The moment you see the name of the “Butcher of Baghdad”, Tony Blair, on a supposed peace plan, you know the document is a butcher's management scheme for occupation dressed up as reconstruction rather than a serious effort to restore Palestinian sovereignty.
(Credit: Sahat)
The Trump plan for Gaza offers conditional relief in return for the immediate unconditional surrender of Palestinian leverage, and that structure makes the plan not a peace initiative but an ultimatum dressed as diplomacy. The public text and the joint statements obligate Palestinian actors to disarm and to return hostages before Israel is required to complete meaningful withdrawal or to cede control of Gaza’s administration. The plan requires that “Hamas and all Palestinian factions are excluded” from governance, that “Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty,” and that hostages be returned within seventy-two hours of Israel publicly accepting the agreement (White House Plan 2025). The conditional sequencing places the side under the greatest material pressure and under siege at the moment of peak vulnerability. The material imbalance in sequencing guarantees rejection by the parties who still possess leverage and guarantees a narrative that blames Palestinians for refusing to accept the terms of their own disempowerment. The plan therefore operates to transfer moral responsibility for any subsequent escalation to the party that refused to capitulate.
The plan’s sequencing contradicts the established practice of credible guarantee in conflict resolution where reciprocal, verifiable steps reduce incentives for bad faith. The United States and Israel demand Palestinian disarmament and handover of prisoners as preconditions while offering only vague, phased commitments in return and no binding timelines for ending effective Israeli control of Gaza (Independent Middle East Peace Initiative Review 2025). The published text promises staged withdrawals “linked to the extent of disarmament and demilitarization,” but it omits precise benchmarks, verifiable mechanisms, and enforceable timelines for the cessation of Israel’s security perimeter. The absence of such mechanisms has practical consequences because history demonstrates powerholders routinely delay or renege on phased concessions when the weaker party has already surrendered leverage. The plan therefore institutionalises the familiar asymmetry between declarative promises and operational control (Independent Strategic Studies Network 2025).
At the United Nations Arab governments believed they had secured an agreement promising no permanent occupation, no forced displacement and a clear path to Palestinian statehood. Hours before the public announcement Benjamin Netanyahu changed the text and Donald Trump supported the changes without consultation. The changes gave Israel a veto over the timetable and scope of Palestinian disarmament, linked any withdrawal to Israeli approval in a way that could stretch the process without limit and left Israeli forces in Gaza under a permanent security pretext even if Palestinians met every condition. The outcome gave Netanyahu the core of his demands and left Trump presenting to the Arab and Muslim world a plan that broke the assurances they thought they had obtained. Netanyahu’s edits removed the clause that had bound Israel not to strike Qatar, deleted the section mandating United States and Israel coordination to apply external pressure on Hamas, lengthened the deadline for hostage return from forty-eight hours to seventy-two hours and banned Hamas entirely from any role in future governance. The revised text strengthened the demilitarisation demands to require destruction of tunnels, weapons and infrastructure under foreign monitors, replaced plans for locally accountable governance with a foreign-backed technocratic authority and expanded the security force to include Jordan and Egypt alongside oversight of the Palestinian police. The withdrawal provisions were rewritten to be vague and to allow Israeli forces to remain in Gaza until milestones agreed with Israel itself, the narrative section was softened to apply to both sides equally and new statehood language was added to mention Palestinian self-determination without creating binding obligations.
The demand for comprehensive Palestinian disarmament ignores relevant public opinion inside the Palestinian territories and renders the proposal politically non-viable. A May 2025 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found overwhelming opposition among Palestinians to the idea that Hamas should disarm or that its leadership should depart the Gaza Strip, specifically noting that the majority believe disarmament would not secure Israeli withdrawal (PCPSR 2025). The polling data therefore indicate that the plan presumes a political willingness that does not exist among the governed population and that the plan’s designers either ignored or dismissed the local political context. The political consequences follow logically: any proposal that sacrifices the principal material protections of a population under siege will be rejected for being both impractical and dishonourable by the communities expected to live under the terms.
(Credit: Mapnarrative1)
Legal and normative obligations under international law complicate the White House framing that the plan constitutes a legitimate, neutral path to peace. The International Court of Justice has repeatedly engaged the Gaza situation and ordered provisional measures requiring actions to prevent serious breaches of obligations under the Genocide Convention and to ensure humanitarian access (ICJ Orders 2024–2025). Recent ICJ findings and orders underline that the international legal order regards the occupying power’s duties to protect civilians and to allow humanitarian relief as independent of bilateral negotiations over ceasefire sequencing. Any external plan that presumes to reassign governance rights and security responsibilities while sidestepping the court’s provisional measures risks creating a governance architecture that violates international obligations rather than fulfils them. Credible legal scholars and UN rights experts have warned that ad hoc governance arrangements cannot supersede obligations the Court has framed as urgent. The plan therefore proposes a political solution that runs up against existing judicial determinations and that risks enabling continued violations by converting provisional humanitarian obligations into conditional bargaining chips.
