Trump’s plan for Gaza is 21st century colonialism.
Ismail Patel is the author of “The Muslim Problem: From the British Empire to Islamophobia”. He is also Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds and the Chair of the UK based NGO Friends of Al-Aqsa.
Cross-posted from Middle East Eye
The 20-point “peace plan” presented by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was hailed by Trump as a momentous step toward “eternal peace in the Middle East”.
While some Arab leaders, including the Palestine Mission in the UK, have welcomed it, an analysis of the proposal shows it is fundamentally harmful to Palestinians.
It is characterised by profound asymmetry, conditional rights, and the imposition of external control, reflecting a continuation of colonialist logic rather than a genuine pathway to self-determination.
Trump, in the shoes of previous imperialists, imposed the plan as an ultimatum.
The plan was unveiled during a joint press conference with Trump and Netanyahu, without any Palestinian representatives in attendance. This approach is reminiscent of the imperial tactics used by the British with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the UN in 1947, when the partition of Palestine was imposed without consulting the Palestinian people.
The plan is inherently asymmetrical. It demands that Hamas, which was not invited to negotiate the terms, accept the conditions or face the threat of Israel “finishing the job”.
While the proposal asks Hamas to surrender its weapons, it essentially demands that all future Palestinians relinquish their right to self-defence, in effect surrendering Palestinian security to the Israelis.
This demand, coupled with the insistence that Hamas and other factions have no role in Gaza’s governance, amounts to a call for political submission and disarmament in exchange for acknowledging Israeli colonisation.
A colonialist plan
A central pillar of the colonialist nature of the plan is its systematic erosion of the Palestinian right to self-determination, primarily through conditional statehood and perpetual external oversight.
The plan offers no guarantee for the creation of a Palestinian state.
Instead, it uses ambiguous language, suggesting that only after Hamas is removed, and after the Palestinian Authority (PA) has “faithfully carried out” a reform programme, might the “conditions… be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.
This pathway lacks any details regarding borders of a Palestinian state, independence to elect its political leaders and is not guaranteed. In undiplomatic terms, it says Hamas is out and the PA can govern only as a proxy of Israel.
Furthermore, the implementation depends heavily on the judgment and discretion of the Israeli side.
Netanyahu is thus empowered to set the criteria for Palestinian governance, enabling him to block progress toward statehood indefinitely, as he has done in the past.
The plan proposes a post-war governing structure that replaces local democratic choice with heavy international supervision, a classic characteristic of colonial systems.
In the interim period, Gaza is to be governed by a “temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee”.
This committee would be supervised by a new international transitional body called the “Board of Peace”, which would be headed and chaired by Trump with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair also slated for involvement.
Both of them have made no secret of their plan to economically benefit from Gaza. Trump wants to build a Gaza riviera and Blair has been shown to have conflicts of interest.
Palestinian surrender
Moreover, while the White House stated that Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza, the plan ensures Israel retains significant long-term security authority. Israel’s military withdrawal is progressive and linked to milestones related to demilitarisation of Palestinian groups.
Critically, the Israeli military will maintain a “security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat”.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu said Israeli forces will not be leaving Gaza, despite references to their withdrawal in the Donald Trump-approved “peace plan”.
This gives Israel the ability to define security standards and retain military influence over the territory indefinitely, effectively continuing the siege around Gaza.
The plan fails to address core Palestinian demands beyond immediate humanitarian aid, which is contingent upon acceptance of the plan. For instance, a comprehensive political settlement must address the volatile situation in the occupied West Bank. Yet the future of the West Bank is absent from Trump’s plan.
This ignores daily settler attacks on Palestinian residents, the continuous violation on Al-Aqsa mosque and the Jewish-only settlements and Israeli checkpoints that fragment the West Bank.
No right to justice
Furthermore, Netanyahu demands that the PA cease “lawfare against Israel at the ICC and the International Court of Justice”. This stipulation effectively demands that Palestinians abandon their right to seek international justice for Israeli war crimes and genocide.
Netanyahu is not only demanding Palestinian surrender the right to self-determination but also the right to justice.
The Trump Gaza peace plan, far from achieving “eternal peace”, structures an arrangement whereby Palestinian political entities must disarm, submit to Western governance led by the US, carry out reform according to Israel, and surrender all right to redress historical injustices.
By demanding submission, replacing local political will with external technocratic oversight, and making self-determination entirely conditional and vague, the plan constitutes a clear disaster for Palestinian national aspirations and functions as a modern continuation of colonialist logic.
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