1. President Trump’s plan for Gaza and the Orwellian-named “Board of Peace” will further entrench Israel’s apartheid system, which is the root cause of all the violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
- Trump’s plan will not bring peace to the region. Israel’s apartheid system and nearly eight decades of oppression of the Palestinian people must end if there is ever to be true and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
2. The board is intended to usurp power from the UN for a body controlled by the US and Trump, who will lead it for life, dispensing with the international human rights-based legal order put in place after World War II.
- Trump wants the board to concentrate power in his own hands and bypass international law and UN resolutions, on Palestine/Israel and elsewhere around the world. When asked if he wants the board to replace the UN, he replied: “It might.”
3. There are no Palestinians on the board, no Palestinians were consulted in the drafting of Trump’s plan, and the board’s charter makes no mention of Gaza or Palestine/Israel.
- The board will be headed by Trump and include leaders of undemocratic, authoritarian regimes with deplorable human rights records and/or countries that have been complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, who do not have the rights or best interests of Palestinians at heart.
4. Benjamin Netanyahu - whose government is still committing genocide in Gaza and who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity - will be on the board.
- Netanyahu, who heads a government that has been systematically destroying Gaza for more than two years (and continues to do so, despite the ceasefire) in a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing, should be facing trial at The Hague, not given a role overseeing Gaza’s future.
5. Israel is flagrantly violating its commitments under the first phase of the ceasefire deal by continuing to kill Palestinians almost daily and restricting the entry of food and other humanitarian aid.
- The Israeli military has killed more than 470 Palestinians - including more than 100 children - in Gaza since the ceasefire supposedly went into effect in October and continues to systematically destroy buildings and block the entry of humanitarian supplies, including tents and items needed to house nearly two million people who have been forcibly displaced from their homes.
- In doing so, Israel continues to carry out its plan - which has been repeatedly articulated by Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials - to make Gaza uninhabitable so Palestinians have no choice but to leave.
6. Israel and its illegal settlers continue to accelerate their violent theft of Palestinian land and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank.
- Israel’s occupying army and violent, fanatical settlers continue to forcibly displace Palestinians in the West Bank and steal Palestinian land for illegal settlements, with the explicitly stated objective of preventing a Palestinian state from ever being created.
7. Like all peoples, Palestinians have an inalienable right to freedom and self-determination.
- Under international law, Palestinians have a right to self-determination and freedom from Israeli oppression that cannot be taken away by Trump, Netanyahu, or anyone else.