Peace Board and the US-Israel tag team

The Gaza peace proposal presented by President Donald Trump has become the most discussed issue in world politics today. I would like to highlight five key areas to determine whether this peace proposal will be able to commence its journey, make any headway, and be implementable and sustainable. The key areas are: President Trump's specific foreign policy style; stonewalling Hamas; Israel's real plan; future of the Abraham Accords; and the likely endgame.

Trump sees himself as a no-war President, but he stands out as the promoter, collaborator and tag team member of the most brutal, one-sided war on Gaza. The twelve-day war imposed on Iran couldn't have been possible without his approval and military assistance. The one-month bombing of Yemen and threatening Venezuela with a military intervention are all matters zipped in President Trump's foreign policy purse.

The impulsive president is more of a businessman and a state tycoon. He is anti-war, not because wars are inhuman and bad, but more because he wants to make deals and do business, which is not possible in a world at war. Before his first term as President in the office, he had never served as an elected official, and so he is as good or bad a diplomat as the people that surround him would want him to be. The love and admiration for the leaders of the Muslim world that he publicly expresses is quite in contrast to his core belief about the Muslim community that he expressed during his election campaign in 2015.

He promised Americans a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering America. Therefore, the Peace Board that he has formed is more of a chessboard on which the not-so-sovereign and helpless Muslim countries are the pieces of the chess, and Israel and the US are the players.

"... this is a different Hamas than we were dealing with, because I guess over 20,000 have been killed. Their leadership has been killed three times over. So, you're really dealing with different people than we've been dealing with over the last four years, five years," said President Trump as he addressed the joint press conference along with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Hamas was seen in numbers and not as a movement or organisation that won a popular mandate to rule the people of Gaza. The tone of President Obama's negotiating nuclear deal with Iran was soft and can be measured from the statement he gave, "Let us never negotiate out of fear but let us never fear to negotiate."

Yet we know what became of it as President Trump reversed and walked out of the deal. Here we are, a deal being offered to Hamas, where Hamas and Iran, the two main actors on the show not being consulted at all and only being presented with a fait accompli. Why would Hamas accept this deal? Why would they let go of the hostages that are their only leverage, allow themselves to be disarmed, and trust the US and Israel, who bombed their negotiating team in Doha? With no future role in Gaza and subjecting themselves to the mercy of the State of Israel, the peace that Trump offers is Hamas's death knell, and it is likely that Hamas, despite the pressure from the Muslim countries, rejects the proposal unless some of its demands are met.

Israel's military action in Gaza is continuing, and President Trump has already said that if Hamas rejects the proposal, Israel will have the full support of the US to get the job done. The job being referred to here is to continue to push the Palestinians to the southernmost part of Gaza and ultimately expel them to Egypt. The Abraham Accords are being labeled by the two chess players in the Middle East, the US and Israel, as a choice between extremism and moderation, between a civilised and an uncivilised world. That's not the true label.

Both the US and Israel are provokers of extremism and radicalism. In an unsettled and uncompromising Muslim world, they cannot do business and trade, and the biggest damage they incur in such a world is the damage to their standing, name and reputation. So, they must get all the pieces of the puzzle together to create a world based on their ethics, their principles and their order. The more Israel pushes the people of Gaza towards the south, the more the Accord we call Abraham is pushed to the wall.

History tells us that there is a long list of Muslim leaders who were sidelined or eliminated because they were more nationalist or considered anti-West. Yet people in the Muslim countries vote in bulk for a leader not based on how anti- or pro-West he is, but how free, independent and sovereign he is in making-decisions based on national interest. The problem with the political movement of such leaders is that their political movements are also popular with the radical and revolutionary groups in their countries as well such as President Morsi's with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Prime Minister Imran Khan's with the Taliban in Pakistan.

The governments formed by such leaders are considered uncompromising, anti-Western, pro-Islamist and radical, and the removal of such governments is considered reasonable to promote the order of liberal internationalism. The idea of re-energising the Abraham Accords after it was forged five years ago is a good idea, but these Accords will get re-energised only if there is a just solution to the Palestinian issue and not an arbitrarily imposed fait accompli handed over to the leaders of the Muslim world.

The endgame is about the greater Israel. It is about Israel never giving back the land occupied during the 1967 Arab Israel War. It is about keeping Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel. It is about punishing the Muslim world on the promises of conquering extremism and vanquishing the forces of extremism. The endgame is about twisting the reality of Jewish ideology of extremism and presenting Israel as a victim of terror that executes unarmed women and children in Gaza and commits genocide because it considers itself a victim of terrorism. Israel has the backing of the US and a free licence to attack any Muslim country. As and if Hamas rejects the peace proposal, the tag team of the US and Israel will continue their journey that leads to this endgame.