Saeed Naqvi

What is the urgency driving Donald Trump to push his Gaza peace plan, even by dishonest means if necessary? In his eagerness to bid for the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump resorted to subterfuge, straightforward knavery. Even more compelling than his yen for the Nobel was the pressure of global public opinion, which chastises the US collaborating with Israel’s unspeakable brutality, the genocide of Gaza, frame by frame on live TV.

A peace plan developed with representatives of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan attending the UN General Assembly was further discussed by Trump and Netanyahu in the White House.

At a parallel meeting in Doha, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Hamas leaders were perusing the 20 points under the microscope. At this point, the text of the 20-point plan with Netanyahu in the White House and the Qataris was the same.

Then the Zionist trio of Netanyahu, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner got into a huddle. The text was radically altered in Netanyahu’s favour, enabling him to boast in a video on the journey back to Israel. In a statement in Hebrew for Israeli television viewers, he said.

“Who would have believed this?” says he triumphantly. “After all the people constantly saying – you must accept Hamas’s terms, get everyone (IDF) out (of Gaza). The IDF should withdraw, Hamas can recover and it can also reoccupy the strip.” He then exploded, “No way. That’s not happening.”

He was asked if he agreed to a Palestinian state. “Absolutely not; It’s not written into the statement, but there is one thing we did say – we would strongly oppose a Palestinian state.”

This diplomacy by deception is for a singular purpose. The pariah status that is sticking to Israel and the US in equal measure has to be shuffled off somehow. The mainstream media will be required to build the narrative that Netanyahu is trying to implement the 20-point plan, but Hamas is obstructing it. A follow-up meeting, one of many expected, is going on in Egypt.

Fortunately for the Palestinians, this media’s credibility is at its lowest for having been consistently in the service of establishments.

In the plan is an idea to have a “Board of Peace”, with Trump as its Chairman and President. In an aside, he said he may not have the time to be hands-on all the time. It was for this reason that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be on the “Board”.

There is no guarantee that the Trump plan will fly, but it does provide a clue to the plan having been tailored for right-wing Zionist acceptability. The response from the Iranian Supreme Leader’s office hits the nail on the head: the plan gives to Netanyahu what he could not achieve on the battlefield: the return of the hostages and an end to Hamas.

The irony is that the plan, even with this interpretation, is unacceptable to the Gvitr-Witkoff duo, who want the Palestinians to disappear or live in other countries. Even though the plan gives Netanyahu all that he could have hoped for, there remains a vast stretch on Israel’s Right, Far Right and Far Far Right capable of throwing a ginger fit if anything short of the Biblical plan for greater Israel is accepted.

Palestinians may be forgiven for being shocked at Tony Blair being inserted into matters concerning their future. Trump would have to search all corners of the globe to find a Western leader more despised by Palestinians than Tony Blair, an exceptional favourite with Zionists.

Blair’s other claim to fame is the way he was chastised by the Chilcot report. Sir James Chilcot, after a six-year investigation, shamed Blair for having misled the British public into joining the Iraq war in 2003. I remember him crying with copious tears for having been caught cheating.

The idea of privatising the administration of Gaza at some later date is not without precedent. A plan to privatise the war in Afghanistan was drawn up in 2017 by Eric Prince, founder of Blackwater, the world’s biggest outlet for mercenary troops. Steve Bannon, Trump’s Chief of Staff, in Trump’s first administration, forwarded a 100-page project to the White House suggesting that the US should hand the Afghan responsibility to private hands.

The British Raj’s administration was in the hands of the Viceroy. That precisely was the model offered by Prince. The project would cost 5 trillion, after which, in the hands of merry capitalism, the investment would start showing returns.

Astonishing though it may seem, this over-the-top plan had acquired life in the corridors of the White House until Secretary of Defence Gen. Jim Mattis shot it down.

If Hamas returns the hostages, what leverage will be left with it to deal with unreliable adversaries? The next hand has to be played in such a way as to retain the global sympathy that Palestinians have earned by suffering genocide for two years.

It is a tough gamble. If Hamas returns the hostages, it loses leverage against a heartless opponent. If it does not return the hostages at this sensitive moment, it begins to lose the global sympathy accumulated over two years of suffering.

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An opiated world has been woken up by Israeli genocide, nonstop for two years. Even a Zionist supporter, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, had to blurt out the truth, unpalatable to the Zionists surrounding Trump. “Israel is no longer liked in America.” The great Israel lobby in the US will probably get into a huddle and sink into the deepest layers of thought.