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A Gaza Plan that Sidelines the Palestinian State

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – November 25, 2025

The UN may have blessed Washington’s new Gaza plan, but it reads less like a peace blueprint and more like a manual for managing occupation. Behind the diplomatic fanfare lies a resolution so riddled with contradictions that it could bury — not revive — the prospect of Palestinian statehood.

The “Peace” Plan

The US-backed “peace” plan may bring a halt to active fighting, but it does not — and cannot — deliver peace for Palestinians. At best, it promises a managed quiet under continued Israeli domination. The Trump administration has framed the initiative as a “pathway” to a political resolution, yet the plan carefully avoids the one political reality that matters: Israel’s entrenched refusal to permit Palestinian statehood in any meaningful sense. Within Israel, the backlash to any hint of Palestinian sovereignty has been immediate and ferocious. Last week, far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich publicly demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repudiate all references to statehood, with Ben-Gvir threatening to collapse the governing coalition if Netanyahu failed to comply. Netanyahu has since reassured them — and Washington — that no Palestinian state will be created under his watch. That political reality is already shaping Israel’s conduct on the ground: despite the nominal ceasefire embedded in the plan, Israel continues to bomb Gaza, implying that “security operations” are exempt. Yet the UN Security Council resolution endorsing the US plan offers no enforcement mechanism, no timetable, and no conditions to bind Israel to any political endgame. In practice, it hands Israel full discretion to shape the conflict’s trajectory and its eventual outcome in real time.

The plan’s proposed International Stabilisation Force (ISF) is presented as the key instrument for “restoring order” in Gaza, but the details reveal a deeply asymmetric security architecture. The force will operate under Israel’s operational umbrella — not under an independent UN peacekeeping mandate, and certainly not as a neutral guarantor of civilian protection. Israel has already narrowed the mission to a single objective: disarming Hamas, a demand Hamas has categorically rejected. For states such as Pakistan, which have signalled support for the ISF, the mission is framed in broader terms — the demilitarization of Gaza as a whole. Yet demilitarization, under this plan, is a one-way street. Israel retains full military freedom: ground deployments, aerial strikes, and intelligence operations can continue without restriction. Palestinians, by contrast, are expected to surrender not only armed resistance but any organised capacity to resist Israel’s occupation, settlement expansion, or annexation — even peacefully. This is not a roadmap to stability; it is a security regime designed to institutionalise Palestinian political paralysis. By stripping Palestinians of all coercive or collective leverage while preserving Israel’s overwhelming military advantage, the plan guarantees an imbalance so severe that no political process can emerge from it. Supporters of the ISF may hope the force will facilitate reconstruction or governance, but the structure of the mandate ensures the opposite: it entrenches Israeli control while outsourcing its enforcement to international actors. Far from opening the door to statehood, the plan cements the very conditions that have made such a state impossible. Under these terms, the prospects that the plan will deliver anything of value to Palestinians — let alone genuine sovereignty — are virtually nil.

The Plan and the Arab world

The plan’s swift acceptance across much of the Arab world is not a reflection of regional confidence in its substance. Rather, it reflects geopolitical fatigue and shifting priorities. After a year of devastating images from Gaza, Arab governments face intense domestic pressure to do something, yet lack either the leverage or the appetite to meaningfully confront the US or Israel. Endorsing the plan allows them to claim diplomatic engagement without assuming responsibility for achieving what the plan itself refuses to deliver. For many Arab capitals, particularly those already normalizing ties with Israel or dependent on US security guarantees, the plan functions less as a political blueprint than as a diplomatic escape hatch.

Nowhere is this contradiction clearer than in Saudi Arabia’s position. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) travelled to the United States this month for high-level meetings, including with President Trump. Publicly, MBS restated Riyadh’s long-held line: Saudi Arabia is willing to join the Abraham Accords, but only if there is a clear and irreversible roadmap to a Palestinian state. Yet Riyadh has conspicuously refrained from criticizing a plan that contains no such roadmap. This silence is not accidental; it is strategic. Saudi Arabia’s overriding objective is to secure a sweeping defence pact with Washington, one that would formally guarantee US protection and enable the kingdom to acquire advanced weapons systems. During his visit, a sweeping defense package was signed, which elevated Saudi Arabia to the status of a “major non-NATO ally,” a move that opens the gates to easier arms transfers and logistical cooperation. On the same trip, Trump confirmed a sale of F-35 jets to Riyadh, marking the first time such fifth-generation fighters would be sold to an Arab country.

That deal, however, is politically impossible for Washington unless Saudi Arabia’s relations with Israel are moving toward normalisation. The Trump administration, unlike the Biden administration before it, sees Saudi–Israeli normalisation as the centrepiece of its regional architecture. Trump called both Israel and Saudi Arabia great allies. MBS understands this and is carefully calibrating his moves, signalling rhetorical support for Palestinian statehood to maintain credibility within the Arab and Muslim worlds while avoiding any criticism that could jeopardize US willingness to finalize the defence agreement. Riyadh’s acceptance of a plan that objectively undermines Palestinian aspirations is therefore not a policy contradiction; it is a diplomatic performance. The kingdom is balancing between two audiences — one domestic, sentimental, and politically sensitive; the other strategic, transactional, and sitting in Washington.

For the Palestinian cause, however, this choreography is devastating. It signals that the Arab world’s most powerful state is willing to sidestep Palestine’s central demand — an enforceable path to sovereignty — in exchange for advanced fighter jets and more. In this sense, the plan is not only shaped by US and Israeli priorities; it is enabled by Arab governments that have recalibrated their regional ambitions away from Palestinian self-determination and toward their own national security bargains.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs

November 25, 2025 - Posted by aletho | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Hamas, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, United States, Zionism