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middle east
A 20-Point Peace Plan Without US-UK Colonialism
A revised version of the Trump plan for an end of the war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank. This is the moment for honesty, global resolve, and moral clarity.
Oct 06, 2025
President Trump’s 20-point plan offers some constructive proposals on hostages, humanitarian aid, and reconstruction. Yet it is marred by an unmistakable colonial framework: Gaza is to be overseen by Trump himself, with Tony Blair and other outsiders cast as trustees for Palestinian governance—while Palestinian statehood is deferred indefinitely.
This logic is not new. It reprises the century-long Anglo-American approach to Palestine since the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, when Britain acquired the Mandate over Palestine, and through successive U.S. interventions, direct and indirect, in the region since 1945.
A real peace plan must eliminate the colonial scaffolding. It should restore Palestinian sovereignty by addressing the central issue: Palestinian statehood. The plan must empower Palestinian agency by establishing that the Palestinian Authority holds governance from the outset, that economic planning is exclusively in the hands of Palestinians, that no external “viceroys” intervene, and that a clear and short timeline is set for Israeli withdrawal and for full Palestinian sovereignty by the start of 2026.
This is a true decolonized plan: close in substance to Trump’s, but freed from the 100-year trickery of mandates, trusteeship, and other outside impositions. It is also consistent with international law: in line with the 2024 ruling of the International Court of Justice, the recent resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, and the recognition of Palestine by 157 countries around the world.
The Revised 20-Point Plan: the Trump Plan with No Colonial Strings Attached
We revise the Trump plan, preserving its core elements related to the release of hostages, end of fighting, withdrawal of the Israeli army, emergency humanitarian relief, and the reconstruction of war-torn Palestine, while eliminating the colonial language and baggage. Readers may make a point-by-point comparison with the original Trump Plan found here.
1. Palestine and Israel will be terror-free countries that do not pose a threat to their neighbors.
2. Palestine will be redeveloped for the benefit of the Palestinians, who have suffered more than enough.
3. If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed line to prepare for a hostage release. All military operations will end.
4. Within 72 hours of both sides publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.
5. Once all hostages are released, Israel will release life sentence prisoners plus Palestinians who were detained after 7 October 2023.
6. Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.
7. Upon acceptance of this agreement, full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip. At a minimum, aid quantities will be consistent with what was included in the 19 January 2025 agreement regarding humanitarian aid, including rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.
8. Entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party. Opening the Rafah crossing in both directions will be subject to the same mechanism implemented under 19 January 2025 agreement.
9. Palestine, and Gaza as an integral part of it, will be governed by the Palestinian Authority. International advisors may support this effort, but sovereignty lies with the Palestinians.
10. The Palestinian Authority, supported by a panel of Arab-region experts and outside experts as may be chosen by the Palestinians, will develop a reconstruction and development plan. Outside proposals may be considered, but economic planning will be Arab-led.
11. A special economic zone may be established by the Palestinians, with tariffs and access rates negotiated by Palestine and partner countries.
12. No one will be forced to leave any sovereign Palestinian territory. Those who wish to leave may do so freely and return freely.
13. Hamas and other factions will have no role in governance. All military and terror infrastructure will be dismantled and decommissioned, verified by independent monitors.
14. Regional partners will guarantee that Hamas and other factions comply, ensuring that Gaza poses no threat to its neighbours or its own people.
15. Arab and international partners, as per the invitation of Palestine, will deploy a temporary International Stabilisation Force (ISF) beginning November 1, 2025, to support and train Palestinian security, in consultation with Egypt and Jordan. The ISF will secure borders, protect the population, and facilitate the rapid movement of goods to rebuild Palestine.
16. Israel will neither occupy nor annex Gaza or the West Bank. Israeli forces will fully withdraw from all occupied Palestinian territories by December 31, 2025, as the ISF and Palestinian security establish control.
17. If Hamas delays or rejects the proposal, aid and reconstruction will proceed in areas under ISF and PA authority.
18. An interfaith dialogue process will be established to promote tolerance and peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis.
19. The State of Palestine will govern its full sovereign territories as of January 1, 2026, in line with the September 12 resolution of the UN General Assembly and the 2024 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice.
20. The United States will immediately recognize a sovereign State of Palestine, with permanent United Nations membership, as a peaceful nation living side by with the State of Israel.
Here are the main differences from the Trump Plan.
Palestinian Sovereignty and Statehood: Trump’s version deferred Palestinian statehood to some indefinite future, contingent on reforms and external approval. The decolonized plan sets firm dates: Israel withdraws by November 1, 2025, and Palestine assumes full sovereignty by January 1, 2026. 126 years since the Versailles Treaty is enough.
