A Palestinian woman washes clothes as she sits next to a tent set up in a cemetery in Khan Younis, Saturday, Sept. 20, 2025. Photo: AP/PTI

Trump’s latest plan for a ceasefire in Gaza has both a short and a longer term purpose. What it currently does is to not just divert attention away from Israel’s continuing genocide but to help absolve Israel from being even seen as punishable for what it has done let alone demanding that it be so punished in any serious way. This ‘agreement’ – finalised between the US President and Israel’s Prime Minister with no negotiating input whatsoever from Hamas – in demanding that must be accepted as it stands, seeks to legitimise the continuation of this genocide by Israel should Hamas refuse to accept the plan.

The ‘fault’ then would lie with it. Any number of governments which include not just western allies of US/Israel but many Arab and Muslim countries as well as Russia, China and India, have welcomed the plan. None of them has been willing to add that regardless of whether Hamas accepts or not, this murderous assault must stop immediately.

This should not be a surprise because by their non-actions while this genocide has been taking place over two years, they have displayed their own moral depravity and unconcern for the people of Palestine. The key Arab governments, which Trump very much wants on his side, could have applied powerful pressures to seriously weaken US support for Israel. Instead they have been the biggest betrayers of the Palestinian cause.

 The US establishing itself as a more dominant player in the region than ever before

Such is the intensity and scale of human suffering in Gaza that one cannot begrudge many of those most honourably committed to justice for Palestine from perhaps thinking that Hamas should accept this disgraceful plan even as it needs to be remembered that it is Israel that resumed military hostilities breaking the three phase truce agreed with Hamas earlier this year for the eventual release of all hostages.

According to the Trump plan there will be a transitional governing team selected by him and his cronies for carrying out reforms and establishing order. But what the mechanisms and procedures will be for this, are still all up in the air. However, even as Hamas must fully disarm and first release all hostages before Israel reciprocates with a limited prisoners swap, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) will retain a buffer zone. An International Stabilisation Force (ISF) will be set up in consultation with some of Trump’s key allies in Europe (UK) and West Asia (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE) for security purposes while UN forces will be completely excluded in this respect.

Israel and the US have a veto over the withdrawal from Gaza since the IDF will carry out a phased withdrawal based on “standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization that will be agreed upon between the IDF, ISF, the guarantors, and the US”. Israel can revert to war if the ‘terror threat’ is not fully eliminated. Aid will flow in due course if everything works out as sought for by this plan, a big if!

Then massive investment from multinational agencies and private corporations will come to develop a Gaza where real power is never going to be in the hands of Palestinians or their representative bodies, and that includes the Palestine Authority (PA) ruled by Fatah as an obedient sub-contractor for the US and Israel. The PA primarily serves the interests of a Palestinian elite in the occupied territories, more so currently in the West Bank (WB).

At this stage everything remains completely vague but what would be indisputable should this plan go through is that the US would now have established itself, along with its junior Zionist partner, as a more dominant player in the region than ever before in its history. The Cold War systemic rivalry is long gone. Countries signing the Abraham Accords have not reneged and key Arab governments are more worried of Iran, of transnational Islamist rebels and of democratic upheavals at home than they are of Israel.

As indicated in the very beginning what we are witnessing today is a very significant step in the longer term perspective that aims to liquidate the Palestinian project of genuine self-determination and to help establish a political structure of rule that would ensure the permanent subordination of Palestinians in the occupied territories to Israel.

This would be in the form of denying Palestinians any hope of having a genuinely independent and sovereign territory of its own as distinct from its ruling strata and most political factions being forced to settle for a Bantustanisation far worse than anything that existed in apartheid South Africa. To fully understand this process one must grasp the essential content and purpose of the 2020 “Deal of the Century” during Trump’s first term and see the current Trump plan as following the logic earlier laid.

Two key people responsible for shaping the 2020 proposal were Jared Kushner, Trump’s property dealer son-in-law and David Friedman who worked as Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer for his failed casinos and subsequently served as his Ambassador to Israel. Friedman had never hidden his closeness to Israeli settlers in the WB and was largely dismissive of the idea of Palestinians having their own state.

