United States president Donald Trump’s recent 20-point proposal for Gaza, co-announced with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been met with fierce criticism from Palestinian civil society, human rights groups, and observers around the world. What is being sold as a peace plan is actually a new architecture for dispossession.
At its core, the Trump Plan seeks to recast Gaza’s future under an external regime. It outlines a phased ceasefire, a mass prisoner and hostage exchange, and the dismantling of Hamas’s military control. In parallel, the proposal envisions that governance of Gaza be shifted to a transition board – dominated by international and allied states – all while Israel retains de facto security control.
One earlier draft, from February 2025, went even further: it proposed full US administrative control of Gaza, accompanied by the “temporary” relocation of millions of Palestinians to territories beyond its borders – a suggestion that drew condemnation as a blueprint for forced displacement or ethnic cleansing.
Palestinian civil society raises its voice
In response, Palestinian civil society organisations, in coordination through the BDS movement, have issued a unified condemnation of the plan as genocidal and colonial in nature. They reject any version of peace that excludes justice, accountability, and the full exercise of Palestinian rights.
They rightly argue that a ceasefire without addressing structural injustice is hollow. Gaza cannot be detached from the rest of Palestine; any scheme of governance that excludes Palestinians is a mechanism of control, not liberation. Forced relocation, they insist, cannot be justified under any name. Their message is clear: nothing less than freedom, justice, and self-determination will suffice.
The Trump plan is not a diplomatic breakthrough, it is yet another manoeuvre in a longer colonial project, updated for a new age of international statecraft.
In a statement released through the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, Palestinian civil society laid out five fundamental objections to the Trump-Netanyahu plan. While the full text names these in detail, key elements are:
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A ceasefire alone is insufficient if not paired with justice, return, and accountability.
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Gaza cannot be severed from Palestine – any plan that isolates it offends national legitimacy.
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Displacement and forced removal are unacceptable under any guise.
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The plan serves as a colonial instrument, resurrecting patterns of external rule over a dispossessed population.
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Only freedom, justice, and self-determination can form the basis of any legitimate solution.
Why DiEM25 rejects this proposal
Trump’s Gaza plan is not a neutral peace initiative. It replicates the same logic that underpinned colonial expansion: designing the inhabited terrain while erasing its rightful inhabitants’ control. It treats Palestinian life and agency as malleable under outside authority.
Europe is not innocent in this. European governments continue to provide weapons, diplomatic cover, and financial backing to Israel while promoting “peace” framework proposals without demanding accountability or rights. To stay silent in face of a plan that reasserts colonial power under new management is to legitimise it.
The Trump Plan is not a fresh start. It is a reworking of an old script: dispossession as peace, exclusion as stability. If we believe in democracy, justice, and dignity, we must loudly dissent.
Peace does not emerge when colonial formulas are repackaged – only when agency, rights, and accountability are restored.
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