Betrayal of Palestinians’ right to their homeland

US President Donald Trump meeting Arab and Muslim rulers at the 80th session of the UN’s General Assembly in New York on 23 September 2025

After almost two years of systematic attempts to eradicate Gaza, Israel has failed to achieve its declared objectives. The resistance has not been destroyed. Surrender has not been imposed. Instead, every day exposes the fragility of Israel’s military and political assumptions

America’s   Arab allies including   Saudi Arabia,  the so called   guardian of Islam  and Islamic holy places, Qatar, UAE, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan and Egypt endorsed  Trump’s Gaza Plan which is a sellout of legitimate Palestinian  rights to their homeland and dignity

Days after  Arab and Muslim rulers met and pleaded with President Donald Trump  not to allow Israel to annex the West Bank, Trump  announced  on Monday September 29, 2025 a proposal to  end Israel’s two year old on going genocidal war  in Gaza. 

However,  United Nations human rights and legal experts warned that the   US plan risks entrenching violations of international law.  

Trump  who recognised occupied East Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and shifted the US embassy in Israel there, was helped to gain  power by the Jewish lobby which expects him  to   serve Israel,  as his predecessors from President Harry S. Truman to Joe Biden did.  Joe Biden and Trump spent 22 billion dollars worth American tax payers’ money  for  Israel’s ongoing  slaughter of the Palestinans and  the destruction of Gaza.

America’s   Arab allies including   Saudi Arabia,  the so called   guardian of Islam  and Islamic holy places, Qatar, UAE, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan and Egypt endorsed  Trump’s Gaza Plan which is a sellout of legitimate Palestinian  rights to their homeland and dignity.

The plan  is perhaps the worst ever moment in the history of Arabs and Muslims. As pointed out by one columnist:  “A ceasefire plan that excludes the occupied is not a peace plan. It is a colonial diktat”.

Worse than before

 After two years of genocide, we have ended up with a proposed settlement which is substantially worse than the situation that existed on  October 6 2023. Israel has a green light to stay in Gaza  and will continue to seal the border and control the amount of aid and quality of construction materials that go through.  

Trump  was given  a legendary welcome by Saudi Arabia, United Arab emirates and Qatar during his recent visit. These countries  invested billions to  please him.  Trump  said the  plan has the support of Arab and Muslim leaders, European allies   and is acceptable to Israelis.  Heaping  praise on while exposing Arab leaders’  sellout,  Trump added that  “Arab and Muslim” leaders have committed to “demilitarise Gaza” and “decommission” the military capabilities of Hamas. 

Blackmailing  Hamas which has been betrayed by Arab  rulers,  Trump  warned that if Hamas chose to reject  the  proposal, Netanyahu would “have our full backing to do what you have to do”.  He announced that former British prime minister Tony Blair,   a US ally who backed the invasion of Iraq, destroying  its modern infrastructure and killing millions of innocent Iraqis, would be on  board along with several others.  

Inevitably,   after Trump warned that  he would unleash “all hell” if they did not respond to his  plan,  Hamas agreed to release all Israeli captives held in Gaza.  Trump’s plan    is a wolf in sheep’s clothing with threat of annihilation  as it includes  no  Palestinian self-determination; Israel maintains control of borders, air and  sea space, co-led by Trump  and  tony  Blair and  no accountability for a single individual or group for  genocide.

Describing the deal as the great betrayal of Palestinians,  British  columnist David Hearst said    there is to be no light at the end of the tunnel  for Palestinians, only a different form of occupation and a different form of siege. None of the eight Arab and Muslim  leaders, prime ministers or foreign ministers  consulted  Palestinians before agreeing to this plan. 

Just at that point in history when world opinion has definitively turned against Israel,  and just as more countries than ever before have recognised the Palestinian state, Arab and Muslim leaders have signed a plan that ensures that a viable state can never emerge from the rubble of Israel’s vengeance.

There is no guarantee they have stopped ethnic cleansing and genocide because, under this agreement, Israeli forces are not leaving the strip, and Netanyahu is the one who decides how quickly and how much of Gaza his forces hand over to the proposed International Stabilisation Force (ISF).  

He is also free to decide how much aid and reconstruction materials to send in. There is no timetable for such a withdrawal. But there is every guarantee that this postwar plan will stifle at birth, with Gaza reemerging under a Palestinian leadership of any kind. 

No Palestinian role

Under this plan, there is no role for any Palestinian leadership in the rebuilding of Gaza which  is definitively split from the Occupied West Bank,   and all thoughts of joining the two have been jettisoned.  Palestinians themselves had been excluded from the process. 

According to Netanyahu,   the PA has to drop its cases against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), it has to stop paying the families of slain fighters, change the school curriculum and tame the media. And only then Israel will consider anything.  

Just as the Palestinians have no agency in the authority that is about to be imposed on them in Gaza, they have had no say in devising a postwar plan. The nations are now tasked with forcing Hamas to accept terms of surrender that Israeli tanks, drones, and robots were unable to achieve on the  battlefield. They can do this with nothing less than an overwhelming sense of shame. 

Where was the Arab counter plan? It does not exist. Where was the determination to counter Israel’s expanding borders? That, too, is pure make believe. 

 Azzam Tamimi,    a British-Palestinian-Jordanian academic and political activist,   said Trump and Netanyahu want Palestinians to capitulate. Palestinians  have no option but to resist the occupation and continue their struggle for freedom and liberation.  

According to Adnan Hamidan,  after almost two years of systematic attempts to eradicate Gaza, Israel has failed to achieve its declared objectives. The resistance has not been destroyed. Surrender has not been imposed. Instead, every day exposes the fragility of Israel’s military and political assumptions.

Rather than being weakened, the Palestinian resistance has drawn greater strength from each sacrifice. Every martyr, every demolished home, every scarred street has become another reason to fight on. Reports even within Israel point to rising levels of trauma and psychological breakdown among its soldiers. In contrast, Gaza’s fighters are driven by the clarity of their cause and their readiness for self-sacrifice. 

Since the outbreak of the genocidal war on Gaza   two years ago, the world has been confronted with an extraordinary reality: a besieged people whose homes are levelled, whose hospitals are bombed and whose families are torn apart, yet who rise from beneath the rubble — sometimes barefoot, often with a little more than rudimentary weapons — to challenge one of the most heavily armed militaries in the world.   

This is not simply a war. It is an existential test for humanity. It is living proof that dignity, when deeply rooted in land and belief, can withstand even the mightiest arsenals of destruction.

 After almost two years of systematic attempts to eradicate Gaza, Israel has failed to achieve its declared objectives. The resistance has not been destroyed. Surrender has not been imposed. Instead, every day exposes the fragility of Israel’s military and political assumptions.

Commenting on Washington’s favourite delusion ”Hamas without weapons,” columnist   Jasim Al-Azzawi said   the demand reveals a profound misunderstanding of Hamas’ historical and ideological context. It ignores the simple, brutal truth that no armed movement in modern history has ever traded its guns for promises alone. The very reason Israel finds itself facing its gravest security challenge in decades is that Hamas refused to do precisely what it is now being asked to do: to surrender its most valuable source of leverage without a single guarantee of a future state, of sovereignty, or of safety.