Between Occupation, Apartheid, Postponed Displacement, and the Guardianship of the American "Peace Council"

Despite what is being promoted about the decline of the displacement project from the Gaza Strip, political and field facts indicate that displacement has not been dropped, but rather postponed and reformulated with softer and more complex mechanisms. Today, these mechanisms intersect with ongoing negotiations under fire, the implementation of division with colored lines, the second phase of Trump's plan, and the arrangements for the "day after" the administration of the Strip.
Israel has never abandoned its strategic goal of reducing the Palestinian presence in historical Palestine between the sea and the river, and achieving a Jewish majority within a colonial, replacement apartheid system. What has changed today is only the method. After the failure of direct forced displacement during the war of extermination, as a result of popular steadfastness and regional and international calculations, the project shifted to a policy of direct and indirect coercion and oppression through comprehensive destruction, systematic impoverishment, collapse of services, political deadlock, and the formation of "new independent committees" in addition to the "National Committee for the Administration of Gaza," which establishes forms of new chaos, and pushes segments of our Palestinian people to emigrate as a "survival option" or a "voluntary option," not by military force.
Trump's and Kushner's ideas about "New Gaza" appear today with a different facade. The second phase of the plan is not based on ending the occupation or recognizing Palestinian national rights, but on managing the conflict in a way that serves American-Israeli interests, by politically separating Gaza and linking reconstruction to security and political conditions, and opening "regulatory" paths for the movement of residents under humanitarian titles that conceal long-term demographic goals, to serve the interests of American capital and companies.
The leaked draft resolution of the "Peace Council" reveals that Trump will head the council, which grants itself full legislative, executive, and judicial powers over Gaza, including "emergency powers," with Palestinians excluded from membership and their role confined to administrative committees under the supervision of a foreign representative, Nikolay Mladenov. The council controls laws, legislation and their annulment, resources, crossings, and reconstruction, and transforms Palestinians into implementers of American-Israeli decisions, without real political representation or accountability mechanisms.
As for the proposed "humanitarian zones," "civil protection corridors," and an international military stabilization force led by the US, these are nothing more than population control tools, through which the disaster is managed instead of ended. Linking aid, freedom of movement, and political participation to compliance with the plan turns basic rights into tools of blackmail, and makes suffering a means of pressure to reshape the demographic and political reality of the Strip.
What is striking in this context is the blatant political paradox represented by the welcome of the "Hamas" movement to the so-called "Peace Council" and considering it a political victory, in contrast to the complete absence of the Palestinian National Authority from the council's membership and its paths. Hamas's welcome reflects a shortsighted reading of the nature of the council, which does not aim to end the occupation or lift the siege, but rather to re-engineer the Palestinian scene to serve the guardianship project and recycle control. As for the absence of the Authority, it does not mean a decline in its role as much as it reflects intentions to confine any potential return for it within an administrative framework stripped of powers and sovereignty, within a "sovereignty-free administration" model, emptying official representation of its political content.
Within this scene, the Rafah crossing transforms from a humanitarian lifeline into a central political and security tool. It was recently announced that a very limited number of Palestinians, not exceeding 150 people, will be allowed to leave daily after their names are monitored by the Israeli occupation and electronic facial recognition technology, and those returning to Gaza will be transferred to an Israeli point for inspection and confirmation of their entry, which reflects the continuation of the policy of coercion and tight control over movement. Linking the opening of the crossing to these details raises fundamental questions, namely, will it be a Palestinian-Egyptian border crossing? Is it a gateway for reconstruction, or a gateway for gradual emigration that empties the Strip of its inhabitants and controls its trajectory? And is the idea of "temporary exit" being reproduced, which practically turns into permanent displacement? Keeping Rafah a pressure tool that can be disrupted means keeping Gaza in a state of suffocation, and keeping displacement a postponed option, not canceled.
In this regard, the Egyptian position rejecting division projects and parallel entities cannot be ignored, which reflects an understanding that any displacement or guardianship over Gaza does not threaten Palestinians alone, but also affects the national security of neighboring countries, foremost among them Egypt. In parallel, influential European capitals expressed clear reservations about the "Peace Council," and refused to grant it political or legal cover to bypass the United Nations and international legitimacy, warning that turning Gaza into a precedent for international guardianship will undermine regional and European stability alike.
In the West Bank, Israel continues its Judaization and settlement expansion in it and around Jerusalem, where it recently included control over the lands of Qalandia Airport and the demolition of shops on Kafr Aqab Street and threats to evacuate citizens, within a settlement project aimed at annexing lands and expanding settlements around Jerusalem to reach the borders of Ramallah city, in addition to publishing tenders for the construction of thousands of settlement units in the Al-Eizariya area and uprooting olive trees in the Kafr Malik and southern Bethlehem and Hebron areas to expand settlement roads and besiege Palestinian villages, which confirms the continuation of the plan to reduce and annex Palestinian lands and impose control and entrench the apartheid system over the entire West Bank to destroy any prospects, if any remain, for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In contrast, Washington and Tel Aviv continue their policy of buying time, by fabricating superficial differences, exaggerating side issues, and talking about technocratic committees or a return of the Authority without real powers, while facts on the ground are completed and the time of suffering is extended awaiting the moment of exhaustion that the occupying state seeks.
Today, displacement is not presented as a crime, but is re-marketed as a humanitarian solution to a crisis that Israel itself created. What the occupation failed to impose by force, it tries to pass through negotiation, exhaustion, guardianship, and recycling the form of occupation. Gaza, in this sense, is not just a battlefield but a test of the will of Palestinian steadfastness and survival and of national responsibility in confronting these challenges as the most dangerous organized projects to liquidate the cause by "soft" means that will roll down to the West Bank with different conditions and pressures that the American-Israeli project is trying to succeed, while time is passing rapidly.