The announcement of the signing of the first phase of the US peace plan for Gaza, which is based on full guarantees for Israel and the capitulation of Hamas, can be credited to President Donald Trump as his eighth diplomatic victory in pursuit of the coveted Nobel Peace Prize. If recently, in his speech before the UN General Assembly, he boasted of having ended seven wars and armed conflicts, some of them in a very precarious manner, the icing on the cake of his alleged peacemaking record is, despite all the traps contained in the plan – the clearest being the burial of the two-state solution supported by the international community, although point 19 of his plan alludes to self-determination – the achievement of an agreement that puts an end, theoretically, to two years of massacres.
No one would have suspected this ending judging by the contradictions about Gaza that the Republican has incurred since taking office in January. The first is his announced project to, once the Strip has been razed, to build a Middle East Riviera, a plan to which the real estate interests of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, shadow designer of regional agreements in his first term (Abraham Accords) and also in this one, or those of his special envoy to the region, the also real estate developer Steve Witkoff, are not unrelated. Trump presented that dystopian project in February as a mere real estate transaction, and insisted for weeks that it was the solution.
Starting with the publication in February of an AI-generated video that showed a future of luxury condominiums in Gaza—an option that also satisfies the most ultra-ministers of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Government—the plan to evict the enclave was modulated until at the end of August, when the first details of the plan finalized this week were known, based on installing a US-dependent Administration that would temporarily take over the government. Named after former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as viceroy That protectorate came to light at the end of August, when he was called to a meeting by the president, which his son-in-law attended. To install an interim government, the condition was to evict the Palestinians, something that two countries in the region, Egypt and Jordan, flatly rejected for fear of being overwhelmed by the exodus, and that the final version of Trump’s so-called peace plan rules out, in theory.
Trump’s path to supposed peace in Gaza has not been free of pitfalls. Surprisingly, in a twist of script, he ordered the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in mid-June, followed by an Israeli attack. It seemed to everyone to be a risky action, which put in check the dialogue that Egypt and Qatar had been maintaining for months, as mediators, with Israel and Hamas, under the protective umbrella of Washington. It was then that Trump himself seemed to put the conflict on hold, waiting to find out if the negotiations would run aground definitively or could be saved.
Economic interests have mobilized the president even during, and on the sidelines, of Israel’s war in Gaza. In May, he traveled to the Gulf monarchies to seal important economic agreements, in an official visit that deepened the rapprochement with Saudi Arabia, which the White House aspired to integrate into the Abraham Accords through a historic agreement to normalize relations with Israel.
Shortly after assuming the presidency, in early March, Washington confirmed that it was holding talks with Hamas, which it has repeatedly threatened to wipe off the face of the earth – the last one just two days ago – for the release of the hostages and the end of the war in Gaza. At that time, he still insisted on taking control of the coastal enclave, showing himself willing to “buy it and own it.” The notorious interference of the Republican Administration in the two years of war went to the extreme of orchestrating with the Israeli Army the delivery of the little aid that the Gazans have received in recent months, provided by the obscure Humanitarian Foundation, a private entity, while the two allies made it impossible for UN agencies and NGOs to assist on the ground.
During the eight months of his presidency, Trump has at all times had his hand extended to Netanyahu and his ultra-conservative government, without the reluctance and anger that his predecessor, Joe Biden, sometimes showed towards the Israeli, or those that Trump himself has expressed about his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the war in Ukraine, in which the Republican has even made more lurches. than in Gaza. No other way than the symbiosis of interests, in addition to the pressures of the powerful lobby American Jew, explains Trump’s offensive against universities and against anyone, American or foreign, who publicly expressed sympathies with the Palestinians.
His strong alliance with Netanyahu has also implied, for example, the appointment of an ambassador to Israel who initially denies the existence of the West Bank and aligns himself with the most extreme positions of the settlers who have opened a second violent front in that occupied territory.
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