had written himself. Not a single Palestinian voice was present: no Hamas, no Palestinian Authority, not even a token representative to lend credibility to the spectacle.
This continuation of the colonial logic that birthed the Abraham Accords is unmistakable: negotiate over Palestine without Palestinians. Celebrate “peace” while ignoring occupation, blockade, and ethnic cleansing. Parrot the language of reconciliation while systematically silencing the people with the legitimate right to speak for themselves.
This deal is not negotiable. It is an imposition. It is surrender dressed as statesmanship.
Netanyahu has a history of targeting Palestinian negotiators. From Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to those convening in Doha to discuss Trump’s draft deal, his policy has been clear: eliminate the negotiators, eliminate the negotiations, and then stand beside Washington to announce a plan crafted by partners in violence.
To give the illusion of legitimacy, Arab and Muslim leaders were summoned, not to defend Palestinians, but to pressure them. Their assigned role was to serve as a fig leaf, to shield Trump and Netanyahu from scrutiny while pushing Palestine toward submission. Netanyahu himself crowed, “Who could believe it?” astonished that Muslim regimes would provide cover for Israel’s diktat.
A Deal of Smoke and Mirrors
Strip away the theatrics, and the plan offers almost nothing. Its only tangible promise is the return of hostages. Beyond that, there are no guarantees of withdrawal, no binding commitments, only vague pledges while Israeli troops remain entrenched. What Trump offered Netanyahu was not compromise, but a diplomatic victory he had been unable to secure through force after two years of bombing and massacres.
Israel did not crush Gaza. It did not bring hostages home through war. It did not break Palestinian will. This “deal” is an attempt to convert military failure into political triumph.
Israel’s supposed victory is, in truth, isolation. At the United Nations, Netanyahu stood at the podium while 77 delegations walked out, leaving him to declaim to empty chairs. Polls across Europe and the United States show public opinion tilting decisively against Israel, with younger generations leading the shift. Meanwhile, global solidarity with Palestine continues to swell, a rising tide that terrifies Washington and Tel Aviv.
The real objective of this deal is to suppress that tide. To counter boycotts, protests, and the growing international conscience. To replace Palestinian agency with an imposed guardianship: a “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump and overseen by Tony Blair, a figure whose colonial record and disastrous interventions in Iraq make him wholly unfit to arbitrate Gaza’s future.
A Colonial Diktat, Not a Ceasefire
This is not peace. It is the Gaza Humiliation Foundation writ large: external control masquerading as humanitarian rhetoric. The Muslim rulers parading beside Netanyahu, from Emiratis whispering in private as the world looked away to others applauding on Trump’s podium, are not partners in peace; they are accomplices in surrender.
As Egypt’s former UN delegate Motaz Khalil put it, this is a “surrender plan.” It silences Palestinians, strips them of representation, and hands Netanyahu the absolute victory he promised but failed to win on the battlefield.
History will not be kind to this moment. A ceasefire plan that excludes the occupied is not a peace plan. It is a colonial diktat, echoing mandates and protectorates of the past. It is the same conceit that allowed the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to promise Palestinian land without their consent. The language has changed, but the logic remains: deny Palestinians their voice, strip them of agency, and impose solutions from abroad.
Trump and Netanyahu can draft as many plans as they please, but the world is moving beyond their conference rooms. Millions march, boycotts deepen, and public opinion tilts. Palestine has become the conscience of the world, and that cannot be negotiated away.
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