Colonial Oversight Removed: Trump’s proposal created a “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump himself, with Tony Blair as a leading member. The decolonized plan eliminates this, recognizing that Palestinians require no foreign viceroys. Governance rests with the Palestinians from day one.
Economic Sovereignty: Trump’s plan announced a “Trump Economic Development Plan” to remake Gaza. The decolonized plan leaves economic planning to the Palestinians supported by Arab experts, with outside proposals considered only at Palestinian discretion.
End of Anglo-American Trusteeship: Trump cast the U.S. as the guarantor and arbiter of Palestinian future, with support of the U.K. The decolonized plan explicitly ends this 100-year model, affirming Palestinian and Arab leadership.
The revised 20-point plan, in short, is not radically different in form from Trump’s. It retains provisions for demilitarization, humanitarian relief, economic reconstruction, and interfaith dialogue. The main difference lies with Palestinian sovereignty and statehood.
For more than a century, Palestinians have been subjected to external colonial control: British Mandate rule, U.S. diplomatic dominance, Israeli occupation, and periodic schemes of trusteeship as in Trump’s new plan. From the Balfour Declaration to Versailles to Oslo to Trump’s “Board of Peace,” Palestinians have not been treated as sovereign actors. This plan corrects that and recognizes that the Palestinian people are a nation of enormous talents, and highly educated and experienced experts. They don’t need tutelage. They need sovereignty.
Our revised plan affirms that Palestinians, through their own authority, must finally and at long last govern themselves, make their own economic choices, and chart their own destiny. International actors may advise and support them, but they must not impose their will. The withdrawal of Israel and the recognition of Palestine’s sovereignty must be fixed and non-negotiable milestones.
A real peace plan must be aligned with international law including the clear-cut rulings of the International Court of Justice and the United Nations resolutions. A real peace plan must be aligned with the overwhelming will of the global community that supports the implementation of the two-state solution. All parties to the peace plan should subscribe to this framework. This is the moment for honesty, global resolve, and moral clarity. Only practical steps that implement Palestinian sovereignty and statehood will bring lasting peace.
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The Most Destabilizing Middle East Country? Israel, Hands Down.
The United States needs to get beyond the familiar mantra about Iran supposedly being the biggest source of instability in the Middle East.
Sep 29, 2025
Is conflict in the Middle East at an inflection point? It might seem so, given how international outrage over Israel’s lethal conduct in the Gaza Strip has become increasingly intense and widespread in recent weeks.
Several major Western countries that previously had declined to join most other members of the United Nations in formally recognizing a Palestinian state used the opening of the current session of the General Assembly as the occasion to take that step. Popular demonstrations in the West in support of the Palestinians have been as large and conspicuous as ever, and recent polls show a sharp decline in the American public’s support for Israel.
Such responses are the least that can be expected in the face of new lows in barbarous Israeli actions against the residents of the Gaza Strip. An Israeli military assault on Gaza City has added to the rubble to which most of the city had already been reduced. The assault has given remaining inhabitants the choice of suffering and perhaps dying in place or fleeing once again to someplace else in the Strip with still no assurance of safety. The armed attacks and imposed starvation have seen the death toll of Gazans increase to what is now probably several times the officially reported figure of about 65,000.
The international responses, including diplomatic recognition of Palestine by Western governments, fall short of eliciting a constructive Israeli response. The recognition of a Palestinian state has been the target of criticism from some Palestinians who rightly point out that it does nothing to alleviate the immediate misery on the ground. Diplomatic moves and street demonstrations do not speak the only language that Israel appears to understand, which is one of force and compulsion.
The Israeli response to the latest diplomatic moves has been one of defiance and threats to inflict still more depredations on the Palestinians. The Israeli national security minister, right-wing extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, is pushing to make annexation of the West Bank the main Israeli response to Western recognition of Palestine.
Most Israelis, and not just their government or the extremists within it, see international pressure as just more evidence of bias against Israel and of the need for Israel to use force to protect itself, regardless of worldwide outrage. Survey research shows that most Israelis believe there are "no innocents" in Gaza and favor expulsion of residents from the Gaza Strip. An appeal to morality will not get a positive response from a government that has this population as its political base. Only the imposition on Israel of significant costs and consequences would lead it to change its policies.
Although we may not be at an inflection point regarding the Palestinian-Israeli tragedy, the thinking of Arab regimes in the region has reached an inflection point of sorts in recent weeks. The Israeli attack in early September on the territory of Qatar, in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Hamas leaders engaged in Gaza-related negotiations, shocked that thinking.
