The great betrayal: Why Arab and Muslim rulers backed Trump's Gaza plan

Arab and Muslim leaders can claim to have been duped into giving their backing to the plan unveiled by US President Donald Trump on Monday.

The plan announced in Washington was substantially different to the one they agreed to in New York. But that is the charitable way of reading what they have done. 

Betrayal is another word that comes to mind.

A betrayal performed as a genocide is in full motion and which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been given a green light by Trump to continue.

The Qataris are furious they were written out of a mediation role and that Trump refused to delay the announcement. The Egyptians, too, are furious that the role of the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been downgraded and that Israeli forces will always remain in Rafah and along the border with Sinai.

But the names of each country are still on the statement welcoming the plan and neither have said or done anything to withdraw from it.

Either way, each of the eight regional nations that backed this agreement is serving the people of Gaza a bitter and bleak reward for two years of enduring the worst military onslaught in the history of this conflict.

For them, there is to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Only a different form of occupation and a different form of siege.

Just at that point in history when world opinion has definitively turned against Israel and just as more countries than ever before have recognised the Palestinian state, Arab and Muslim leaders have signed up to a plan that ensures that a viable state can never emerge from the rubble of Israel’s vengeance.

The regional states can claim they stopped the mass ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the Israeli occupation, and brought the UN agencies back into Gaza. But the keys to each remain in Netanyahu’s hands. 

No agency

There is no guarantee they have stopped ethnic cleansing and genocide, because under this agreement, Israeli forces are not leaving the strip, and Netanyahu is the one who decides how quickly and how much of Gaza his forces hand over to the proposed International Stabilisation Force (ISF).

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He is also free to decide how much aid and reconstruction materials to send in. There is no timetable for such a withdrawal.

But there is every guarantee that this postwar plan will stifle at birth Gaza reemerging under a Palestinian leadership of any kind. 

Under this plan, there is no role for any Palestinian leadership in the rebuilding of Gaza. Gaza is definitively split from the Occupied West Bank by this agreement and all thoughts of joining the two have been jettisoned. 

The PA fares no better than Hamas or the other factions. Already disarmed, the PA has to go further. 

According to Netanyahu’s remarks at the joint press conference, the PA has to drop its cases against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), it has to stop paying the families of slain fighters, change the school curriculum and tame the media. And only then Israel will see. 

None of the eight leaders, prime ministers or foreign ministers of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan consulted the Palestinians before agreeing to this plan. 

Just as the Palestinians have no agency in the authority that is about to be imposed on them in Gaza, they have had no say in devising a postwar plan.

The nations are now tasked with forcing Hamas to accept terms of surrender that Israeli tanks, drones, and robots were unable to achieve on the  battlefield. They can do this with nothing less than an overwhelming sense of shame.

Arab counter plan

Where was the Arab counter plan? It does not exist. Where was the determination to counter Israel’s expanding borders? That, too, is pure make believe.

Differences between the draft and the final statement cover the time limit for handing over the hostages, the distribution of aid, the number of Palestinian prisoners that would be released, the international stabilisation force, and the lines to which Israeli forces would withdraw. 

Where was the Arab counter plan? It does not exist. Where was the determination to counter Israel’s expanding borders? That, too, is pure make believe

On each of these issues, Israel’s control has been hardened, and its commitments lessened, between the draft agreed at the UN and the announcement in the White House.

But the key ones are the following: a commitment on Israel to allow 600 trucks of aid in a day has been replaced by the words "full support" without numbers or specifying what equipment Israel will allow in; a commitment to withdraw from all of Gaza has morphed magically into a withdrawal "conditional on disarmament and the maintenance of a security perimeter".

The statement issued jointly by the leaders and foreign minister of the countries that Trump met - Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, Egypt and Indonesia - referred to the first draft Trump and Witkoff had agreed to in New York.

Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner took that plan to Netanyahu. Together and over many hours in hotel rooms they changed the text radically. The Times of Israel referred to these changes as "edits".

