The grand betrayal of Palestine

The Zionists have been quite worried for some time now. From Hollywood to the world of international sports, the calls to boycott Israel have been growing louder. Israel is becoming the most loathed state by the global youth. Even in the Zionist stronghold of America, the younger generation is turning away from Israel. Many voices in the USA are now considering Israel a strategic liability and questioning the unrestricted US support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its numerous wars of aggression. They argue that billions of American taxpayer dollars and significant military assets can be utilised for better purposes than participating in a genocide that will only generate hatred for the USA across the world. Israel is decisively losing the battle of narratives.

Strangely enough, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has been the least bothered. His only focus is to retain himself in office for the foreseeable future so that he can avoid going to jail for corruption. However, Zionists deeply committed to the well-being of Israel have been having sleepless nights over Israel’s losses in the battle of narratives. To flip the situation, they have recycled an old but effective tactic: shift all the blame to the victim. After all, this strategy worked after the fiasco at Camp David in 2000 when Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak saddled Yasser Arafat with all the blame for the failed negotiations. The old US-Israeli tactic (also used at Camp David 2000 and numerous other occasions after the Oslo Accords) has been recycled as well wherein an Israeli proposal is put forth as a US proposal and when it is accepted by the Arabs, it is further modified by Israel greatly to its advantage. However, this is not 2000. 25 years and thousands (around 200,000 according to some estimates) of Palestinian genocide victims later, the USA and Israel cannot dominate the narrative by themselves. They required patsies. Tragically, they have found them in the so-called “Muslim World”.

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The 20-point Trump Plan was hastily endorsed by eight leading countries of the Muslim World (Qatar, UAE, Turkiye, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Jordan, and Egypt) in a move that can only be described as a grand betrayal of Palestine. Interestingly, it appears that the eight patsies of the Muslim World themselves were duped by the old US-Israeli tactics when Netanyahu modified key points of the “Trump Plan” with Trump’s implicit support and declared that a Palestinian State wouldn’t ever be established, and the IDF will continue occupying huge chunks of the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu also removed Trump’s guarantee to the Muslim leaders that the West Bank won’t be annexed by Israel, even though it was an essentially meaningless guarantee in the face of the fact that Netanyahu is building and expanding illegal Zionist settlements in the West Bank at an alarming rate. Nevertheless, even without Netanyahu’s “amendments”, the Trump Plan was a horrific document that provided clear-cut timelines and mechanisms for the aspects that advantaged Israel while being vague about anything the Palestinians could receive. Here are a few salient features of the agreement that the eight Muslim countries agreed to:

• All Israeli hostages would be released before even a single Palestinian hostage is released (giving the option to Netanyahu to renege on the deal the moment he gets all the Israeli hostages).
• Gaza to be governed by a “Board of Peace” headed by President Trump with Tony Blair (dubbed a “weapon of mass deception” by the British media after lying about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and becoming complicit in the killing of around a million Iraqis in a war based on a lie) in the role of “Viceroy”.
• Acceptance of Trump’s peace plan of 2020, which drastically reduced the area to be placed under Palestinian control (in contrast to the UN’s demand of complete withdrawal of Israel from territories occupied in the 1967 War) and practically voided the idea of a sovereign Palestinian State.
• Complete demilitarisation of Hamas, which would be handled by the forces of these Muslim countries (dubbed the International Stabilisation Force [ISF]) as Israeli forces continue occupying huge chunks of Gaza with the right to veto any further withdrawal until they are satisfied with the “progress” of the ISF. This demand ignored the fact that the right of armed resistance against occupation forces is protected under international law.
• Numerous mentions of “ensuring that New Gaza poses no threat to its neighbours” that put the blame for the war and genocide squarely on the victims who were oppressed and whose lands were occupied.
• No timelines for Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. However, it was stipulated that Israel would continue occupying an unspecified security perimeter inside the Gaza Strip indefinitely.
• Subjecting any progress towards the establishment of a Palestinian State to a vague requirement of reform for the Palestinian Authority, with Israel having the ultimate say in judging whether the PA is sufficiently “reformed” or not.

Trump also declared, with the implicit assent of the Muslim leaders, that Hamas will have to agree to the plan in the next three or four days or he will give his full backing to Netanyahu to restart the genocide with renewed vigor. So, the Trump Plan (even without the later additions of Netanyahu’s Protocols) is much less a peace plan than an ultimatum that’s attempting to blackmail Hamas into surrendering by leveraging the lives and dignity of two million Palestinians facing starvation and murder at the hands of Israel. The acceptance of this plan by eight Muslim countries is an even greater betrayal of Palestine than the Abraham Accords (concluded at least before the most horrible genocide of the 21^st century was unleashed by Netanyahu after 7 October 2023). By backing this plan, these eight Muslim countries have tried their best to paint the Palestinians as the aggressors and terrorists while giving a clean chit to Israel and its genocidal acts. They have struck a blow in Israel’s service to turn the tide in the battle of narratives! It reminds me of a quote by the famous Pakistani thinker Eqbal Ahmed: “We live in scoundrel times. This is the dark age of Muslim history, the age of surrender and collaboration, punctuated by madness.”

