02 Oct Colonial Logic Redux: Scholars Comment on Trump and Netanyahu’s Proposal
The Gaza Riviera: Colonial Fantasy Masquerading as Peace
Both the American president, Donald Trump, and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, caught the headlines this week, with much of mainstream media publicising the offering of a “peace plan” to the Palestinians. The European Union, several Arab states, and even the UN Secretary-General welcomed the proposal. While the desire to see an end to the bloodshed is understandable, the acceptance of this plan is not, with even the most cursory examination exposing the inequalities embedded in the now-infamous 20 points. Not only does it not contain any of the characteristics of a genuine peace agreement, but it revisits the worst excesses of colonial diktat, a modern iteration of the “civilising mission” speckled with the language of peace.
Parties are always disappointed by a peace agreement. While the end of violence is welcome, negotiations between adversaries always result in painful concessions, with each side accepting the unacceptable to break the stalemate. Reciprocity is central, with terms meant to facilitate not just the cessation of violence, but agreement on highly contentious issues: prisoner swaps, land exchanges, compensation packages, and, often, mechanisms to achieve a combination of accountability, justice, and societal renewal. Even where antagonism reigns, a principle of equality must anchor the negotiations, lest either side fall prey to the dangerous belief that they may unilaterally dictate peace terms. It’s a morbid reality that peace agreements are strongest when both sides have suffered casualties, creating an impetus that would otherwise be missing (something that is self-evidently missing here). It was thus telling that both Trump and Netanyahu stood before the cameras beaming about their peace plan, with Trump promising a very sad end if Palestinians do not concede to the capitulation he demands.
To be clear, this is not a peace plan but an abdication demand, with the terms of Palestinian surrender laid out in Times New Roman. Foremost, Palestinians are to release all hostages — a legally and morally justifiable demand, but one that underscores the inequality of the agreement, as no reciprocal commitment from Israel to cease its violations is included. Hamas is to disarm, an act that would, in an instant, render the population of Gaza defenceless. Again, this might be an understandable request if it were met with something of comparable weight — such as an end to Israel’s occupation, blockade, and starvation campaign. No such reciprocity is on display. Instead, the plan explicitly envisages the indefinite presence of Israeli troops, disregarding both the primary Palestinian condition for any truce and the key sources of Israel’s international legal wrongs (and Netanyahu’s indictment), as repeatedly affirmed by the International Court of Justice.
And if we thought it could not get any worse, lo and behold, a pitch for one of the most discredited practices in modern international law: the “international administration” of native lands. Technocrats, investors, and snake oil peddlers are to descend on Gaza, coordinated by a dystopian overseer committee — chaired by Trump himself, with Tony Blair as vice-regent — to ensure that Kushner’s “Gaza Riviera” is developed at breakneck speed. Palestinians are to be tutored by the civilised in the art of self-rule and capitalist development, at least the few Palestinians permitted to remain as a pliant labour class. Indeed, just as the Palestinians were disappeared from the negotiations, so too are they to evaporate before the condominiums are ready for sale, with Trump’s plan for ethnic cleansing expected to accelerate before digging for the Trump Tower begins.
We must also recognise that this proposal was not negotiated with Palestinians. While bypassing their negotiators may be more humane than assassinating them, the outcome is equally vile with their demands — for independence, dignity, return, and justice — wholly absent. We are faced with colonial logic at its most raw: deciding a people’s future without their participation and under the threat of extermination.
To see states such as Pakistan and France, Saudi Arabia and Belgium welcome this proposal is unsurprising. They, like many other states, would like to see the Palestinian Question recede from the headlines — not out of a commitment to Palestinian aspirations or to international law, but because their own domestic agendas make kowtowing to Trump a convenient course of action. Principles, the rule of law, and basic humanity be damned. Yet, this is not only a betrayal of Palestine; it is a betrayal of the international order itself. It signals a return to 19th-century gunboat diplomacy, now peppered with 21st-century gangster politics. Palestinian life, self-determination, and even their very survival are disregarded in favour of political favours, construction projects, and domestic expediency.
While this plan represents a natural culmination of decades of Western policy towards Palestinians, it also presages something much worse. Trump and Netanyahu have presented the world not with a peace plan but an imperial one. It is smothered in racialised dynamics that demand the perpetual subjugation of the Palestinians and the obliteration of international law. To see so many states concede to this act of civilisational vandalism is to peer at the return of empire in its most naked form — not as legacy, nor as metaphor, but as UN-sanctioned domination. Acceptance of this plan would not only erase a people. It would bury international law itself.
