We are told that Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan envisages a potential pathway to a future Palestinian state.

I think of all the previous pipe dreams that were sold to the Palestinians, instead of their right to self-determination. We have seen this movie before: the Camp David Accord and Oslo Accords that brought neither justice nor peace. They served as useful distractions that gave Israel time to steal and annex land and establish facts on the ground. And, all the time, the leaders of the enlightened, civilised and free world banged on about the “two-state solution”. All the time, they continued to supply Israel with weapons, intelligence and diplomatic cover.

Right at the bottom of Trump’s 20-point plan, point 19 states, “While Gaza re-development advances and when the PA reform program is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognise as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.” I stop at the words “faithfully” and “may” and “credible” and “pathway” and “aspiration”. A textbook example of fraudulent drafting. Who will judge if the PA reform program has been carried out faithfully? Who will decide that the conditions are finally in place for (not statehood, God forbid) but for a credible path to statehood? Certainly not the Palestinians. As always it will be the people with the planes and the bombs. And why is it that all people have the right to self-determination, but in the case of Palestinians this right becomes a mere “aspiration”?

The last point in the plan says, ‘The US will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous co-existence." Does anyone seriously believe that such a dialogue will be fruitful? Perhaps someone ought to tell Trump that peaceful and prosperous co-existence is impossible without an end to the occupation. It is not complicated. The Likud Party Platform, says that “..between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty”. And Palestinians want freedom from occupation, from collective punishment and from periodic slaughter and destruction. Yet the US, that honest broker in all matters relating to Israel, “will establish a dialogue aiming at agreement on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous co-existence”.

We are told that the governance of Gaza will be overseen by a new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by Trump who drew our attention to the beauty of the new body’s name. And on the beautifully-named “Board of Peace” there will be other members to be announced, including former British prime minister Tony Blair (Qui donc a eu l’idée de sortir Blair de la naphtaline? asked a French reader.). The “Board of Peace” will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program.

So following the flurry of the recent recognitions of the Palestinian state by Western leaders, we are told Palestinians are not ready to govern themselves. They say it will take years to reform the Palestinian Authority. As if the latter were a free entity and not subject to serious Israeli controls. And as if we have not watched many a good Palestinian leader emerge, only to be assassinated or jailed by Israel. Imagine the outcry from Western leaders if the PA had among its members someone like Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, or Ben-Gvir, Israel’s security minister, or Tally Gotliv, member of the Israeli Knesset, who urged the government to not break the siege on Gaza because it gave them leverage to bribe and recruit collaborators.

The imperial West has always treated the Global South as children who need the guardianship of grown-ups. The problem is not only the delaying of self-determination, but also that in the meantime the guardians plunder the resources, use their mighty weapons to crush dissent, leave death and destruction in their wake and then have the temerity to complain when people fleeing the devastation end up on their shores. Those “criminal illegal aliens” as the chair of the beautifully-named “Board of Peace” calls them.

On the question of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, Trump’s Peace Plan is short on details and timelines. We are told the “IDF will progressively hand over the Gaza territory it occupies according to an agreement they will make with the transitional authority until they are withdrawn completely from Gaza, save for a security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.” Occupation by any other name. I wonder who needs security. Israel, that is armed to the teeth with state-of-the-art spyware plus unlimited access to Western weapons, intelligence and the Security Council veto, or the starved, bombed and ravaged Palestinians? Palestinians, who have suffered the outcome of colonial Britain’s decisions, now have to contend with the US empire’s even worse decisions.

The Peace Plan states that “Gaza will be a deradicalised terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbours”, and Israel often claims Palestinian children are being indoctrinated to hate Jews. Palestinians say it is the occupation they hate and that they would have hated their occupier regardless of the latter’s religion. They see Israel’s call for deradicalisation as an attempt to make them accept the occupation, and label their calls for freedom as hate speech.

On deradicalisation of Israelis, the Peace Plan is silent. Professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan has written about the ways in which Israeli textbooks are used to marginalise Palestinians, legitimise Israeli military action and prime Israeli children for military service.

Orly Noy writes: “What Israel is doing in Gaza City is not the tragic byproduct of chaotic events on the ground, but a well-calculated act of annihilation, executed in cold blood by ’the people’s army’ – that is, the fathers, sons, brothers and neighbours of us Israelis. How is it that, despite the mounting testimonies from Gaza’s concentration and extermination camps, no mass refusal movement has taken root in Israel? That after two years of this carnage barely a handful of conscientious objectors sit in prison is truly inconceivable. Even the so-called ‘gray refusers’ — reserve soldiers who do not oppose the war on ideological grounds but are simply exhausted and questioning its purpose — remain far too few to slow the killing machine, let alone bring it to a halt.”

She says, “Once the dust of death settles, we will have to retrace our steps back to the Nakba, to the mass expulsions, the massacres, the land seizures, the racial laws, and the ideology of inherent supremacy that normalised contempt for the native people of this land, and the theft of their lives, property, dignity and the futures of their children. Only by confronting this deadly mechanism inherent to our society can we begin to uproot it.”

I searched the Peace Plan, in vain, for a mention of the Genocide. Accountability? Reparations? Are the Palestinians supposed to forget two years of their children sniped in the head and the heart? Two years of hundreds of thousands killed and maimed? Two years of forced starvation? Two years of watching their country being systematically levelled? Two years of trying to survive a dystopian nightmare?

We are told that the Arab countries are on board. Read the Arab puppet regimes are on board. However, we human beings are programmed to resist injustice. So the Arab rulers can sign a hundred Abraham Accords. They can jail their critics and torture their dissidents. But for the Arab street, Palestine will remain the issue. Peace is certainly better than war, and millions around the world have gone hoarse chanting “Ceasefire now”. But peace without justice carries within it the seeds of the next war.

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