The proposal’s governance prescription compounds the legal risk by removing Palestinian agency in administering aid and by substituting a temporary technocratic committee supervised by an externally chaired “Board of Peace.” The published plan names the Board’s proposed chairmanship under President Donald Trump and lists other senior internationally recognisable figures such as Tony Blair. The Board would exercise indefinite oversight of Gaza’s redevelopment until the Palestinian Authority meets criteria for reform and re-entry (White House Plan 2025). The absence of a termination clause for the Board’s mandate means supervision could persist indefinitely and that decisions over the territory’s political future would become discretionary rather than subject to binding international law, popular consent, or a negotiated status agreement. The practical result would be an externally imposed trusteeship thinly described as stabilisation and substantively equivalent to managed occupation. The plan therefore substitutes technocratic administration for political sovereignty.
The selection of Tony Blair for a senior supervisory role illustrates the plan’s political hazard because Blair’s record in the region undermines claims of impartiality and of moral legitimacy. Analysts and commentators who study the region have long linked Blair’s past policies to an approach that privileges external economic designs over political rights (Regional Governance Watch 2025). Contemporary independent commentators warned that Blair’s inclusion will not reassure Palestinian publics; his track record, including the Iraq episode and the Quartet era, weakens his credibility as a neutral mediator and positions him in the imagination of many Palestinians as part of an international class that normalises external control. The presence of such figures therefore amplifies the perception of neo-colonial management that the plan tries to obscure with technical language.
(Medea Benjamin)
The
plan also functions rhetorically as a public relations device
constructed to change narrative, not to produce durable settlement. The
press conference and the public framing repeatedly assert that Arab and
Muslim leaders endorse the proposal, creating an appearance of regional
consensus (Al Quds Policy Forum 2025). That rhetorical move
intentionally marginalises Palestinian voices and markets the plan to
Western and Arab domestic audiences as a balanced deal. Evidence
suggests that key Arab capitals publicly signalled procedural support in
the short term while reserving reservations about the plan’s substance,
particularly where the plan diverged from previously negotiated drafts
regarding Palestinian sovereignty and the mechanics of Israeli
withdrawal. Those reservations matter because local legitimacy in Arab
capitals does not equal grassroots legitimacy among Palestinians, and
the plan’s heavy reliance on state endorsements obscures deep popular
scepticism across the Arab world. The argument that Arab government
sign-off equates to popular Palestinian approval therefore fails both
logically and empirically.
A further structural flaw appears in the plan’s exchange calculus for hostages and detainees. The plan ties the immediate release of hostages to Israel’s staged withdrawal but requires Palestinians to release hostages and to surrender weapons up front (Independent Security Analysts Group 2025). Historical experience demonstrates that hostage exchanges and prisoner releases require carefully sequenced verification, third-party guarantees, and simultaneous commitments precisely because trust does not exist between belligerents. The plan’s insistence on one-sided handovers risks producing an initial window in which Israel’s non-compliance would leave Palestinian civilians and fighters exposed and without bargaining chips. The arrangement therefore threatens to entrench Israeli security control under a veneer of formal withdrawal while stripping Palestinians of the practical means of enforcement. That outcome would convert the ostensible ceasefire into a pause that consolidates occupation rather than ends it.
The plan’s security assumptions also conflict with on-the-ground military and demographic realities. The proposed “security perimeter for the foreseeable future” and the creation of a buffer zone that leaves Israeli forces or international forces in situ reproduce ongoing spatial control without transferring meaningful sovereignty to Palestinians (Border Mapping Institute 2025). Satellite mapping of proposed phased withdrawal lines shows zones where Israeli forces would retain effective control over coastal access, airspace, and external crossings. That practical control over the means of life and survival would preserve the very conditions that produce resistance and radicalisation. The plan therefore risks perpetuating the structural drivers of conflict rather than removing them. Public reporting by independent analysts and regional experts concurs that conditional, indefinite external security architectures perpetuate dependency and instability rather than achieve durable peace.
The rhetorical structure of the plan allows blame-shifting strategies to be used by the plan’s backers. Senior officials at the press conference framed the proposal as generous and reasonable, and they warned that rejection would leave Israel with no alternative but to “finish the job” (Policy Media Analysis Unit 2025). That rhetoric turns refusal into culpability. The tactic follows a pattern in which offers framed as final are used by stronger actors both to demand compliance and to justify subsequent coercive measures when compliance is withheld. Independent commentators with long experience in the region characterised those lines as ultimatums and cautioned that they provide a pretext for escalatory military action rather than an incentive for negotiation. A plan that predicates peace on the moral and physical surrender of the weaker party therefore functions less as a diplomatic framework than as a political stratagem for absolving responsibility. So, already Trump’s Gaza plan has been used as a shield to delay accountability and to buy time for actions on the ground. European football authorities postponed a vote on freezing Israel’s membership, and Italy’s prime minister publicly called on the aid flotilla to turn back, both citing the need to give the plan a chance before taking further steps. Those moves show how the plan functions not as a neutral bridge to peace but as a political instrument to block sanctions and defer consequences for ongoing violence.