That earlier plan declared that the WB settlements were not illegal under international law and would remain under Israeli sovereignty as well as accepting the annexation of the Jordan Valley with its agricultural and water resources. A series of Palestinian enclaves would be created surrounded by an enlarged Israel.

In exchange for Israel getting more land in the WB two Palestinian enclaves would be created in the Negev desert. While Israel’s capital was shifted to Jerusalem with Trump’s full approval, the Palestinian authority could set up its so-called capital in the outskirts of Jerusalem but this would be separated from the rest of the city by an Israeli controlled artificial barrier. This reorganisation of the territory, itself de-militarised would be allotted to the PA which must accept that Israel will control all its borders, airspace, electro-magnetic spectrum and, in the name of protecting its security, Palestine’s ‘foreign policy’ behaviour would be subject to getting Israeli approval.

Furthermore, there would never be a right of return for Palestinians pushed out in 1948 and 1967 and after, and this ‘Palestinian state’ would have to recognise Israel as a Jewish state and nation. That plan fell aground because it was contingent on Hamas no longer being in power in Gaza and the PA being willing to sign it which it wasn’t then.

Now the possibility of Hamas being ousted or its power in Gaza being decisively eroded is much closer to fulfilment and the PA sees itself as much weaker in geopolitical terms. The latest plan was not accompanied by any White House statement that the settlements in the WB are illegal let alone that they be evacuated.

Only this time, Gaza has been put into more serious focus which is why Trump shortly after taking office for the second time made his declaration about turning much of Gaza into a Riviera, eyeing as he always does, the opportunities for his own companies and family to make ever more money. At the time there were many commentators who dismissed this as overblown rhetoric not to be seriously indicative of his intentions or plans.

 The need for a new kind of Palestinian leadership

The 2020 plan promised $50 billion of investments through loans, grants and private investments in the occupied territories as a whole as well as in Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon as a way of luring their support at least in part. This time the aim is to create a number of enclaves in Gaza as well where Palestinians will reside.

Most of the rest of the territory, including where there are valuable gas deposits on and offshore would be kept under separate control by US companies willing also to collaborate with counterparts in Israel and in other countries. The hitherto stalled, economically motivated groupings of I2U2 and IMEC, can now hope to start operating more effectively.

Forget the Palestinians! We governments, even those not ideologically in love with each other as Hindutva India and Zionist Israel are, can continue to use as a cover for our moral and political hypocrisies, our loudly declared and regularly repeated endorsement of a “two state solution” while doing nothing or as little as possible to help bring it about.

Netanyahu has made it clear that there will be no Palestinian state and he is now supported by the vast majority of the Israeli public even outside the WB settlements. More significant is that Trump has dismissed these acts of recognition by a growing number of even allied countries as foolish and “rewarding terrorists”.

What is important than this formalistic divide between those who call for this recognition or don’t, is what they all in common believe and accept; namely that some form of self-governance, well short of any meaningful notion of having a truly independent state, will suffice even as they can differ on the degree and extent to which it can remain dominated by Israel.

Is there a way forward for Palestine in its pursuit of justice? There are three reasons why one can continue to hope. First is the indomitable spirit and courage of Palestinians under Israeli control and in the diaspora. Here, what is needed is a new kind of leadership that is neither corrupt like Fatah nor like Hamas and other groups, Islamist or otherwise that believe that an offensive strategy of armed resistance, beyond direct protection of one’s family and possessions if under military assault, remains necessary in the collective struggle for liberation.

The struggle has to be fought in a fundamentally non-military manner for rights and equality within what is in reality, a ‘Greater Israel’ from which territorial separation is a fast diminishing possibility. This will reinforce the second new development that has taken place and which gives us some considerable cheer.

Never before amongst the world public, independently of their own governments, has there be such a shift in mass consciousness in favour of Palestinians recognising the terrible, indeed evil, nature of Israel’s treatment them. This consciousness can expand more deeply and widely if the Palestinian resistance forswears military means and thereby raise greater prospects of promoting Israel’s political, moral and even economic isolation.

Third, it remains the case that a more lasting overthrow of one major authoritarian Arab regime in the West Asian region will shake-up and significantly erode the existing relationship of forces that today seems more weighted against the people of Palestine than ever before.

Achin Vanaik