Qatari officials were so furious at these "edits" they tried to get Trump to delay his announcement, but they were brushed aside. However, they could not have been remotely surprised by what Trump and Witkoff did.

These two men are serial and shameless breakers of their word. They have form in abandoning positions to which they publicly signed up.

Critical changes

The worst example was the January ceasefire deal with Hamas which these regional actors blithely allowed Netanyahu to tear up, but there are many others. Another example, the talks with the Iranian delegation that Witkoff was about to have in Oman when Israeli warplanes and US B2 bombers struck Iran's nuclear facilities. 

This was a deceit Trump publicly revelled in. 

The result? Egypt has apparently signed up to a permanent Israeli presence in Rafah and along the Philadelphi Corridor which separates Gaza from Sinai. Israel has been adamant about retaining control of both. 

Qatar is back in the role of mediator, although its future worth has been put in grave doubt by Israel's obvious attempts to write it out of this agreement.

Netanyahu's apology was limited as he did not apologise for attacking the Hamas delegation Doha was hosting. On the other hand, Netanyahu has got an agreement which hands him complete control over the withdrawal of his troops from Gaza long after the hostages have been released.

The key issues which are critical to Hamas - a complete Israeli withdrawal and cessation of war before the hostages are released and the red line of keeping their weapons - have also suffered critical changes between the first and final drafts.

The first draft stated that "Israeli forces will withdraw to the battle lines as of when the [US special envoy Steve] Witkoff proposal was presented to prepare for hostage release." But it did not specify which Witkoff proposal, as there have been a number of them.

The final statement simply states "Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed-upon line."

This, too, appears to refer to a map published which gives Israeli forces control of the majority of Gaza even after the first pull back of troops.

As The Times of Israel notes, point 16 of the original agreement read Israeli forces "will progressively hand over the Gaza territory that [it] occup[ies]."

To this has now been added the following caveats: "IDF will withdraw based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization that will be agreed upon between the IDF, ISF, the guarantors, and the US”.

No wonder Netanyahu had a big smile on his face. And no wonder he told Israeli television viewers: "Who would have believed this? After all people constantly say, you must accept Hamas’ terms, get everyone out. The IDF should withdraw, Hamas can recover and it can also rehabilitate the strip. No way. That’s not happening."

Netanyahu was then asked if he agreed to a Palestinian state. He replied: "Absolutely not. It's not written into the agreement, but there is one thing we did say. That we would strongly oppose a Palestinian state. President Trump also said it. He said he understands it."

Here he is right. 

The last of the 20 points merely says "The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous co-existence."

Article 19 only gives the vaguest nod to statehood. It recognises self determination and statehood as the  "aspiration" of the Palestinian people - note not the right - but even that aspiration is contingent on "redevelopment advances in Gaza and PA reform faithfully carried out".

Who is the arbiter of this process? Israel of course.

This did not need the busy hands of Witkoff and Kushner to rewrite. The betrayal of the Palestinian national cause by those Arab and Muslim leaders who claimed to have promoted it for so long had already been completed.

For there is not one word in this plan about self determination and the inalienable right of Palestinians to their own state. Trump is deaf to anything but Israeli statehood between the river and the sea. He sees Palestinians as migrant workers.

The betrayal complete

Trump devoted some time in his press conference to describe how he defied regional opinion on the decisions he made in his first term of office to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, or the annexation of the occupied Golan Heights. 

"And you know what? It turned out to be amazing. Everybody thought it was going to lead to the end of the world, right? The end of the world, Ron. That’s what they said. It didn’t lead to anything.”

After two years of genocide we have ended up with a proposed settlement which is substantially worse than the situation that existed on October 6

That is how he really views Israel’s Arab neighbours. With contempt. His description of the history of Gaza is so distorted, it's hard to know where to begin.