One might ask here, what prompted these eight Muslim countries to participate in such a disgraceful betrayal. There appear to be different motives (or thirty pieces of silver) for each participant. Examples include unpopular and illegitimate governments requiring Trump’s support for survival (Egypt and Pakistan), a piece of the pie in Syria (Turkiye), an opportunity to gain economic boons in the “Special Economic Zone” to be created in Gaza under the Trump Plan plus the fact that the USA refuses to guard them against Israeli aggression if the war goes on (UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar). What’s ironic here is that, like Judas, these countries won’t be able to enjoy what they hope to gain from this betrayal for long. Unpopular and illegitimate governments’ fragility is only increased when they are seen as puppets of a foreign power. Israel has a clear policy regarding Syria, and it will never let that country stabilize unless it somehow gains the will and strength to fight Israeli aggression. As for the Gulf States that hope to extract economic gains and security from the rubble and corpses in Gaza, they will soon know that the Zionist project of Greater Israel is as integral to Israel as the project of Greater Germany was to Nazi Germany. A Palestinian might address these deluded Muslim States in the words of a character in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: “Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing!”

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The grand betrayal has left the Palestinian resistance in a very tough situation. It wasn’t receiving any significant assistance from the Muslim countries before anyway but now it has been abandoned utterly. What options are there for the Palestinian resistance? Acceptance of the Trump Plan will grant not only a victory for Netanyahu (one that he has yet failed to win on the battlefield), but it will also not guarantee even a halt in the genocide. The plan leaves ample room for Netanyahu to renege on all of Israel’s commitments after recovering the Israeli hostages. Rejecting the plan outright will enable Netanyahu and his American allies to resume the genocide with the tacit backing of eight important Muslim countries, along with an opportunity to paint Hamas as the “spoiler” and gain some ground in the battle of narratives. Probably the best option for the Palestinian Resistance is to ask for clarifications and iron-clad guarantees for the vague points of the Trump Plan.

Undoubtedly, Trump and Netanyahu will not provide those and will try to paint this as a “rejection” by Hamas for their own nefarious ends. However, their cries will ring hollow, and the battle of narratives will continue to be dominated by Palestine as the genocide resumes. Netanyahu’s hopes of a political comeback will also be dashed as the prospects of Israeli hostages’ recovery will recede with the resumption of genocide. Henry Kissinger’s famous maxim: “The conventional army loses if it does not win, the guerrilla wins if he does not lose” is relevant here. If the Palestinian resistance can hold on till Netanyahu is voted out by Israelis next year, then there is a hope that Israel will be plunged into internal political turmoil. If this happens, then a ceasefire agreement that guarantees Israel’s complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip while the forces of Palestinian Resistance remain intact might become possible. Netanyahu’s modifications of the Trump Plan have granted a chance of redemption to the eight Muslim countries as well. They can now recognize the fact that they have been duped and push for a ceasefire agreement that ensures reciprocity (even the thought of demanding that Israel be held accountable for genocide might be too much for the elites ruling these states). In this way, they can wipe off some of the stain from their faces and avoid becoming collaborators in a genocide of their brethren.

Lastly, I want to state a fact that is only too apparent to anyone who reviews the Netanyahu Protocols to the Trump Plan for Palestine. The two-state solution is dead. One can argue that it was stillborn at Oslo (another unequal agreement that Israel brazenly warped beyond recognition for its ends), but even the most optimistic advocates of the Oslo process can’t deny the fact that Netanyahu is adamant on his negation of the two-state solution because he knows that this will get him a great many popularity points in Israel. The Western World will not lift a finger in the face of genocide. So, the Palestine conflict can only have two endings. Either a Greater Israel is formed after a genocide from the Nile to the Euphrates, or a free Palestine is created in the land from the river to the sea. The “Muslim World”, especially the eight countries duped by Trump and Netanyahu, faces a crossroads. It can choose to abandon its attempts at flogging the dead horse that is the two-state solution and pool all its energies in securing a free Palestine. Or it can choose servility as a new century of humiliation is imposed on it, and the genocidal state of Greater Israel emerges as the superpower of the Middle East.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.