By Anas Iqtait
Copyright brisbanetimes
The reference to aid flows is equally telling. By acknowledging that aid “will proceed without interference”, the plan implicitly concedes what has long been obvious: that Israel has systematically obstructed humanitarian access. Yet, the mechanism it outlines invites a continuation of the same problem, leaving space for the much-criticised Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to dominate the delivery system, while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the region’s foremost and most capable body for delivering aid and managing humanitarian affairs, is left out. In its current format, the plan ensures aid remains an extension of politics.
Perhaps the most farcical element is the creation of a so-called Board of Peace featuring figures such as former UK prime minister Tony Blair. Blair previously led the Quartet – the US, EU, UN and Russia’s Middle East peace envoy mechanism – from 2007 to 2015, an experiment that already demonstrated the bankruptcy of such models. During his tenure, Israel entrenched its system of settlements, thwarted Palestinian reconciliation attempts, and cemented its control over the West Bank. To imagine Blair overseeing Palestinian “modern governance” is not diplomacy, but satire. It suggests a Palestinian future managed indefinitely by the very international actors complicit in entrenching occupation.
The call for reforming the Palestinian Authority is another recycled talking point. But what exactly are the “international standards” the authority must meet? Washington and its allies rejected the authority’s UN statehood bid in 2011 despite the UN, World Bank, and IMF confirming it had achieved benchmarks for sound governance that should have readied it for statehood.
Talk of a “New Gaza” that commits to peaceful coexistence with its neighbours obscures the very nature of Gaza itself. Gaza is not a self-contained polity, nor were its people ever meant to exist in isolation. It is, fundamentally, a refugee camp, the concentrated result of expulsions in 1948. International law recognises the right of return. Yet the plan treats Gaza’s residents as if they were a distinct nation, severed from the Palestinian whole.
