For everyone horrified by Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, it is easy to be seduced by the latest headlines regarding President Donald Trump’s so-called peace plan. After two years of mass destruction, the present moment offers the contradictory possibility of a near-term pause in Israel’s deadly assault combined with the continued long-term subjugation of the Palestinian people.
How we arrived at this moment is the result of multiple factors, but it’s hard to overstate the impact of public outrage. Trump has never been subtle about his narcissistic desire to be seen as a peacemaker worthy of the Nobel Prize. At the same time, anti-Israel sentiment is now negatively affecting Trump’s approval ratings, with only 35 percent of American voters approving of his handling of Gaza. The Republican Party base is increasingly skeptical of the U.S.–Israel alliance, and Jewish Americans are demonstrating rising revulsion over Israel’s crimes against humanity. And no one should be surprised if there has been private engagement by Israeli elites who are already fed up with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and are seeking an off-ramp that enables them to escape global isolation — while preserving their domination over Palestinians.
The simple reality is that public opinion matters. Even if political elites in the U.S. and Israel pretend otherwise, they are impacted in different ways by public opposition to their policy choices. Though Trump’s long-term plan for Gaza is an ugly vision of neocolonial control, it can be bent and blocked by more of the global pressure that has made even this moment possible.
That’s why this is not the time for supporters of Palestinian self-determination to be quiet. It’s the moment for us to demand more.
To understand just how much has shifted in recent days, it is worth recalling the surprising headlines of the last week. First, Trump humiliated Netanyahu by releasing a photo of the Israeli leader apologizing to Qatar’s ruler for bombing his country. Then Trump announced his 20-point Gaza plan, threatening Palestinians in Gaza with more violence if Hamas didn’t accept his terms. When Hamas offered its limited acceptance, Trump called on Israel to stop bombing the Palestinian territory. “I am asking everyone to MOVE FAST,” he declared as he dispatched Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy, to Egypt to mediate negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
Despite the headlines, there are some sobering realities to consider. Israel is still bombing Gaza, regardless of Trump’s claims to the contrary. And Trump’s plan for Gaza calls for Israeli military withdrawal based on “standards, milestones, and timeframes” that would be decided in the future, a day that may never come. Israel has a decadeslong history of violating agreements in order to continue stealing what is left of Palestinian land. And the U.S. has a long history of sending Israel billions of dollars in military funding, no matter what Israel does or doesn’t do.
While Trump’s plan offers the important possibility of a pause or end to Israel’s genocide, the worst of Trump’s plan for Gaza is embedded in its long-term vision. The plan amounts to a blueprint for external neocolonial domination over Gaza, under which Palestinians will have no formal ability to assert their rights or determine their future. Trump’s plan for Gaza denies Palestinians self-determination and says nothing of Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
Under the plan, Trump would personally chair an Orwellian “Board of Peace” that would rule over Gaza, with former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair at his side. The Trump-run “board” would convene an unnamed “panel of experts” who would create a “Trump economic development plan” that would “rebuild and energize Gaza.” But dig a little deeper, and it is clear that Trump’s vision for Gaza is yet another page from the Trump family playbook for corruption and self-enrichment.
Trump’s vision for Gaza is yet another page from the Trump family playbook for corruption and self-enrichment.
Back in February, after meeting with Netanyahu for hours, Trump called for Gaza to be developed into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” with “the United States owning that piece of land” and Palestinians being moved elsewhere. Though the plan no longer calls for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, it — like so many Trump proposals — appears to be a handout to his family businesses. (Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is already heavily invested in Israeli business interests that profit from Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, with at least $2 billion in financial support from Saudi Arabia’s ruling dictator, Mohammed bin Salman.)
But the Trump family is not alone in profiting heavily from this plan. In July, the Financial Times reported that the Tony Blair Institute, Boston Consulting Group, and Israeli businessmen Michael Eisenberg and Liran Tancman developed an investment plan for Gaza that included building an “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone.” The investment plan called for cutting development costs by removing Palestinians from the territory. No surprise that the Tony Blair Institute has received at least $345 million from pro-Israel billionaire and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.
Under Trump’s plan, Palestinians would be required to relinquish all forms of resistance to Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide. While Trump’s “Board of Peace” would cash in on Gaza, it would delegate daily governance in Gaza to “a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” that would be “responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza.”
The plan proposes that the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, could eventually take over Gaza, but only if it meets the so-called “reform” conditions previously outlined in an earlier plan Trump put forward in 2020. That 2020 plan required that the Palestinian Authority give up all claims against Israel or the U.S. before the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, “and all other tribunals.” Of course, the Palestinian Authority is already considered by many to be an undemocratic and corrupt institution that rules over Palestinians and serves as a subcontractor to the Israeli occupation. These new requirements would block any last vestige of justice for Palestinians.
The long-term implications of Trump’s latest “peace plan” appear startlingly similar to the goals that America’s white settlers must have had for Native Americans.
The plan also requires that Hamas demilitarize as part of making Gaza “a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.” But no mention is made of the fact that Israel has bombed Qatar, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and, of course, the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank. Nor is there any mention of “deradicalizing” the violent Israeli settler movement or holding accountable the thousands of Israeli soldiers and their leaders who are still committing genocide in Gaza today.
Given these details, the long-term implications of Trump’s latest “peace plan” appear startlingly similar to the goals that America’s white settlers must have had for Native American populations: Confiscate their resources and drive them into smaller and smaller parcels of land, whether through murder, violent displacement, treaties that would later be ignored, or all of the above.
While Trump pushes for an immediate, headline-grabbing “win,” the broader political trends make it clear that time is not on Israel’s side. A June Quinnipiac poll revealed that sympathy for Israel dropped 14 percent among Republicans over the last year, from a May 2024 level of 78% down to 64%. An April Pew Research poll showed that Israel’s unfavorable rating among Republicans aged 18 to 49 had risen from 35 to 50 percent. Meanwhile, loud conservative voices like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens have all spoken critically of America’s alliance with Israel. And a September New York Times/Siena survey found more American voters “siding with Palestinians over Israelis for the first time since The Times began asking voters about their sympathies in 1998.”
These shifts in U.S. public opinion reveal the path ahead. Activists across the U.S., Europe, and worldwide must continue isolating Israel and begin explicitly pushing their own governments to reject the full arc of Trump’s plan. Yes, an immediate deal that ends Israel’s genocidal violence and mass starvation of Palestinians is critical. But Trump’s longer-term vision for Gaza must be defeated.
Massive waves of opposition to Israel’s genocide have already flooded cities worldwide, from the hundreds of thousands who protested in Amsterdam and Mexico City, to the millions who took to the streets in Italy. Protesters should now consider taking direct aim at Trump’s plan itself. Global pressure is critical if we are to see a future in which Palestinians can live free from Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide.
