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AS proximity talks continued yesterday between Hamas and Israeli representatives in Sharm el-Sheikh, mediated by Egypt and Qatar, it is unclear whether the negotiations were accelerated by Donald Trump’s request to “MOVE FAST”, accompanied by the warning that “TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE OR, MASSIVE BLOODSHED WILL FOLLOW”.
The misplaced comma is easy to ignore in the broader context of an ultimatum that challenges the acknowledgement in the 20-point “peace plan” that “the people of Gaza … have suffered more than enough”. No one could disagree with what was obvious by the time South Africa took its case against genocide to the ICJ towards the end of 2023.
The question is whether that suffering will end. The Israeli-US plan — hastily approved by a bunch of Arab and Muslim states among other sycophants — is ambiguous on that score as in other aspects. Some of these states have complained that the draft plan they glimpsed was later amended at Israel’s behest. It was indeed changed in consultations between Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ron Dermer. Precisely what this gang of four altered to protect Israeli interests has not clearly been spelt out, but none of the objectors has dared to rescind its approval of whatever Trump ordained.
Sure, the plan ostensibly has its redeeming features. Anyone with an ounce of humanity would welcome the cessation of Israel’s killing spree, and the free flow of food and medical aid to a starving population that is physically and psychologically traumatised, but the implementation of even that pledge is shrouded in complicated clauses. The idea that Gazans could travel in and out of the devastated territory at will is also welcome, although probably a fantasy. The vow that Hamas fighters or associates who abandon their militancy would neither be murdered nor prevented from settling abroad is even more fantastical.
Trump’s ‘peace plan’ doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
The overall aim of the plan is to bury forever any form of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, which has been the Zionist dream since long before 1948. No one should be under any illusion that the Eretz Israel project has been abandoned. The terms of its implementation might have shifted marginally, but almost nothing in the plan guarantees any progress towards Palestinian autonomy, let alone even an ersatz statehood. It does not mention the diminishing West Bank, but does declare that Gaza will not be annexed.
That’s not so much a concession as an assurance to Israel that its Western and Arab/ Muslim collaborators will keep Gaza emasculated under its supervision by a ‘Board of Peace’ helmed by Trump and Tony Blair, whose disturbing record in the Middle East — from the UK role in Iraq to his dalliances with the Gulf sheikhs and the worst Zionists — offers little hope that even a partially implemented plan would deter the genocide.
The Israeli Defence Forces are supposed to make way at some point for an International Stabilisation Force whose constituents could include a Pakistani contingent. Older Palestinians might recall Pakistan’s role in protecting the Jordanian monarch in 1970, when a mercenary force led by Brig Ziaul Haq was complicit in military actions that killed 25,000 Palestinians. According to the plan, meanwhile, the ISF will train any future Palestinian police force in Gaza in consultation with Egypt and Jordan, “who have extensive experience in this field” — training in repression provided by their Western overlords.
As Diana Buttu, a former adviser to PLO negotiators, puts it, “How is it that the country committing genocide is granted any say in the future of the people against whom it has committed genocide?” Former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy notes that Trump’s plan contains “many things that one would imagine come from an Israeli pen”.
Vast anti-Israeli protests across Europe and elsewhere have no doubt been instrumental in marginally shifting US-Israeli tactics and strategy, but the intended outcome remains the same. Former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami fairly accurately puts the kibosh on the notion of a two-state solution with his comment, “There is too much history here now and too little geography.” The history won’t change, but the geography will get narrower with, at the very least, an Israeli-determined buffer zone along its border with Gaza.
Whatever emerges from Sharm El-Sheikh, let us at least admit that what we have witnessed in the past two years is not a war but a genocide. As Greta Thunberg indicated, the maltreatment of the Sumud flotilla abductees should not detract from the far bigger Israeli crime. Any relief for Gazans would be at least a temporary joy. Any judicious outcome of the Palestinian dispossession in the distant future isn’t likely to involve Washington or Tel Aviv.
Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2025
