Even for the king of bombast, US president Donald Trump, his assertion that the ‘Gaza peace plan’ will bring about ‘everlasting peace’ in the Middle East is outrageous. There is a stark contrast between his claim of permanent peace and the reality of the most slapdash accord in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The 20-point plan which Trump unveiled in the White House on 29 September, alongside Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, leaves crucial questions unanswered. The only concrete element relates to the release of 20 Israeli hostages held by Hamas and its allies, in exchange for the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences, and 1,700 Gazans detained without charge after 7 October 2023, effectively hostages themselves.

As well as this exchange, the plan rehashes the same elements that have been under discussion since the first few months of the Gaza war: Hamas’s military and political eradication; the prospect of a (partial, gradual and conditional) withdrawal of Israeli soldiers; the governing of Gaza by a ‘reformed’ Palestinian Authority (or ‘revitalised’ in the words of then president Joe Biden) after an interim period of control by an international stabilisation force made up mainly of regional troops. The new elements in Trump’s plan unsurprisingly reveal his personal interests: shortly after his second inauguration, the US president – ever the property developer – expressed his desire to redevelop the Gaza Strip as the Riviera of the Middle East.

According to the new plan, Gaza would be administered by a ‘Board of Peace’, headed and chaired by Trump himself. He would supervise the setting up of a ‘Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energise Gaza’ including a ‘special economic zone’ (free-trade zone).

This projected guardianship over the Strip is reminiscent of what looked, towards the end of the cold war, like a renewal of the colonial mandates of the interwar years over ‘failing states’. (…)

Full article: 1 923 words.

Gilbert Achcar

Gilbert Achcar is Emeritus Professor at SOAS, University of London, and author of The Gaza Catastrophe: the Genocide in World-Historical Perspective, Saqi Books/University of California Press, London/Berkeley, 2025.

(3) Jonathan Lis, ‘After two years of dodging deals, Netanyahu allies claim he had a plan all along’, Haaretz, 14 October 2025