Trump’s Peace Council and the realities of Gaza

The White House announced the establishment of the Peace Council, which comprises two interconnected and complementary structures to manage the post-war phase in the Gaza Strip. This step reflects complex American and regional understandings that ultimately led to the cessation of the genocidal war on Gaza. The first body can be described as an oversight council with a U.S.-led political–economic “guardianship” character, where the founding council’s role focuses on strategic supervision, resource mobilization, and ensuring alignment with U.S. foreign policy.

The second body is a coordinating executive council with a specifically regional character for Gaza. It includes the states that played the role of guarantors and mediators of the ceasefire agreement, and its mandate centers on regional coordination and the management of operations on the ground.

This development coincides with the confirmation of the start of the second phase, during which the names of the temporary Palestinian technocratic committee to administer the Gaza Strip were announced. This has occurred in the absence of any guarantees thus far regarding Israel’s commitment to the obligations of the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, alongside clear indications of Israeli intent to obstruct these efforts, despite the fact that they essentially fulfill the majority of Israel’s medium- and long-term security demands. In contrast, the regionally oriented coordinating executive council—within which former UN Middle East envoy Nikolay Mladenov plays the role of a liaison among all these components (the oversight council, the executive council, and the technocratic committee)—is expected to provide everything required for the temporary technocratic committee to manage civilian affairs in Gaza.

In this context, it has become evident that the Palestinian cause has entered a new phase, marked by a process that shifts the center of gravity regarding Palestinian self-determination from Palestinian national reference frameworks to a U.S.-led international–regional framework. This is evident in the absence of any direct Palestinian national representation. This reality is apparent even at the symbolic level, as the “service-oriented” technocratic committee was unable to display the Palestinian flag during its first meeting in Cairo. This occurs without denying the existence of a non-final national mandate that remains subject to reassessment, yet in the absence of a clear horizon for viable alternatives to the current situation. This points to serious risks of an implicit U.S. approach that separates the administration of Gaza from the broader trajectory of the Palestinian cause, transforming the Strip into a quasi-independent functional/security/economic file—contrary to the substance of UN Security Council Resolution 2803, which did not negate the Palestinian people’s future right to self-determination and the establishment of their state.

This trajectory does not necessarily reflect a total U.S. ability to control the fate of the Palestinian people as much as it expresses a serious American effort to strip the outcomes of the war on Gaza of any political meaning and to convert them into technical arrangements focused on stability, services, and reconstruction, without linking them to questions of occupation, sovereignty, and territorial unity.

As for the Palestinian resistance factions—foremost among them Hamas—the post-war reality clearly indicates the impossibility of restoring conditions to what they were before October 7, alongside the failure of any policy based on excluding or bypassing Hamas. This places the Palestinian condition, in all its components, at a crossroads in dealing with this reality: either rejecting it in a manner that could lead to the continuation of national attrition, potentially culminating in a resumption of aggression and the fulfillment of war objectives aimed at altering the demographic equation and undermining Palestinian national existence for decades to come; or fully acquiescing to this reality, which would result in the functional containment of the Palestinian national movement and pose an existential threat to its liberation project based on freedom, independence, and self-determination, culminating in the establishment of a Palestinian state in accordance with international law.

In contrast, the most realistic option remains national repositioning: relieving the burden of direct administration without forfeiting what remains of the elements of strength—chief among them preserving the Palestinian presence on the land, maintaining social cohesion, safeguarding national identity, and ensuring the unity of institutions and national representation—while accepting these interim arrangements as a de facto reality that meets the most urgent needs of Palestinian society in Gaza in particular. This must occur in parallel with a national focus on strengthening national representation and restoring the principle of unity within the political system, in a manner that guarantees territorial unity between Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem at this stage, prevents the entrenchment of division, and keeps the meaning of the post-war phase open to a political horizon that does not reduce the Palestinian cause to its humanitarian or economic dimensions.