Daniel Levy, who knows a thing or two about peace negotiations, warns us that, “The plan is being used to push back against the momentum behind holding Israel accountable, the thing that could actually produce positive change.”

He says,“This is a time to redouble efforts, not to stand down – campaign for that shift in policy, pulling recalcitrant governments from paralysis towards action.” And I want to shout it from the rooftops.

Western leaders and a complicit media would have us think that all is well in the Holy Land. A number of Western leaders have recognised Palestine, a ceasefire will soon be in place and a peace plan has been negotiated. What more could we want?

Let’s not be lulled into mothballing our Palestinian flags and keffiyehs. Let’s not be lulled into abandoning our calls on governments to hold Israel accountable. Let’s not be dazzled by hollow words and the familiar smoke and mirrors. Let us redouble our efforts for Palestine.

Much has been written about Trump’s so-called peace plan. I hope people will continue to write about it and shine a light on who are its real beneficiaries. In a long essay, Levy superbly unpacks what he calls “The Trump (Netanyahu) Gaza plan.” He writes,“There is no avoiding that this plan is as sinister as it is delusional. It is not serious – it fails to offer the kind of substantive, detailed and realistic proposals that could improve a desperately horrific situation.”

He says, “.. It is dripping with racism towards Palestinians (who were not consulted in the paper’s preparation) over whom new mandates for economic and governance colonisation are to be imposed. Apparently only those who are being genocided (rather than the state conducting the genocide) must be deradicalised and disarmed. The choice offered to Palestinians between genocide or apartheid is barely concealed.”

The past two years have been exhausting for those campaigning against the genocide of Palestinians. They have taken a huge toll on people’s lives and careers. But all our problems pale in comparison to the horrors Israel unleashed on Palestinians.

Let’s not be distracted by the celebratory declarations of the arrival of peace, and remember what is actually on offer for the Palestinians.

• A welcome reprieve from the raining bombs. I use the word “reprieve” because there is nothing in Trump’s plan or Netanyahu’s pronouncements that guarantee a permanent ceasefire.
• An end to the occupation? No. And incidentally, if Israel needs a security parameter, why not establish it inside Israel?
• An end to their dehumanisation? Hardly. They are the ones the plan says must be deradicalised. How does one come back from Israeli soldiers' excrement in Palestinian cooking pots? And young Israelis taunting starving Palestinians, by posting videos in which they eat burgers and suggest to Palestinians that “… all the innocents eat the ones who aren’t. Bon appétit.”?
• An opportunity to rebuild their shattered lives and destroyed land? No. They have had no say in the plans being prepared for their homeland. These plans are all about skyscrapers in a prize piece of real estate by the sea. We can be sure that Jared Kushner and Naguib Sawiris are not planning hospitals and schools for Palestinians. Levy describes the establishment of a non-Palestinian governance and economic regime for Gaza, with the involvement of Trump and Tony Blair as “.. like the charter for a 21st century version of the Dutch East India Company”.
• Their right to self-determination? No. Not within their own sovereign state. Israel has clearly said that a Palestinian state will not happen, and has been working for decades to ensure that such a state becomes unfeasible. And not within one secular, democratic state with equal rights for all its people. Israel also rejects this because a one-state solution is incompatible with Zionism.

Cheerleaders for the “peace plan” point out that Palestinians will not be forced to leave Gaza, as if allowing people to remain in their homeland is a gift their superiors are bestowing on them. Israel, with the help of the US, has long been trying to expel all Palestinians from Gaza. Voluntary transfer they call it. All sorts of pressures were put on neighbouring Arab countries to take in the Palestinians. This is a war zone, they said. This will be a construction zone, they said. Strong sticks were waved and bags of carrots were offered. When the answer remained “No”, we were told that negotiations were afoot with other countries to take in all the Palestinians of Gaza. Apparently, nothing came of these efforts.

So, at least for now, Palestinians can stay. Experience tells us Israel has many ways of forcing Palestinians to leave “voluntarily”. Perhaps not en masse as it desires, but gradually. It can deny them jobs, medicine and education for their children. It can restrict their calorie intake to an even lower level than before the genocide. It can sow divisions, exploit collaboration and blame any problems that arise on the Palestinian technocrats at the bottom of the planned administrative structure. In time, it could even proscribe those technocrats as terrorists and use this as a pretext to further “thin out” Palestinians and reduce its Palestinian problem. There will be opportunities galore for manufactured pretexts. Not that Israel has ever needed a pretext.

The plan says those who leave will be free to return. Can we trust them? An emphatic “No”. Trump changes his mind between breakfast and afternoon tea. And Israel didn’t get to expand its fluid borders from those of 1948 to those of today by keeping its word.

If this is too depressing, I write it to remind us all of Levy’s words:“This is a time to redouble efforts, not to stand down – campaign for that shift in policy, pulling recalcitrant governments from paralysis towards action.”

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.