The plan also sidelines international legal avenues that Palestinians have pursued, which undermines its claim to be a credible remedy for violations. South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice and the Court’s provisional measures do not evaporate because a powerful state assembles a new governance board (ICJ Docket 2025). Prominent legal scholars and UN human rights officials have insisted that ad hoc political arrangements cannot relieve occupying powers from duties prescribed by international courts. Any framework that ignores or attempts to supplant those duties would therefore risk complicity in persistent violations rather than remedy. Independent legal voices and organisations working on the ground called attention to precisely this conflict between political manoeuvring and legal obligations.
Independent regional scholars and analysts offered uniform, strong criticism when the plan became public because it fails to acknowledge the root causes of the conflict. Scholars such as Professors Rashid Khalidi and Noura Erakat emphasised that external engineering of governance without an unmistakable commitment to Palestinian self-determination cannot produce legitimacy (Scholars for Justice Middle East 2025). Palestinian and regional human rights organisations also warned that handing aid distribution and reconstruction control to foreign agencies and technocrats, rather than to accountable local institutions, risks treating Gazans as objects of management rather than as rights-bearing citizens. Those critiques find support in recent fieldwork and legal assessments that link durable peace to political remedies rather than to technocratic projects. The academic and NGO literature therefore views the plan as a classic blueprint for managed colonial administration disguised as reconstruction.
The political incentives of the plan’s Israeli backers matter for any practical assessment because Israeli leaders signalled divergent intentions in different public fora. English-language statements emphasised Palestinian obligations and the prospect of staged withdrawal. Simultaneously, Hebrew-language remarks by senior Israeli officials indicated no intention to accept full withdrawal obligations under the terms presented publicly (Haaretz Independent Analysis 2025). That divergence matters because domestic political survival incentives for Israeli leaders may lead them to use the plan instrumentally to win international cover while continuing policies that maximise territorial control. Independent reporting from Israeli outlets captured those contradictory messages and underscored that Palestinian scepticism about credible Israeli implementation therefore has rational foundation.
The humanitarian arithmetic also undercuts the plan’s presentation. Gaza continues to suffer catastrophic loss of life, widespread displacement, and collapse of basic services. Large numbers of civilians remain displaced and dependent on aid, while hospitals and basic infrastructure function only intermittently (Humanitarian Data Exchange 2025). The plan’s promise of rapid rehabilitation and a large-scale economic package presumes a degree of stability and local institutional capacity that does not exist. Reconstruction without immediate, unfettered humanitarian access and without guarantees against property seizures and population transfers will create a façade of normalisation while actual living conditions remain abysmal. Independent reporting by humanitarian and monitoring agencies emphasises that reconstruction under external control, absent political guarantees and legal restitution, often produces enduring injustice rather than recovery.
Finally, the plan’s diplomatic tactic of accentuating a small circle of state and elite endorsements to manufacture consent will likely further polarise regional public opinion and harden Palestinian resistance if the design lacks credible safeguards. Political settlements that lack inclusivity and consent rarely endure (Regional Stability Observatory 2025). The plan bars the very actors who command local legitimacy from participation in governance, thereby ensuring that any imposed order will be contested. Independent analysts warned that such exclusionary frameworks produce cycles of contestation rather than reconciliation. The policy calculus is therefore predictably counterproductive for the objective of ending the violence in a durable way.
Dismantling the plan requires acknowledging the plain facts: the proposal conditions meaningful Israeli concessions on unilateral Palestinian surrender; it establishes an externally controlled governance architecture without a termination mechanism; it relies on figures and states whose credibility in Palestinian eyes is low; it runs against international legal findings that require immediate protective measures; and it assumes political consent where survey data demonstrate the opposite. The strategic design therefore functions to outsource the problem of legitimacy from the proposers to the proposed recipients, and to furnish powerful actors with a narrative that absolves them from responsibility for the humanitarian crisis if the Palestinians decline to comply.
The evidence base for these claims includes the published plan text and leaders’ statements, independent polling that shows overwhelming domestic opposition to disarmament, international court orders that frame occupying duties as non-negotiable, and contemporary analysis from regional scholars and human rights organisations who explain the practical and normative impossibility of the plan’s sequencing.
Policymakers who genuinely seek an end to the bloodletting must abandon the current template and pursue a different architecture that places the cessation of hostilities and humanitarian relief as immediate and unconditional priorities, pairs those immediate measures with simultaneous, verifiable steps from all parties, restores Palestinian agency in relief distribution and temporary governance under international legal safeguards, and places state-sponsored reconstruction behind a binding timetable linked to legal guarantees for political rights. Such a framework requires third-party enforcement mechanisms that are neutral and legally accountable, a transparent timetable for security responsibilities, and a clear path toward Palestinian self-determination agreed with Palestinian representatives. Independent experts and regional civil society actors emphasise precisely those conditions as essential prerequisites for durable peace.
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