Mohsen al Attar
Cheering for the Illegal, Hailing Coercion
This week, Trump and Netanyahu presented the world with their vision for Gaza’s future: an ultimatum demanding Palestinians either accept their plan or face the threat to “finish the job” of genocide. The proposal seeks to establish a demilitarised and heavily policed Gaza, designed to serve the interests of foreign capital and administered by an authority led by none other than Tony Blair and Donald Trump. In violation of their duties under international law, some Arab and European states have swiftly endorsed this plan as a viable path to peace.
This casual tone of physical coercion, threatening to “finish the job,” is a direct result of the global disregard for third-state obligations and the duty to prevent genocide. Israel’s policy of leveraging excessive civilian casualties as a negotiating tool is so entrenched it has a name—the ‘Dahiya Doctrine’. For 58 years of illegal occupation, the diplomatic hesitance, bureaucratic processing, and bad-faith legal interpretations by third states have created a hospitable environment for global bullying. The Trump administration further tested the limits by establishing the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private military contracting agency responsible for killing over 1,400 aid seekers and injuring over 4,000. Despite the horror inflicted by the GHF, states remained hesitant to take concrete action against Israel, fearing they would agitate the United States – opting only for symbolic condemnations. The global tolerance for Israel’s bullying reached a new low last week at the UN General Assembly, where the platform designed to foster international peace and security was instrumentalised to terrorise a population living under genocide, as Netanyahu’s speech was broadcast live via loudspeakers across Gaza.
The proposed plan does not end the occupation but merely rebrands it, partially replacing direct Israeli control with an American one. Bringing back traumatic flashbacks of the Coalition provisional Authorities, responsible for the dismantling of the economic and social fabric of the Iraqi society. It proposes a foreign stabilisation force and a foreign administrative body – the presence of Palestinian or Arab individuals in these bodies does not negate their foreign and imposed nature. According to Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations, a “territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.” Consent for this deployment is unequivocally absent, as the plan flagrantly contradicts the will of the Palestinian people in Gaza. The prospects of the use of advanced technology in the control of the Gazan population – offers a dystopian image of hostility in contradiction to self-determination and human rights. Notably, the plan does not offer concrete guarantees that Israeli troops would completely retreat.
Furthermore, the plan imposes conditions that violate the jus cogens Palestinian right to self-determination. As I have argued elsewhere, the pillars of this right include the dismantling of the occupation, the right of return, reparations, and resistance until the illegal occupation ends. These basic tenets are not subject to negotiation nor can they be forfeited. Other customary rights, such as the duty of non-intervention, sovereignty over natural resources, and accountability for international crimes, are equally non-negotiable. Any conditions that contradict these pillars, especially in the absence of Palestinian consent, are de facto void. In this context, states that endorse the plan are endorsing illegality, further normalising coercion as a modus operandi of international relations – and reviving the colonial spirit of ‘mentorship’ of the ‘uncivilised’. They are accepting a lesser standard of humanity for Palestinians—a standard they would never accept for themselves. Instead of cheering for such a dehumanising proposal, states must raise the bar for what is acceptable by using their leverage. The only viable way forward begins with fulfilling third-state obligations: implementing arms and energy embargoes, imposing economic sanctions, and taking collective action to support a strong resolution under the Uniting for Peace initiative at the UNGA led by the Hague Group.
Entrenching the Illegal Occupation, and Other Thoughts on the So-Called “Peace Plan”
The so-called peace plan is a slap in the face of international law and to the Palestinian people as a whole. It is an attempt to deal with the growing isolation of both the US and Israel – a marketing ploy to buy more time to regain some relevance and a false semblance of victory in the face of a genocide. The plan further entrenches the illegal occupation. It reads like a formal United States-led transformative occupation of the Gaza Strip, not only in clear contradiction with core rules of the law of occupation but also against the peremptory norms of international law.
Recently, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) affirmed that due to the illegality of Israel’s occupation, for its serious violations of international law, namely the prohibition on annexation and denial of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination – along with pointing to racial discrimination and apartheid – Israel must immediately end its occupation in its entirety. This would entail a complete and immediate military and civilian withdrawal from the territory of historic Palestine occupied in 1967, being the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Third States have an obligation to ensure that this happens, without conditions.
The plan – which is more of a plan for a plan for a plan – seems to create conditions on only the possibility of such a withdrawal and only within the Gaza Strip. It proclaims that “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza.” In reality, it provides no guarantees. The occupation must end without exception. Moreover, regardless of the situation, humanitarian aid and access is unconditional. UNRWA and others must be able to operate to their fullest extent.Third States and the United Nations Secretary-General seem to be careful in their language welcoming the plan, while not addressing its contents. It is possible that they saw a different version. Nonetheless, it would have more careful for those statements to have reiterated the demands that should be guaranteed without exception in line with the ICJ’s advisory opinion and condemn the agreement’s clear contradictions and willingness to violate international law and, more so, what seems to be an open invitation for third States to take part in those violations.
Photo by British Library on Unsplash
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