Dr Anas Iqtait of , whose chosen title was “Tony Blair’s ‘Board of Peace’ is a farce, not diplomacy”
Donald Trump’s 20-point “peace plan” for Gaza, unveiled with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s endorsement, has been presented as a blueprint to end the war. In reality it is adocument designed less to resolve conflict than to reframe it.
Its language is intentionally vague, its mechanisms impractical and its assumptions historically dishonest. The plan reinforces Israel’s position while leaving Palestinians with little more than recycled illusions. Yet at this stage it may be the only practical path to pause the killing and save what remains of Gaza’s population from Israel’s unhinged war machine.
The first problem is the deliberate ambiguity woven into every stage of the plan. Netanyahu’s speech
following Trump’s announcement revealed as much: his objectives bear no alignment with the text in
either substance or consequence. Take the proposed release of 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life
sentences. The plan does not say who will be freed or who decides. Prisoner names have long defined
the substance of negotiated exchanges between Israel and Palestinian factions, and this time will be no different.
Netanyahu tied the success of the proposed international “Board of Peace” to what he calleda
permanent end to the war, a framing that – when read alongside the plan’s provision that Israeli forces will retain a “security perimeter presence” until Gaza is deemed fully secure – signals Israel’s intention to maintain open-ended control over Gaza’s security apparatus.
By acknowledging that aid “will proceed without interference”, the plan implicitly concedes what has
long been obvious: that Israel has systematically obstructed humanitarian access. Yet the mechanism it outlines invites a continuation of the same problem, leaving space for the much- criticised Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to dominate the delivery system, while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the region’s most capable body for delivering aid, is left out. In its current format, the plan ensures aid remains an extension of politics.
Perhaps the most farcical element is the creation ofa so-called Board of Peace featuring former UK
prime minister Tony Blair. Blair previously led the Quartet – the US, EU, UN and Russia’s Middle East peace envoy mechanism -an experiment that demonstrated the bankruptcy of such models. During his tenure, Israel entrenched its system of settlements, thwarted Palestinian reconciliation attempts and cemented its control over the West Bank. To imagine Blair overseeing Palestinian “modern governance” is not diplomacy but satire. It suggests a Palestinian future managed indefinitely by the actors complicit in entrenching occupation.
The call for reforming the Palestinian Authority is another recycled talking point. Washington
and its allies rejected the authority’s UN statehood bid in 2011 despite the UN, World Bank and IMF
confirming it had hit benchmarks for sound governance that should have readied it for statehood.
Talk of a “New Gaza” obscures the very nature of Gaza itself. It is, fundamentally, a refugee camp, the concentrated result of expulsions in 1948. Yet the plan treats Gazans as ifthey were a distinct nation, severed from the Palestinian whole.
The plan also speaks of “battle lines” frozen until Israel completes its staged withdrawal, as though
Gaza were a conventional theatre of war between two armies. Israel has waged a war of elimination, one described by the UN and leading international organisations as genocide. To accept the plan’s
language is to erase reality and to grant Israel the dignity of a military opponent where none exists.
Inastark irony, the plan may also be the last available mechanism to halt the killing. Several Arab and
Islamic governments, along with the Palestinian Authority, have signalled support, presenting it as
the first proposal Israel has not rejected outright since January.
For Palestinians, alternatives are vanishingly thin. Accepting a text that lets Israel interpret almost every clause to its advantage risks surrendering history, rights and memory; rejecting it risks the continuation of annihilating violence. This is less a peace plan than a political instrument. To treat it as a solution is to misread it.
Dr Anas Iqtait is a senior lecturer at the Australian National University ….. VISIT https://cais.cass.anu.edu.au/people/dr-anas-iqtait ….
Position: Senior Lecturer in Economics and Political Economy (The Middle East) and Convenor of Masters and Honours programs in Middle East and Central Asia Studies
School and/or Centres: Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies
Email: Anas.Iqtait@anu.edu.au
Researcher profile: https://researchportalplus.anu.edu.au/en/persons/anas-iqtait
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Looks more a bluff than a settlement.
I find Dr Iqtait’s review compelling.