By Ameer Ali –

Dr. Ameer Ali

The real objective behind Donald Trump’s October 18 Ceasefire in Gaza, with subsequent paraphernalia of a grand Board of Peace to be chaired by the stage manager Trump himself, a fifteen member Palestinian Technocratic Administration headed by the former Palestinian Deputy Minister of Planning and Gaza-born Ali Shaath and overseen by the former Bulgarian UN Middle East peace coordinator Nickolay Mladenov, and the whole structure to be protected by an International Stabilization Force, was exposed by the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee when he openly stated that Israel has a “right to much of the Middle East”. Instead of denouncing this claim categorically US sources only said that Huckabee was quoted “out of context’.

The so-called ceasefire originally announced after a meeting between Trump and Netanyahu at the white House, itself shows that the ceasefire was not meant to stop Israel from continuing with the genocide in and destruction of Gaza but to force Hamas to relinquish its weapons and release all Israeli captives, dead and alive. Of course, as result of that ceasefire Israel did not kill Gazans in hundreds as before but did so in single and double digits, and the number killed so far stands at 492 with another 1,356 injured. But Israel’s restrictions and blockade of food and medical aid to Gaza remains intact. A total of 37 aid agencies remain banned to enter Gaza. While admitting that the war continues Trump thinks that it is “at a very low level”.  In his recent State of the Union address Trump was consoling the Israeli parents for their loss of kith and kin in the war but expressed not a word of sympathy for the tens of thousands of Gazans intentionally killed by Israel’s IDF. What is more, neither in his State of the Union address nor in his plan to rebuild Gaza is there any mention of that popularly touted two-state solution. For that matter there is no mention at all about Palestine itself in Trump’s Board of Peace Charter.

Just like the partial ceasefire the two-state solution was also a camouflage devised to appease the Arab and Muslim worlds. When the two-state solution was first proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937 it angered many prominent Jews at that time. But Ben Gurion who was to become the first Prime minister of Israel and Minister of Defence argued in favour of that division, and in a letter he wrote to his son Amos on 5^th October 1937 he argued that it was only the beginning and not the end and that the “Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen” (Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleaning of Palstine, 2006). That moment came in 1948 and the ethnic cleansing or Nakba began. The genocide and invasion of Gaza in 2023 was the continuation of what began in 1948.

As a result, not only that Israel is now controlling nearly 58% of Gaza’s land area after the ceasefire but has gone further by de facto annexation of parts of the Wet Bank through land registration which has turned into de jure with provision of consular services to the settlers. All these developments in the West Bank are illegal under the 1967 accord. But does Israel care about international laws so long as it has the support of US? For that matter does US have any respect for international laws? Without the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza there is no liberation for Palestinians. This is why Trump’s Board of Peace, Palestinian Technocratic Administration and the rest of his plan to rebuild Gaza is no more than a camouflage before handing over the reconstructed Gaza and entire Palestine to Eretz Israel.

To Global North as a whole, Israeli expansionism in the Middle East is part of a civilizing mission. This point was the underlying message from Marco Rubio’s address at the Munich Security Conference held on 14 February, where he tried to convince European powers to rally behind the US Trump Administration. “We are part of one civilization” he said. “We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir”. In this light, Trump’s hidden agenda through his Board of Peace to support Israeli expansionism become a civilizational duty of Global North. Having watched with alarm the rapid rise of China in the East as the largest or second largest economy in the world (depending on how one measures it) with unchallengeable military might and planning to spread its influence wider and deeper into other parts of Asia and Africa, US is determined not to allow any power in the Middle East to challenge the might of Israel, the Bastion of Western  civilization. This in essence defines US policy towards that region nd Israel’s expansionism. Greater Israel extends from the Nile to the Euphrates and territorially as far as Iraq. Thus, the current war against Iran is not the end but only another obstacle to overcome to achieve that goal.

Iran is not a security threat to US as Trump claims but certainly poses a challenge to Israel. Iran’s uranium enrichment and nuclear research programs are to achieve balance of power to check Israel’s expansionism. Hence Trump’s decision to annihilate Iran’s nuclear arsenal. When Muammar Ghaddafi of Libya was attempting to strengthen his country’s defence system with the so-called weapons of mass destruction US forced him to destroy those weapons under threat of military attack, and when Saddam Hussain chose the same path, his country was invaded by US and at the end he was hanged after a show trial. Now it is Iran facing the music. With US and the West by its side Eretz Israel is on the march. Once Iran is subdued and Palestine is annexed Israel’s next target would be Lebanon and Syria.

Soon after the 1948 war while the Arab regimes were licking their wounds after the defeat at the hands of Israeli forces their leaders should have realised that they were facing an existentialist threat from their new neighbour Israel and should have taken steps collectively to strengthen their own military arsenal to confront any repetition.But their historic disunity and selfishness prevented taking such steps and instead made them depend solely on the protection promised by their puppet masters, Britain, France and America. At least after 1970s with money flooding from oil, they should have built their own research centres in science and technology instead of constructing palaces, grand mosques, hotels and sport venues. But they didn’t. They remained as vassal states to the Western powers. Meanwhile, Israel was emerging as a nuclear power and exporter of deadly weapons thanks to the financial assistance and expertise provided by the same powers. The Arab regimes didn’t even have the guts to ask their masters of the logic and rationale of allowing Israel to develop a nuclear arsenal while denying the same to one of them. In a shocking revelation it appears that Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia secretly canvassed Trump to attack Iran. So much for the much-touted Islamic Brotherhood! Just as Jordan was playing a double game in the 1948 war UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are doing the same.  Egypt’s silence is shocking.

The US-Israel-Iran war may come to an end sooner or later. But it would leave Iran’s military strength substantially weakened if not annihilated and that of Israel strengthened, unless something miraculous happens to reverse this outcome. Trump already initiated during his first term the Abraham Accord partly to exploit jointly with Israel and neighbouring Arab regimes the oil and gas resources of Palestine and partly to promote friendly relations between the Arabs and Israel. With the current war ending in favour of Israel the Arab regimes would have no alternative but to deepen that relationship and virtually remain as vassal states of Geater Israel.