Trump's Gaza peace plan is Iraq 3.0

For the third time in two years, there is a fragile but welcome pause in Gaza's horror. Bombs have slowed, aid trucks are expected to trickle in and some families are finally able to search for their loved ones' bodies. Across Gaza's ruins, there will be fleeting moments of relief — mothers finding their children alive, families reuniting and communities daring to breathe after relentless siege and starvation. But even as the world exhales, and even if the new Trump-Netanyahu 'peace plan' holds, it threatens to turn this fragile lull into a blueprint for permanent subjugation — a plan wrapped in the language of peace but rooted in domination.

Donald Trump's newly unveiled 20-point Gaza plan has been lauded by some Western and Arab leaders as a "historic breakthrough." Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney praised it as a pathway to peace and pledged Canada's support in marketing it abroad. But peel away the rhetoric and it becomes clear that this proposal is not a roadmap to peace; it is colonialism dressed up as diplomacy, an ultimatum to besieged and brutalised people.

At its core, the plan demands that Palestinians — the very people subjected to siege, bombardment and displacement — undergo "de-radicalisation." In other words, victims of war crimes are told to surrender their dignity and political aspirations in order to be deemed acceptable partners. Meanwhile, Israeli leaders accused of genocide and crimes against humanity face no accountability. A recent poll shows 82 per cent of Israelis support "cleansing Gaza" of its population, yet the plan says nothing about confronting that extremism. As Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former peace negotiator Diana Buttu has noted, it is grotesque to demand that Palestinians "negotiate an end to their own genocide" - a process that forces the abused to legitimise their abuser's power.

The double standard extends to captives. The plan demands that all Israeli hostages be released within 48 to 72 hours, yet only some Palestinian detainees would be freed — excluding thousands held without charge including children, journalists and political prisoners. This is a hierarchy of human worth in which Israeli lives are valued more than Palestinian ones.

Even the plan's supposed political horizon is a mirage. It installs a foreign-designed governance system in Gaza - a temporary "technocratic" committee overseen by a US-chaired 'Board of Peace' and backed by a foreign "stabilisation force" tasked with policing Gaza, disarming resistance and securing Israel's interests. Reconstruction and economic planning would also be dictated externally, not by Palestinians themselves. Palestinians were not even invited to participate in drafting the plan; Trump barred their representatives from attending the UN meeting unveiling it. As Buttu powerfully observed, it is like "the abuser, backed by his father and friends, dictating terms to the victim." Palestinians are being forced to negotiate a pause to their own genocide, under structures designed to preserve their subjugation.

For Pakistan and the wider Muslim world, this is not just a regional issue, it's a test of moral leadership. The plan mirrors every failed "stability mission" that the West has imposed across the Muslim world, from Iraq to Afghanistan. It recycles the same illusion: outsiders can impose peace through force and aid while ignoring justice and dignity. Pakistan, with its own history of navigating sovereignty under global pressure, should recognise this pattern — the language of peace masking the architecture of control — and reject it unequivocally.

The promise of Palestinian statehood is equally hollow. The plan offers only a vague pathway toward sovereignty, conditioned on security benchmarks and the approval of outside powers. There is no binding timeline, no guaranteed outcome and no recognition of the Palestinian right to self-determination. As The New Yorker reported, Trump used "soaring language about eternity" while appointing himself chair of the board, leaving Palestinians' most basic rights suspended indefinitely. Netanyahu has already clarified that statehood "is not even on the table."

What's missing are the essentials of law and justice that make any peace legitimate. There is no accountability for war crimes, no reparations for the destruction and displacement of millions, no dismantling of the occupation or apartheid regime and no guarantee of self-determination. The plan entrenches the very conditions that have produced generations of dispossession and despair. As Buttu wrote, Palestinians are not celebrating because they trust the architects of this so-called peace. They are simply grateful that, at least for now, "the killing has slowed, and the starvation has paused." That tragic humility — relief merely at survival — underscores the obscenity of a plan that offers reprieve without rights.

As Dr Sami Al Arian warned, this is "poison in the honey." The plan's sweeteners - a ceasefire, humanitarian aid, prisoner exchanges, reconstruction promises - are all tied to conditions that strip Palestinians of sovereignty and resistance. The real aim is to achieve politically what Israel could not achieve militarily: the crushing of Palestinian resistance, the disarming of Gaza and the consolidation of control under an international veneer. Even Australian lawyer Michael Bradley cautioned that "nobody has asked Palestinians what they think; they have no reason to trust a plan written without them."

Neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority has the authority to forfeit the collective and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. Those rights belong to Palestinians — in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and the diaspora — and cannot be signed away by any faction. Peace cannot be dictated by outsiders or achieved by rewarding war crimes and forcing victims to negotiate the terms of their oppression.

Trump's 20-point plan is an ultimatum, a repackaged Israeli agenda to extract hostages, impose foreign control and then return to "business as usual." By tying Washington to Netanyahu's supremacist project, it risks creating Iraq 3.0 — another US-endorsed 'nation-building' experiment that promises peace but delivers endless instability and resentment.

This fragile pause in violence is precious. It is a brief breath of humanity after years of slaughter. But peace cannot grow from the ashes of injustice, nor can hope take root under foreign control. If this moment of respite is to mean anything, it must become the beginning of a genuine reckoning. One that ends impunity, restores dignity and recognises Palestinian self-determination.

True peace will not come from ultimatums drafted by those complicit in genocide. It will come when Canada and the world insist that justice, equality and freedom — not colonial control — guide the path forward. Only then can this pause become more than a fleeting silence between wars.