Belfast (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Like most Palestinians, I was initially excited about the ceasefire agreement in Gaza — even though, judging by recent history, Israel has breached every agreement it signed and never lived to its commitments.
But I’ve concluded that Trump’s twenty-point plan will only lead to the continuation of suffering. There are multiple problems with the plan including textual and practical ones. The text does not mention the occupation or international law or UN resolutions. Moreover, Trump’s plan seems not to acknowledge Israel’s obligations under international law, stating “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza.” This phrasing implies, contrary to what the International Court of Justice has affirmed, that Israel is not occupying Gaza and has no legal responsibility as an occupying power. Not to mention that the plan completely ignores the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and its own tens of thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians. It elides, too, Israel’s declared intention to annex the territory, and the increasing violence of Israeli squatters on Palestinian land there. Previous ceasefire agreements between Israel and Hamas wrongly ignored the situation in the West Bank, which reinforced the Palestinian divisions — playing into the hands of Israel.
The plan speaks of a potential Palestinian state without specifying where this state is going to be. It also makes it conditional on the Palestinian authority to carry out some reforms but does not mention ending the Israeli occupation or evacuating the illegal Israeli squatter-settlements built on stolen Palestinian land. It could at least call for a freeze on the building of any more settlements or expanding the already existing ones, since they are already an obstacle to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Or by check:
Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)
Additionally, there is no mention in the plan of holding those responsible for the genocide to account — thus letting Israeli officials off the hook. This omission will encourage them to continue committing atrocities towards the Palestinians. If anything, failure to hold Israeli politicians to account is one of the root causes of the continuation of injustice and suffering.
There are also practical problems. The plan insists on the return of all Israeli hostages, including the remains of those who died during the conflict. Yet it is well known to the Trump administration and for that matter the whole world that Israel destroyed most search-and-rescue equipment and vehicles in order to maximize fatalities among the Palestinians. The lack of equipment makes the search for Israeli bodies difficult. Israel made the task even more difficult by refusing admittance to a team coming from Turkey that has experience searching for bodies after earthquakes.
The document centers the recovery of Israeli bodies while ignoring thousands of bodies of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel and buried under the rubble, whose loved ones also want a decent burial and closure.
What was not said, moreover, is more alarming than what was said. The total disregard for Palestinian lives is on display in the plan, since there is no mention of any steps to deal with the unexploded ammunition dropped on Gaza by Israel. The UN estimated that 10 percent of the 200,000 tons of bombs that Israel dropped on Gaza failed to explode, leaving a silent killer buried in Gaza rubble.
Point number 13 of the plan talks about decommissioning and demilitarizing Gaza, though this applies to the Palestinians only and does not apply to the Israeli army. As a Palestinian, this unfairness brings back the painful memories and the nightmare of the conditions that led to the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, in which thousands of Palestinians were killed over 43 hours.
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Current events in Gaza are very similar to these in Lebanon in 1982: an assault by Israel with heavy loss of life followed by ceasefire deal that included disarming the Palestinian refugee camps when the PLO fighters left to Tunisia. The US and Italy guaranteed the safety of the mainly Palestinian civilian population of the refugee camp but left a few weeks later, depriving the refugee camps of any protection. These developments enabled the Israeli forces to encircle the refugee camps while far-right Lebanese Christian militias, proxies of Israel, went into the refugee camps on September 16 and committed the massacre. An Israeli commission concluded that Ariel Sharon who was then Israel defense minister was personally responsible for the massacre, but he never faced justice. Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi argued that the US was responsible for the massacre as declassified documents showed that the Israelis told American diplomats what they might be up to in Lebanon.
Photo of Gaza July 31, 2024, by Emad El Byed on Unsplash
Now we are seeing similar circumstances in Gaza, where there is a possibility that the Palestinian civilians will be left without any protection or effective police force, such that if the current extremist Israeli cabinet decided to begin the genocide again, it would face even fewer obstacles than in the past.
These fears are even more frightening considering that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair are involved. Kushner openly talked about the value of Gaza’s waterfront property in the event that the Palestinian population of the Strip were ethnically cleansed. Tony Blair famously lied to the world about weapons of mass destruction in order to justify an illegal war and invasion of Iraq. He is also well known for being pro-Israel. Moreover, Israel’s refusal to have Turkish forces in Gaza increases suspicions about Israel intentions. It is not only that the world just witnessed a genocide and did very little to stop it but the world might also be enabling Israel to repeat history and commit another atrocity.
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