The attack in Qatar comes amid a fusillade of Israeli armed attacks against other regional states, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran, in addition to the carnage in Palestine. These and other regional states (such as Iraq and Egypt) have been the targets of Israeli attacks — both overt military and clandestine — for many years, but it is the near-simultaneity of some of the attacks over the past month that has added to the shock.
The attack in Qatar demonstrated to the Arab governments not only that Israel is the most destabilizing state in the region but also that any one of their own nations could be similarly attacked. Qatar’s security relations with Israel’s prime backer, the United States — which has a large military presence at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar — did not protect it from the Israeli aggression. Although Arab governments may be showing signs of fatigue in their decades-long support of the Palestinian cause, they are highly concerned about the possibility of any assault on their own territories.
The concerns of Egypt — party to the first Arab peace treaty with Israel — are great enough for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to label Israel an “enemy” in his remarks at an emergency Arab summit following the attack in Qatar. Egypt, like Qatar, has mediated ceasefire talks on Gaza, and could become another target of Israeli determination to kill Hamas officials wherever they may be, even ones involved in peace negotiations. Egypt also fears consequences for its own security of continued Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip, which adjoins Egypt. Jordan has similar fears regarding how increasingly aggressive Israeli moves against Palestinians in the West Bank could push them eastward and upset Jordan’s already fragile domestic situation.
One result of these events is to remove, at least for now, the possibility of more diplomatic normalization agreements between Arab states and Israel, to add to the ones that Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates signed during President Trump’s first term. There might even be some retreat from cooperation by governments that did sign such agreements. The UAE responded quickly to talk in Israel about annexing the West Bank by warning that annexation would cross a “red line.”
A benefit of this development is to help debunk the notion, which one sometimes hears in the United States, that the upgrading of relations with Israel — the so-called “Abraham Accords” — represents progress and even a step toward Israeli-Palestinian peace. To the contrary, such upgrading is an alternative to Israel making peace with the Palestinians. It is a way for Israel to enjoy, and be seen by the world to enjoy, full relations with regional neighbors while continuing the subjugation of Palestinians and occupation of their territory. Given the Israeli inclination also to view such agreements as the core of an anti-Iranian alliance, these supposed “peace agreements” also have sharpened lines of conflict in the Persian Gulf.
An implication for the United States is that it should discard the fixation, which has characterized both the Trump and Biden administrations, on seeking more normalization agreements between Israel and Arab governments. Given the other circumstances in the region, including what is transpiring in Gaza, such agreements do nothing to advance peace and security in the Middle East or other U.S. interests.
Another implication flows from the decreased value that Arab governments are almost certainly placing on security cooperation with the United States. Arab doubts about that value were stimulated in 2019 by the U.S. non-response to an Iranian attack on Saudi oil facilities (which was part of the Iranian response to the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy, reaffirmed in Trump’s second term, that was aimed at cutting off Iran’s oil exports). The Israeli attack in Qatar, a small state that had implicitly placed much of its security in the hands of the United States, has amplified the Arab doubts. The United States may need to prepare for lesser military access to Arab territories.
It is good for U.S. interests that a new formal security agreement with an Arab state, such as what the Biden administration pursued with Saudi Arabia, has become less likely than before. This development helps to minimize the risk of the United States getting ensnared in conflicts not of its own making. But as the Qatar episode illustrates, even just an implicit guarantee entails costs and risks. With Israel primed to repeat such attacks anywhere in the region, the United States, owing to its close association with Israel, may again be put in a difficult position.
The United States needs to get beyond the familiar mantra about Iran supposedly being the biggest source of instability in the Middle East. It needs to consider what other state actually has started more wars and attacked more nations — and currently is killing more civilians — than any other state in the region, and to fundamentally reappraise its relationship with that state.
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When Water Becomes War: The Moral Failure of Global Governance in the Middle East
Global powers that once justified their interventions in the Middle East with rhetoric about human rights remain silent when basic rights are violated through the denial of water.
Aug 21, 2025
The Middle East today is witnessing a transformation that goes far beyond conventional geopolitics or the competition for oil. One of the most urgent yet underexplored dimensions of its crisis is the question of water, which has increasingly become both a scarce commodity and a weapon in the hands of states and non-state actors alike.
According to the Pacific Institute, in 2022 and 2023 alone there were roughly 350 conflicts worldwide linked directly to water, and the Middle East—particularly Palestine—accounted for a disproportionate share of these incidents. This reality is not accidental. It reflects the way global climate change intersects with regional inequalities, colonial structures, and authoritarian governance to create a cycle of violence where access to water itself becomes a matter of survival, control, and domination.
