Chris Hedges ScheerPost
There is no ceasefire in Gaza. There is no functioning “Board of Peace.” There is no roadmap to ending the genocide or mechanism to creation of a Palestinian state. Israel has refused to implement or abide by any of the conditions of Trump’s “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” since its inception. It won’t begin to honor them now.
There is only genocide. It changes shape and intensity. But it does not change its essence.
Trump’s plan is a mirage, a conjuring trick, a fleeting vanity project. In October 2025, Trump gathered world leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to announce his peace deal, which he said “took 3,000 years” to achieve, before disappearing offstage. The peace plan, like the smoke-and-mirrors act that defines the Trump era, has been relegated to a dark memory hole, as our P.T. Barnum commander in chief trots out another bloody spectacle: war on Iran.
Trump announced a “historic” agreement on July 30 that entailed “the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza.” He called the 15-point plan, credited to the Board of Peace, which has no Palestinian representatives and installed Trump as its chair for life, “a monumental step toward lasting peace and security.”
But Hamas swiftly qualified the demand by saying that handing over its heavy weapons was only contingent on Israel ending “all forms of” its “aggression” and withdrawing its occupying forces from Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu blithely dismissed Trump’s proposal. Israel, he said, will not withdraw its forces until Hamas is “genuinely” disarmed.
Read this to mean never.
The peace plan — which was endorsed by the United Nations in a stunning disregard for Palestinian sovereignty and international law — was never more than a publicity stunt. It exists to provide Israel with the diplomatic cover to bring the genocide to its intended conclusion — the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza — a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.
Since the “ceasefire” went into effect on Oct. 10, 2025, two months before the Trump “peace plan” was formalised, Israel has killed 1,258 Palestinians in Gaza.
Ceasefires with these body counts are not ceasefires.
Once Gaza is emptied, the West Bank will be next.
Of the myriads of peace plans over the decades, this one is the least serious.
Aside from a demand that Hamas release the hostages within 72-hours after the ceasefire began — which took place — it lacks specifics and imposed timetables. It is filled with caveats that allow Israel to abrogate the agreement.
That is the point.
“It is not designed to be a viable path to peace, which most Israeli leaders understand,” I wrote when the plan was announced. “Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Israel Hayom, established by the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to serve as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and champion messianic Zionism, instructed its readers not to be concerned about the Trump plan because it is only ‘rhetoric’”
Israel, I noted, in one example from the proposal, will “not return to areas that have been withdrawn from, as long as Hamas fully implements the agreement.”
“Who decides if Hamas has “fully implemented” the agreement?” I asked. “Israel. Does anyone believe in Israel’s good faith? Can Israel be trusted as an objective arbitrator of the agreement? If Hamas — demonized as a terrorist group — objects, will anyone listen?”
“How is it possible that a peace proposal ignores the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 Advisory Opinion, which reiterated that Israel’s occupation is illegal and must end?” I continued. “How can it fail to mention the Palestinian’s right to self-determination?”
“Who gave the U.S. the authority to send to Gaza an “International Stabilization Force,” a polite term for foreign occupation?” I wrote. “Why is Israel, which has destroyed Gaza, not required to pay reparations?”
Ninety-two percent of Gaza’s residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed and around 81 percent of all structures are damaged, according to UN estimates. The Strip has been reduced to 61 million tons of rubble, including nine million tons of hazardous waste that includes asbestos, industrial waste, and heavy metals, in addition to unexploded ordinance and an estimated 10,000 decaying corpses. Israel has demolished some 1,500 buildings since the ceasefire went into effect.
How can anyone believe that Israel, intent on leveling Gaza, will reverse itself to allow Palestinians to rebuild what it spent so much time, money and blood to destroy?
Retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council, echoed this sentiment on Sunday on Israel’s 103FM radio station.
“Israel has no interest in Gaza being rebuilt, it is better for us that it be destroyed for generations to come,” Eiland said.
“The greater the despair in Gaza and the greater the destruction, and the greater the monument to what they did on October 7, years to come, that is good,” he added.
Israel will never permit reconstruction in Gaza. It will never restore health facilities or water treatment plants. It will never turn over authority to an International Stabilization Force (ISF), one which only exists on paper. It will never permit the creation of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza or agree to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.
Trump promises a Gaza Riviera that will function as a “special economic zone” — a territory operating outside of state law governed entirely by private investors, such as the Peter Thiel-backed charter city in Honduras. But Trump’s Gaza Riviera is nothing more than a pathetic temporary camp along the ceasefire line near Rafah. It consists of “portable cabins” under Palestinian administration and a tiny international security force, according to The Guardian.
It is touted, in desperation, as a pilot scheme.
Despite some $17 billion in pledges to the Board of Peace, as of late May 2026 not a single dollar had reached its official World Bank-administered Gaza reconstruction fund. Only about $23 million had been received through alternative channels for operating costs, with a further $100 million pledged by the United Arab Emirates that was earmarked for a future Palestinian police force, though it remains “frozen,” according to the Financial Times.
This amounts to about $0.72 for every $100 pledged.
Given the heavy economic costs incurred by Gulf and regional donor countries because of the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran — including Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the UAE — it is very unlikely the pledged funds will be paid.
The European Union, the U.N. and the World Bank, in an assessment published in April, estimated that $71.4 billion is needed for recovery in Gaza.
The Board of Peace, for which Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov is the principal official, is desperate for funds. The U.S. attempted to pilfer $11 billion in Palestinian tax revenues and frozen bank funds withheld by Israel, which was rejected by the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Israeli withholding of tax revenues has deepened the financial crisis in the West Bank, with the PA slashing salaries in half of thousands of Palestinian civil servants.
The ISF, a multinational peacekeeping force that is supposed to be composed of troops from Albania, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Uganda and Indonesia — the latter of which has since suspended its commitment, is also nonexistent.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Settlements and National Missions Minister Orit Strook have demanded that Netanyahu reconvene the Security Cabinet so that its July 26 vote authorizing the entry of ISF troops can be reversed.
The entire Trump project is an Alice-in-Wonderland fantasy.
Anyone in Gaza who strays close to the Yellow Line — which is constantly shifting and poorly marked — is shot. Police are shot. Hamas leaders, along with their families — including Azzam Khalil al-Hayya, the son of Khalil al-Hayya who was the head of Hamas’ political bureau and the faction’s lead negotiator — are assassinated. Palestinians lining up at food kitchens and those handing out aid to them are obliterated by Israeli bombs. Israel restricts food and humanitarian aid to half of the trucks stipulated in the ceasefire agreement.
Palestinians, 90 percent of whom have been displaced, continue to live in tent cities amid rubble and open pools of raw sewage. They lack toilets or electricity. There is an 80 percent unemployment rate. Tens of thousands of children suffer acute malnutrition in Gaza. A child, on average, is killed every day.
Tacitus understood. They made a desert and call it peace.
Trump’s plan was not designed to end the conflict. It was not designed to provide an equitable settlement for the Palestinians. It was not designed to halt the ongoing mass slaughter. It was designed to allow Israel to complete its genocide and drive surviving Palestinians from their homeland — the culmination of the Zionist dream.
Trump, however obtuse, has at least figured this out.
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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, best-selling author & activist
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