Trump's Gaza peace plan

In such geopolitics, how seriously can the world take the 20-point peace plan floated by Trump?

Almost like in brazen vengefulness, Israel has been obliterating all international norms with illegal acts, such as waves of assassinations in other countries' sovereign soils; bombing them with impunity; and enacting all the clauses of genocide logged in the UN Genocide Convention upon Gaza. It has razed Gaza to the ground, inflicting famine and extreme human conditions on the people.

The Arab neighborhood and the world community have not relented from giving a tit-for-tat to Israel either. Not only has it been bombed from Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, it has also been economically isolated via the Boycott Divest Sanction Movement and criminalised by the ICC. Moreover, the world community has repeatedly sided with the people of Gaza, raised voice against the genocide and recognised Palestine as a state, in the UN.

Almost two years into the war and being continuously hit from different sides, Israel has practically started behaving like a wounded hound that just needs to keep attacking and showing aggression because it feels so vulnerable. This behaviour peaked when Israel hit the very offices in Doha, where Hamas negotiators were trying to find a way to peace and end war. In contrast, Israel wanted to tell the world that it will not allow any negotiations, nor will it end the war.

The problem is that every step of aggression Israel has taken has only hurt itself and isolated not only itself but also its greatest ally, the US. And the Doha attack has been a peak point in this lunacy, for it has been the reason for the Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (SMDA) between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The attack rattled the whole Gulf's faith in the old American security blanket in the Middle East that has ensured Israel's existence for so many decades.

Having military bases in each of the Gulf states - the biggest one being Qatar's Al Udeid Airbase that also houses the CENTCOM headquarter - the US inaction or negligence in defending Qatar's airspace and not even warning the Qataris of the coming contingent of 12 fighter jets including US-made F-16s and F-35s, was unacceptable. The strike crystallised a fear that has been building for the last two years - precisely since the Gaza war - that in the face of regional escalation, with Israel on one side and the Arab on the other, the US will choose Israel.

So, Israel's uncalculated aggression has pushed the Muslim world closer. So much so that Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia and many other Muslim states have called for a joint security arrangement to defend each other as one. Rather Iran has already expressed the will to be part of the Pak-Saudi defence umbrella. One cannot take this lightly because the strength of Pakistan's military comes with two major injunctions - its nuclear prowess and its China-integration. China-integration means not only Chinese fighter jets and missiles, it also means complete integration with its radars, satellites and real-time data and intelligence sharing.

If Pakistan is to defend Saudi airspace, it exigently brings the whole China-led security architecture with it. This clashes with the existing US-led security architecture, which will either have to be made inert or rendered obsolete altogether. Interestingly, it may come out to be the case that if the US bases remain, the Pak-China security umbrella would be ensuring their protection too?

With the US security architecture removed, the Abraham Accords also go into the ditch because normalisation with Israel also included a joint defence for Israel and the Arabs against Iran and its partners. But with the historical Saudi-Iran rapprochement in 2023, just months before the Gaza war, this need was evaporated. Rather now, with the Shia-Sunni divide bridged, the Arabs could focus exclusively upon the Palestine cause, which they continuously showed by insisting upon the Two-State Solution like never before.

Apparently, from the Gaza war to the Doha strikes, the world has completely changed for Israel. Most recently, France, Britain, Canada, Australia and Portugal have recognised Palestinian statehood. Perhaps Europe had understood long before the Doha strikes, in the Ukraine war, that under US leadership, they have in hand an impotent security architecture, one that cannot win wars or defend them.

In such geopolitics and in the face of Trump's volatility, specially after letting Israel bomb Hamas negotiators in Doha, how seriously can the world take the 20-point peace plan floated by Trump, with Netanyahu at his side? The genocidal maniacs came out with a completely one-sided plan, not consulted with Hamas, and a slapping ultimatum that if Hamas rejects the plan in four days, Israel will be allowed to 'finish the job' in Gaza.

The tone is void of diplomacy; it is the tone of a wounded hound. And the 20 points are just as absurd. They call for return of hostages and complete disarmament of Hamas while Israeli forces remain inside Gaza, frozen! And that IDF will withdraw phase-wise and any Gazan who wants to leave will be free to. With complete mistrust between the two sides and Netanyahu's foul habit of backing out from agreements, Hamas can never agree to such defeating options.

Moreover, the plan says, "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", and of course Netanyahu will be deciding the faithfulness.

And all this will be under the temporary transitional governance, oversighted and supervised by an international transitional body, the "Board of Peace", headed Trump himself, and governed by former British PM Tony Blair, renowned as a war criminal and for his genocidal policies towards Iraq. Rather this means that after decades of bearing all types of hardships and fighting for their freedom, and a century after the British Mandate (1920-48), and seven decades of Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide, Trump has smoothly come up with a solution that throws Gaza back into a new British Mandate, one that will facilitate the Gaza Rivera Project, employing the leftover Gazans in petty jobs they deserve.

By the way, Netanyahu on his way back from the US has said he "absolutely did not agree to Palestinian state" and that "IDF will remain in most of territory". And there is news that Trump showed another plan to the Arabs, and Netanyahu agreed to another plan — another circus that only the biggest clown in the biggest democracy can perform.

And the circus may well be a cover for another lethal strike, to 'finish the job' on Gaza, before the Sumud arrives!