On September 29, 2025, President Donald Trump announced a new “peace plan” for Gaza. Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza is little more than a repackaged ultimatum that blatantly favors Israeli interests while offering Palestinians only empty gestures and long-term international oversight with no real self-determination. Here is a closer look, point by point:
A Point-by-Point Critique of Trump’s 20 Measures
1. Appointment of Tony Blair as “Governor”
Trump’s proposal to install Blair is the keystone of neocolonial arrogance. Blair symbolizes Western interventionism at its most imperial, having championed the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. For Palestinians, this is not neutral oversight but occupation by proxy—a reminder that Western powers treat Arabs as incapable of self-rule.
2. International Security Force Deployment
A “peacekeeping” garrison would effectively become an occupation force that suppresses Palestinian resistance while shielding Israel. Security is defined here only as the absence of Palestinian armed resistance, not the end of Israeli military attacks or the blockade.
3. Disarmament of Militias
This measure demands Palestinians surrender arms while Israel preserves a vastly superior war machine. It seeks to strip Gaza of its capacity for resistance while refusing to dismantle Israeli military outposts or end bombing campaigns. Disarmament in this framework equals unilateral vulnerability.
4. Dismantling of Hamas
The demand to eradicate Hamas is a thinly veiled attempt to terminate Palestinian nationalism in one of its clearest manifestations. This is not de-radicalization but de-politicization—the criminalization of a movement that represents authentic Palestinian resistance. Exclusion of Hamas negates the principle of self-determination.
5. Reconstruction Under U.S.-Israeli Oversight
Rebuilding Gaza is framed as charity, but tied to foreign control of all funds and projects. This rewards Israel for destruction, then grants it leverage over who receives aid. Palestinians are stripped of agency in reconstructing their own homes, schools, and hospitals.
6. Economic Zones for “Growth”
Proposals for free-trade zones echo colonial “development corridors.” These zones enrich international contractors and constrain Palestinians into menial labor markets, while entrenching dependency on Israel’s economy rather than building genuine sovereignty.
7. Foreign Supervision of Education
Educational systems would be “reformed” under international management. Translation: any expression of Palestinian nationalism or resistance is rewritten out of the curriculum, replaced with a depoliticized, sanitized syllabus promoting docility and compliance.
8. Counter-Radicalization Programs
So-called deradicalization equates to ideological re-education. It assumes that Palestinian resistance is irrational extremism rather than a rational response to occupation. The real “radicalism” ignored here is Israel’s genocide and apartheid system.
9. Permanent Israeli Security Coordination
The plan mandates coordination with Israeli intelligence and military systems, ensuring perpetual surveillance of Gazans. Instead of dismantling apartheid structures, it institutionalizes them at the heart of Gaza’s governance.
10. Internationalized Border Control
Palestinian borders would be policed by foreign actors in coordination with Israel, denying Palestinians control over their own movement. This entrenches the blockade in another form, cloaked in the language of “neutral regulation.”
11. Prohibition on Political “Extremist” Parties
By outlawing factions like Hamas or Islamic Jihad, the plan allows only externally approved parties to operate. This is the very definition of colonial governance: democracy permitted only within boundaries set by the occupier and its allies.
12. Refugee Management Under UN/Egyptian Oversight
The refugee crisis—produced by Israeli violence—is reframed as a logistical matter, managed externally. Refugees are displaced political subjects, yet are treated as a social burden to be administered and monitored without granting their right to return.
13. Infrastructure Projects Led by Foreign Contractors
Electricity, water, and sewage will be rebuilt not by Palestinians but by international firms profiting from the catastrophe. Local capacity and autonomy are denied, while foreign investors reap wealth from destruction.
14. Restrictions on Palestinian Military Technology
While Israel maintains one of the most advanced militaries in the world, Palestinians are to be arrested even for rudimentary defense capabilities. This measure codifies a permanent imbalance of power—a recipe for perpetual domination.
15. Normalization Incentives for Arab States
Trump ties Gaza’s future to wider normalization between Israel and Arab regimes, using Palestinians as bargaining chips. This effectively erases Palestinian sovereignty by subordinating their future to the geopolitical interests of authoritarian states.
16. “War Crimes Accountability” Against Hamas
Trump wants mechanisms for criminal tribunals targeting Hamas leaders while granting Israel blanket impunity for its on-going genocide in Gaza. It is a brutal inversion of justice: the victim is labeled the criminal, the perpetrator the enforcer of law.
17. Ban on Memorialization of Armed Struggle
The plan even intrudes into cultural memory, criminalizing martyrdom memorials or the commemoration of resistance fighters. Erasing memory is a hallmark of settler-colonial projects, aimed at crushing not merely resistance but the very narrative of liberation.
18. Privatized Health System Under Foreign NGOs
Healthcare would be dominated by foreign NGOs and aid machinery, leaving Palestinians dependent and powerless in their most basic human needs. Instead of sovereignty over basic services, occupation is rebranded as humanitarianism.
19. Conditional Aid Based on Compliance
All aid is tied to Gaza’s compliance with U.S.-Israeli diktats. Palestinians are punished collectively if they assert independence, turning food, medicine, and shelter into instruments of coercion.
20. Long-Term “Roadmap” with No Statehood Promise
Most cynical is the final point: a “roadmap” that offers no path to Palestinian statehood, only indefinite management. Gaza becomes a perpetual protectorate, a laboratory for neocolonial governance, and an eternal hostage of Israel’s geopolitical designs.
The Neocolonial Essence of the Plan
Taken together, these 20 measures bury peace beneath paternalistic control. They deny Palestinians the right to resist, to elect their own leaders, to govern their reconstruction, and to determine their future. By empowering Netanyahu and rehabilitating Blair, Trump’s plan is not the end of Gaza’s suffering but the institutionalization of it.
This is why it must be exposed not as a “peace plan” but as an imperial decree. By rejecting Hamas, sanctifying Israeli war crimes, and dictating governance from abroad, Trump and Blair merely extend the colonial project against Palestine into the twenty-first century.
The truth remains: peace in Gaza will not be delivered by imperial overseers but only by recognition of Palestinian sovereignty, the legitimacy of Hamas and other resistance, and accountability for Israeli genocidal violence. Any other architecture is, and will remain, a crime veiled as peace.