For decades, international observers focused on energy as the main axis of power in the Middle East. But as climate patterns shift, it is water that increasingly defines the possibilities of stability or conflict. Israel’s control over Palestinian aquifers and its systematic restriction of water access in Gaza and the West Bank is a striking example of how resource management is turned into an instrument of collective punishment. For Palestinians, the denial of water is not simply a matter of inconvenience; it is a violation of their most basic human right, used deliberately to weaken their social fabric and impose dependency. In this sense, water becomes no different from a siege or a blockade: It is a tool of war under another name.
The instrumentalization of water is not confined to Palestine. In Iraq and Syria, dams on the Tigris and Euphrates have repeatedly been manipulated by regional powers and armed groups to gain leverage over civilian populations. The deliberate flooding or drying of entire areas has been used both as a tactical weapon and as a form of coercion against communities already devastated by decades of war and sanctions. In North Africa, the tensions between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan over the Grand Renaissance Dam reveal how water disputes are reshaping the geopolitics of the Nile basin. These examples highlight a pattern that is not unique to one country but characteristic of the entire region: Water is increasingly governed not as a shared resource but as an instrument of power, deployed in ways that exacerbate fragility and deepen mistrust.
If water continues to be treated as a weapon, the region will face not only deeper wars but also the erosion of any possibility of trust among its peoples.
Overlaying these conflicts is the accelerating impact of climate change. The Middle East is warming faster than many other regions, and prolonged droughts are already destabilizing entire societies. In Syria, a decade of severe drought preceding the outbreak of civil war played a major role in driving rural populations toward cities, where state neglect and economic desperation created fertile ground for unrest. In Iran, recurring protests over water shortages reveal how ecological stress translates directly into political instability. In Yemen, the depletion of groundwater has compounded the devastation of war and famine, pushing communities into cycles of displacement and despair. These are not isolated events; they are symptoms of a systemic crisis in which the environment is no longer a neutral background but an active driver of conflict.
From the perspective of the Global South, the crisis of water in the Middle East cannot be separated from broader patterns of structural inequality in the international system. Just as natural resources such as oil or minerals have long been subjected to forms of colonial extraction, water too has been folded into systems of control shaped by external powers and neoliberal institutions. Privatization schemes, often promoted by global financial institutions, commodify access to water and place it in the hands of corporate actors whose logic of profit directly contradicts the principle of universal human rights. For vulnerable populations in Gaza, Basra, or Sana’a, the question is not merely ecological but profoundly political: Who controls the flow of life itself?
The human cost of these dynamics is staggering. Water scarcity strikes hardest at the most vulnerable—children, women, refugees, and the poor—who bear the brunt of disease, malnutrition, and displacement. When families must choose between buying water or food, the very notion of human dignity is stripped away. In refugee camps across the region, inadequate water supply is linked to rising health crises, while urban populations face soaring prices as corporations exploit scarcity. To speak of water in the Middle East is therefore to speak of justice, of whose lives are considered expendable in a system that treats water as a weapon rather than as a shared right.
At the same time, the weaponization of water reveals a profound moral failure of the international community. Global powers that once justified their interventions in the Middle East with rhetoric about human rights remain silent when basic rights are violated through the denial of water. This silence reflects a double standard in which ecological violence is normalized when it serves geopolitical interests. It also underscores how little regard is given to the voices of the Global South, where communities consistently insist that climate justice cannot be divorced from political justice. To demand fair access to water is to demand a reordering of priorities that places human survival above strategic advantage.
The irony of the current moment is that while the West proclaims its commitment to universal values, it is in fact the countries of the Global South that articulate a more compelling vision of planetary justice. In Latin America, Africa, and Asia, movements have emerged insisting that water is a commons, inseparable from human dignity and beyond the logic of commodification. This resonates deeply in the Middle East, where communities understand that peace cannot be built on pipelines of oil or weapons, but only on the guarantee that every person can drink, irrigate, and live without fear of thirst. Such a vision requires not only local cooperation but also a radical shift in global governance, one that dismantles the structures of environmental colonialism and affirms water as a fundamental right.
The Middle East stands today at a crossroads where climate change, conflict, and inequality converge. If water continues to be treated as a weapon, the region will face not only deeper wars but also the erosion of any possibility of trust among its peoples. Yet the very urgency of this crisis also opens a space for a new discourse, one that reframes water not as an object of control but as a foundation for coexistence. To imagine such a future is not naïve; it is the only realistic response to a world where climate shocks are intensifying and old paradigms of power are collapsing.
For those of us in the Global South, the lesson is clear: The struggle for justice in the 21st century is inseparable from the struggle for water. To defend the right to water is to defend the possibility of peace, dignity, and life itself.
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