According to Trump, in 2005, Ariel Sharon, then prime minister of Israel, withdrew from the prime sea front property of Gaza in search of peace. 

“And they said, 'All we want to do now is have peace.' Instead of building a better life for the Palestinians, Hamas diverted resources to build over 400 miles of tunnels and terror infrastructure, rocket production facilities and hid their military command post and launch sites in hospitals, schools, and mosques. So if you went after them, you wouldn’t even realize you ended up knocking out a hospital or a school or a mosque.”

This is what has lodged in Trump’s head about a period when Hamas won the only election ever to take place under Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s rule; when Fatah with Israel’s help tried and failed to mount a pre-emptive coup, and when a brutal 17-year siege started.

Trump justifies the destruction of every hospital, school and mosque in Gaza over the last two years which are war crimes and amount to genocide.

But it's even worse than that.

Blair's failure

Tony Blair, the man who in his oration at Sharon’s funeral described the former general whose tanks lit the path for gunmen massacring Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon as a "man of peace", is back to haunt Gaza. 

No-one outside Ramallah has played a bigger role than Blair in keeping Hamas out of a national unity government, which for decades was the only path to deconfliction. 

In 2006, the year before he became Middle East envoy, Blair sided with then US President George Bush, rejecting the results of a freely won election, boycotting Hamas and laying the foundation of international support for a permanent siege. The Quartet’s conditions ensured Hamas’ exclusion.

Now he is back as a member of the "Board of Peace". 

In 2010, after his term as envoy had expired, the Israeli revisionist historian Avi Shlaim wrote of the former UK premier: "Blair's failure to stand up for Palestinian independence is precisely what endears him to the Israeli establishment."  

In February of last year, while the Palestinians in Gaza were still mourning their dead, Blair received the Dan David prize from Tel Aviv University as the "laureate for the present time dimension in the field of leadership".

"The citation praised him for his "exceptional intelligence and foresight, and demonstrated moral courage and leadership". The prize is worth $1m. I may be cynical, but I cannot help viewing this prize as absurd, given Blair's silent complicity in Israel's continuing crimes against the Palestinian people.

These words read as true about Blair today.

Palestinians alone

The options for Hamas are bleak. 

The deal before them is substantially worse than the one Hezbollah accepted, and even that is being violated on a daily basis by Israel.

If Hamas surrenders the hostages, it has no guarantees the war will end and no more levers to ensure the release of Palestinian prisoners. Reject it and the war continues with Trump’s full backing. 

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From Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Egypt, there are no surprises in the way they have folded. 

But Turkey and Qatar are in this too. Together they have betrayed the Palestinians in putting their name to a deal as bad and as one-sided as this. 

Time and again they were told to be wary about trusting US assurances and their mercantile relationship with Trump, and time and again they have been used as pawns. 

They were the ones who warned about the dangers of going back to October 6, the day before the Hamas attack, when Saudi Arabia was about to normalise with Israel.

After two years of genocide, we have ended up with a proposed settlement which is substantially worse than the situation that existed on 6 October 2023.

Israel has a green light to stay in Gaza, either directly or through proxies like Blair.

Even if it pulls its troops fully back, it will continue to seal the border and control the amount of aid and quality of construction materials that go through.  

Israel has a green light to stay in Gaza, either directly or through proxies like Blair.

It has a green light to invade al-Aqsa. It has a green light to build settlements in the West Bank.

This is the same formula tried with the Oslo Accords but on steroids.

Palestinians can only be allowed to live next to Israel in peace if they show themselves to be subservient to its wishes, cower in the corners of land settlers have not grabbed, and abandon all plans for an independent state of their own.  

That is what "deradicalisation" means. Putting their national flag away, while the settlers unfurl their Star of David all over their former homes and land.

Never have the Palestinians, wherever they live, been more alone. 

The Arab and Muslim leaders have responded to the bravery and steadfastness that Gaza's Palestinians have shown night and day on their television screens with fear, cowardice and self-interest.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.