<p>With two years of war having passed into the bloodied history of modern times, celebrations were seen on both sides of the northern frontier as the ‘historic’ Gaza peace plan was foisted on Palestine by an American-led international order. The celebrations appear premature, considering how the previous agreements failed, including the one in January, which was violated by Israel after two months. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will try to subvert the agreement (finalised for the first phase only) to hold on to power, with the Israeli Supreme Court waiting in the wings to oust him from office. Donald Trump, while signing the first phase plan, stated that he couldn’t guarantee that Israel would not attack Hamas again if they tried to regroup. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has given orders to the IDF to hunt down Hamas militants if Hamas refuses to implement the agreement.</p><p>The first phase of the plan is done, and 20 living hostages were released from Hamas’s captivity while Israel delivered on its agreement to free nearly 2,000 Palestinian militants and civilians. A grand ceremony jointly hosted by Egypt and the United States on October 13 at the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh brought a galaxy of world leaders from the Western world as well as the region to applaud the statesmanship of the US President.</p><p>It is important to note that neither the UN, which is mandated to administer Gaza, nor the Palestinian Authority, which is supposedly governing the West Bank, was consulted on the peace plan. For instance, Navi Pillay, the former Chair of the UN Commission for Human Rights, the body which found Israel responsible for committing genocide (subsequently taken by South Africa to the International Court of Justice), claimed that Palestine was not a party to the plan.</p><p>The second phase of the plan, dealing with the disarmament of Hamas and future governance of Gaza, is in limbo as Hamas has not agreed to the subsequent phases of the plan. This suits the Far-Right Likud party headed by Netanyahu well, as it will probably attribute all ensuing problems to the intransigence of Hamas. It is not surprising to understand the position Hamas has taken in the face of obstacles and having lost men and arms, besides its image within the Arab bloc. With 67,000 plus innocent lives lost, women and children murdered, maimed, raped, and starved to death, and with hospitals, schools, and community centres bombed, food and medical supplies weaponised, and homes destroyed, what could have been their options?</p><p>As Franz Fanon, the celebrated author of the decolonisation primer The Wretched of the Earth, says, “Decolonisation is truly the creation of new men. But this creation owes nothing of its legitimacy to any supernatural power; the thing which has been colonised becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself”. Hamas has thought fit not to surrender the right of the Palestinian people to speak for themselves, for their self-determination and sovereignty. The legitimacy of Hamas derives from its mandate to govern Gaza since its victory in the 2006 elections, no matter whether or not the Western powers, who now clamour to recognise the State of Palestine, see it as a terrorist group.</p><p><strong>India’s position defies tradition</strong></p><p>While India had given its all-out support to the peace plan (Prime Minister Modi congratulated both Netanyahu and Trump several times), Gaza or Hamas has been conspicuously absent in Delhi’s political thinking. India, it may be noted, was one of the first non-Arab countries to recognise the PLO in 1974 and Palestine as a State in 1998, in line with its principled position on decolonisation.</p><p>Writing in the Harijan in November 1938, Gandhi had said, “My sympathy for Jews does not blind me to the requirements of justice. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs”. India had opposed the UN Resolution 181, which laid the ground for the UN Partition Plan of 1947. Contrast it with the present-day pattern of India’s voting in support of the “two-nation theory” on the floor of the UN, along with 153 member nations, when it has been an uncomfortable proposition for New Delhi, even after several resolutions calling out Israel’s genocidal actions and proposing an immediate ceasefire in Gaza were vetoed. While ‘Palestine’ may have become taboo in public discourse, this position amounts to denying history and the long tradition of India’s support for the Palestinian cause.</p><p>Trump’s peace plan, a cleverly manipulated instrument of surrender for Hamas, leaves little room for any kind of Palestinian autonomy now or in the future, nor any scope for its participation in post-conflict reconstruction. The plan has been critiqued for its vagueness and top-down imposition</p><p>by the global rules-based order clique in cahoots with global capitalism. Soon after the peace summit and withdrawal</p><p>of the IDF from the proximate periphery of Gaza, militants released from Israeli prisons publicly slaughtered so-called infidels.</p><p>With food aid having been halted, chaos is ruling the Gaza landscape again. Peace is extremely fragile – the deftly crafted scheme under the Trump imprimatur, so readily endorsed by Arab nations driven by their own plans, may have come to naught with Palestinian resistance showing no sign of dying out.</p><p>Peace imposed by force can never withstand the increasing challenge of just demands for a homeland. The global order needs to recognise this.</p><p>(The writer is a retired diplomat and political analyst; Syndicate: The Billion Press)</p><p>Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.</p>
