Whose interests do the plans for Gaza serve?

While US President Donald Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza and create the “Riviera of the Middle East” has been largely opposed by the rest of the world, the proposal put forth by Egypt leaves much unanswered. What stands out from the details revealed so far is the insistence to eliminate Hamas from the political scene.

“There will be no major international funding for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Gaza if Hamas remains the dominant and armed political element on the ground controlling local governance,” Reuters has reported.

The plan envisages the creation of a Governance Assisted Mission to replace Hamas in Gaza. To fill in the void of local security, the plan puts forth an International Stabilisation Force with Arab states’ participation, which would be regulated by an international board that includes Arab and Muslim countries, the US, the UK and the EU and its member states. The Palestinian Authority also seems to have been side-lined in the Egyptian plan for Gaza.

Hamas will not accept foreign interference in Gaza.

“Hamas rejects any attempts to impose projects or any form of non-Palestinian administration, or the presence of any foreign forces on the land of the Gaza Strip,” insisted senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri.

The PA, which made its presence felt throughout the genocide by grovelling to world leaders to take over Gaza, has also rejected the non-involvement of Palestinians. An unnamed official told Reuters that an agreement was reached with Egypt on a committee of Palestinian experts that would advise the PA “and doesn’t answer to non-Palestinian bodies.”

Albeit for different reasons, Hamas and the PA have agreed on non-interference by international bodies. The PA, however, relies heavily on remaining in the international community’s good books for funding and extending its own hierarchy through the violence of its security services, which collaborate with the Israeli occupation forces.

The PA collaborated with Israel against the Palestinian people in the recent mass expulsion of Palestinians from Jenin refugee camp.

And there are many other examples of such collaboration.

Hamas, on the other hand, has attempted several times to engage diplomatically with the West, making certain compromises along the way but not stooping as low as the PA. What the West refuses to concede is that as long as colonialism exists in Palestine, the need for legitimate resistance movements, be they Hamas or any other faction, will not disappear.

From the details that have emerged so far, the main significance of Egypt’s plan is that it draws closer to the international community in eliminating Palestinian political input over Palestinian lives. What Hamas has termed “non-Palestinian administration” with reference to foreign impositions and presence, is what created the conditions for the current genocide in Gaza. Is it not reasonable after decades of Palestinians being ethnically cleansed, forcibly displaced, mass murdered, harassed, tortured, detained and abused, that a resistance movement calls for non-interference?

Furthermore, opposing Trump’s plan for Gaza by creating another that is more favourable to the rest of the international community, does not score points for Palestinians. The proposed non-involvement of Palestinians only extends Israel’s colonial rule and entrenches international complicity in keeping Israel’s genocidal options open. Whose interests do these plans for Gaza really serve?

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250304-whose-interests-do-the-plans-for-gaza-serve/