On Friday, US President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social account to announce that the Gaza ‘board of peace’ has been formed, launching phase two of his 20-point plan to end Israel’s genocidal war on the strip. However, like many Trump announcements, there appears to be more theatre than substance. The members of the board are yet to be announced, though the Israeli PM has claimed that a former UN Middle East envoy will direct the board. The board is expected to supervise a new technocratic Palestinian government, namely the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the disarmament of the resistance to Israel (Hamas), the deployment of an International Stabilisation Force, the further pushback of Israeli troops and the reconstruction of the battered strip. This is a monumental task and Trump’s triumphal announcement made no mention as to how exactly the board would go about achieving all of this. Who is going to fund this new technocratic government and does its authority supersede that of the Israeli occupation? Does this government even have any legitimacy among the Palestinians? Who is and isn’t going to be part of the stabilisation force?
However, there are some things that we do know for certain. The Israeli slaughter has not stopped and it has killed at least 425 Palestinians since the ongoing ‘ceasefire’ came into effect last October. It is important to remember that this number only represents those killed in Israeli genocidal military actions and not indirect deaths due to things like starvation and lack of medical aid. We also know that Israeli troops have not been adhering to the ‘yellow line’ that is supposed to demarcate where they can and cannot operate and has slowly been moving the line deeper into Gaza. A ceasefire where the illegal occupier keeps killing, occupying and blocking aid is not much of a ceasefire. This brings into question why exactly the US is moving into the second phase of the ceasefire when the first phase is hardly established. We also know that countries have not exactly been queuing up to join the proposed stabilisation force. As such, the force equation continues to lie firmly in the hands of the Israelis and since force seems to be the only thing it respects, the chances of this new setup restraining the Zionists seem bleak.
Sadly, the Israelis are not content to bring death, destruction and imperialism to just Gaza. A report released by the UN Human Rights Office last week says that Israel has expanded the use of unlawful force, arbitrary detention and torture, repression of civil society and undue restrictions on media freedoms, severe movement restrictions, settlement expansion and related violations in the occupied West Bank since October 2023. It concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe the separation, segregation and subordination of Palestinians is meant to be permanent. Israel is thus solidifying its West Bank apartheid. Then there is its recognition of and visit to Somaliland region of the Federal Republic of Somalia, a blatant violation of the latter’s sovereignty. None of this has drawn the ire of the US and, instead, it is the Palestinians who bear the onus of disarmament and returning bodies. It is quite astonishing that the US is moving into the second phase of a peace plan that has not brought peace. Though, maybe that was never the point.