<p>With two years of war having passed into the bloodied history of modern times, celebrations were seen on both sides of the northern frontier as the ‘historic’ Gaza peace plan was foisted on Palestine by an American-led international order. The celebrations appear premature, considering how the previous agreements failed, including the one in January, which was violated by Israel after two months. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will try to subvert the agreement (finalised for the first phase only) to hold on to power, with the Israeli Supreme Court waiting in the wings to oust him from office. Donald Trump, while signing the first phase plan, stated that he couldn’t guarantee that Israel would not attack Hamas again if they tried to regroup. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has given orders to the IDF to hunt down Hamas militants if Hamas refuses to implement the agreement.</p><p>The first phase of the plan is done, and 20 living hostages were released from Hamas’s captivity while Israel delivered on its agreement to free nearly 2,000 Palestinian militants and civilians. A grand ceremony jointly hosted by Egypt and the United States on October 13 at the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh brought a galaxy of world leaders from the Western world as well as the region to applaud the statesmanship of the US President.</p><p>It is important to note that neither the UN, which is mandated to administer Gaza, nor the Palestinian Authority, which is supposedly governing the West Bank, was consulted on the peace plan. For instance, Navi Pillay, the former Chair of the UN Commission for Human Rights, the body which found Israel responsible for committing genocide (subsequently taken by South Africa to the International Court of Justice), claimed that Palestine was not a party to the plan.</p><p>The second phase of the plan, dealing with the disarmament of Hamas and future governance of Gaza, is in limbo as Hamas has not agreed to the subsequent phases of the plan. This suits the Far-Right Likud party headed by Netanyahu well, as it will probably attribute all ensuing problems to the intransigence of Hamas. It is not surprising to understand the position Hamas has taken in the face of obstacles and having lost men and arms, besides its image within the Arab bloc. With 67,000 plus innocent lives lost, women and children murdered, maimed, raped, and starved to death, and with hospitals, schools, and community centres bombed, food and medical supplies weaponised, and homes destroyed, what could have been their options?</p><p>As Franz Fanon, the celebrated author of the decolonisation primer The Wretched of the Earth, says, “Decolonisation is truly the creation of new men. But this creation owes nothing of its legitimacy to any supernatural power; the thing which has been colonised becomes man during the same process by which it frees itself”. Hamas has thought fit not to surrender the right of the Palestinian people to speak for themselves, for their self-determination and sovereignty. The legitimacy of Hamas derives from its mandate to govern Gaza since its victory in the 2006 elections, no matter whether or not the Western powers, who now clamour to recognise the State of Palestine, see it as a terrorist group.</p><p><strong>India’s position defies tradition</strong></p><p>While India had given its all-out support to the peace plan (Prime Minister Modi congratulated both Netanyahu and Trump several times), Gaza or Hamas has been conspicuously absent in Delhi’s political thinking. India, it may be noted, was one of the first non-Arab countries to recognise the PLO in 1974 and Palestine as a State in 1998, in line with its principled position on decolonisation.</p><p>Writing in the Harijan in November 1938, Gandhi had said, “My sympathy for Jews does not blind me to the requirements of justice. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs”. India had opposed the UN Resolution 181, which laid the ground for the UN Partition Plan of 1947. Contrast it with the present-day pattern of India’s voting in support of the “two-nation theory” on the floor of the UN, along with 153 member nations, when it has been an uncomfortable proposition for New Delhi, even after several resolutions calling out Israel’s genocidal actions and proposing an immediate ceasefire in Gaza were vetoed. While ‘Palestine’ may have become taboo in public discourse, this position amounts to denying history and the long tradition of India’s support for the Palestinian cause.</p><p>Trump’s peace plan, a cleverly manipulated instrument of surrender for Hamas, leaves little room for any kind of Palestinian autonomy now or in the future, nor any scope for its participation in post-conflict reconstruction. The plan has been critiqued for its vagueness and top-down imposition</p><p>by the global rules-based order clique in cahoots with global capitalism. Soon after the peace summit and withdrawal</p><p>of the IDF from the proximate periphery of Gaza, militants released from Israeli prisons publicly slaughtered so-called infidels.</p><p>With food aid having been halted, chaos is ruling the Gaza landscape again. Peace is extremely fragile – the deftly crafted scheme under the Trump imprimatur, so readily endorsed by Arab nations driven by their own plans, may have come to naught with Palestinian resistance showing no sign of dying out.</p><p>Peace imposed by force can never withstand the increasing challenge of just demands for a homeland. The global order needs to recognise this.</p><p>(The writer is a retired diplomat and political analyst; Syndicate: The Billion Press)</p><p>Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.</p>
