In this interview, international legal scholar Richard Falk breaks down Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan. He discusses its coercive nature and the politics of the West at the expense of Palestinian agency and describes the Israeli and Hamas political psychology, as they both face pressure in adhering to or rejecting the plan. This all shows the fragility of dialogue when the continuation of settler-colonialism is at play in pursuit of an imperial grand strategy.

Daniel Falcone: Could you comment on Israel and Hamas and their motivations within the “Trump Plan?”

Richard Falk: Israel and Hamas have reasons to fulfill the first stages of the Trump Plan and share strong pressures to allow it to collapse thereafter. Netanyahu faces pressure from his ultra-right partners (led by Smotrich and Ben Gvir) to resume the Gaza City operation to destroy Hamas resistance and avoid signs of weakness by accepting a diplomatic compromise forced upon Israel by Trump’s coercive threat diplomacy.

Hamas faces pressures, some relating to its acceptance of a plan heavily weighted in Israel’s favor and devised without its participation in conformity with the colonial playbook. The absence of Palestine in the shaping of the plan has problematic implications that bear on Hamas’ future role. This plan is tainted by its perverse impression of rewarding the perpetrators of genocide while punishing victims. It makes no pretense of either procedural or substantive balance with its minimal contributions to the realization of Palestinian rights as amounting to acts of charity conferred by the perpetrator and its main complicit supporter.

Despite these drawbacks both Israel and Hamas have pragmatic reasons for adherence. On the Israeli side, after the release of all Israeli hostages by Hamas, there is no longer any need for exhibiting constraint in the future should Israel decide it no longer sufficiently benefits from the plan. By accepting the Trump deal, Netanyahu might also believe that his legitimacy is restored. Israel’s pariah status acquired by its lawless behavior since the October 7 attack will be overcome.

Israel might also believe in the diplomacy since Arab states and Muslim majority societies, like Turkey and Malaysia reveal strong political momentum in favor of the plan. There are economic incentives for Israel to do its part in bringing the violence to an end. This latter consideration will undoubtedly be downplayed internally by Israel. It would reveal Israel’s vulnerability arising from its acute economic precariousness and the related impact of growing informal and formal international hostility and civil society activism. So long as Trump believes the plan was a brilliant contribution to peacemaking, Israel would be most reluctant to antagonize the White House by taking responsibility for the collapse of the 20 Point Plan.

Reverse considerations are at play on the Hamas side. Giving in to this one-sided plan, and its ‘negotiation’ by way of an ultimatum, is suggestive of Hamas being squeezed between a rock and a hard place. The surviving population of Gaza seems to seek an end to Israeli violence no matter how high the political costs of giving up their resistance, based on a survival-first ethos, even if it involves the acceptance of a colonialist governance scheme that probably will produce a chapter of high profits in the history of disaster capitalism.

Such a plan seems to deprive Gazans of any influence in guiding the restoration process and governance arrangements, or of the economic benefits of their own large offshore natural gas deposits. How a post-genocide Gaza is rebuilt has crucial identity and heritage implications. Choices as to whether to recreate a traditional architectural and residential character or go with international styles of modernism as in Doha or Dubai is of great relevance to the character of Gaza as a community develops, and as whether it remains an Arab city or becomes a Western city.

Hamas is internally split and somewhat implicit in its ‘conditional’ acceptance of the Trump Plan. It is ready to implement the prisoner exchange and ceasefire features but is so far holding out when it comes to an acceptance of a unilateral obligation to disarm and to endorse post-conflict governance that excludes Palestinian participation. Unlike Israel, Hamas has little to lose by a reasoned repudiation of Trump’s Israel-aligned diplomacy, especially if Israel seems intent on breaking the ceasefire.

The future of the Trump Plan after the probable implementation of its initial phases is a matter of conjecture in a diplomatic atmosphere fraught with uncertainty. Hoping for the best at this stage seems to imply support for an immediate ceasefire of uncertain duration, return of the Israeli hostages, and negotiations that include Hamas and are designed to determine the post-conflict political future of Gaza, which means above all, the maintenance of the ceasefire.

I refrain from using ‘war’ and ‘peace.’ First, the armed conflict in Gaza was asymmetrical in military capabilities as to make the violence resemble ‘a massacre’ more than ‘a war.’ Second, this alleged turn by the U.S. to threaten diplomacy by way of a ‘take it or leave it’ proposal is better regarded as a continuation of coercion by a threat and ultimatum than a search for peace based on international law. It is a short step away from warning Hamas that if it does not accept the proposal in 72 hours, the U.S. will support an Israeli decision to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza City.

Daniel Falcone: What would happen if the hostages were not released?

Richard Falk: If Israel resumes its military operations or breaches the ceasefire with respect to the delivery of aid, then efforts should be made to restore compliance with the plan. If Hamas refuses to release all the hostages without offering a persuasive explanation, then at this stage there seems a failure of the Trump approach that would lead Israel in all probability to resume its state violence.

Israel could limit its reaction to the partial release of the hostages by refusing to withdraw its troops or even redeploying them rather than repudiating the ceasefire. The U.S. reaction would also be relevant, either by throwing its weight in support of Israel’s return to genocidal battlefield tactics of conflict-resolution or by counseling a moderate tit-for-tat response — that left the ceasefire in place and called for further negotiations aimed at achieving the completion of all 20 points in the Trump plan. No matter what Hamas does by way of provocation in relation to the prisoner exchange, it gives Israel no grounds for claiming impunity in relation to the crime of genocide.

Daniel Falcone: Could you remark on how this hardly changes the balance of power in Gaza. Any hope for a short respite in the conflict? Could the deal slow down the production of Greater Israel?

Richard Falk: If Hamas should agree to disarm, and some sort of Arab stabilization force established order in Gaza during a transition period it would give U.S./Israel substantial control and create a situation where Palestinians on the ground faced a choice of leave, submit, or resist. This latter option would expose the Gaza population to harsh policing and lifestyle restrictions that may be unwelcome after years of enduring Israeli oppression either by direct occupation from 1967 to 2005 or the siege from 2007 to the present.

If Israel respected the military withdrawal provisions of the plan, the population of Gaza would at least be free from apartheid style repression that was initiated by the conquest of Palestinian Territories in the 1967 War. If normalization was accompanied by large-scale international aid in relation to construction, education, health, and culture, the daily life experience of Gazans would improve dramatically and objections to the Trump transition setup could wither away and even possibly marginalize Hamas if Palestinian sentiments turned from resistance and liberation to the benefits of normalization.

Israel might allow this normalization scenario to unfold in Gaza and concentrate its political efforts on overcoming its pariah status, which could lead to many gains by way of prosperous relations with neighbors and the West. It could reaffirm its commitment to democracy and even dismantle its apartheid policies and practices, at first in pre-1967 Israel, but later in the West Bank where it would order the Israeli settlements to either withdraw from Palestine or make a credible adjustment to peaceful coexistence with the Palestinian governing institutions. This seems far-fetched and presupposes the radical reform of Zionist ideology or its abandonment, but nothing short of this can have any realistic chance of delivering a justice-driven future to these embattled two peoples. Algeria and South Africa both reversed courses and transformed into forms of democratic coexistence. Gaza would certainly benefit from a coexistence model instead of the visions for a Greater Israel.

The Zionist Movement has always been content with taking what it can in the present political context without giving up on seeking to come closer to its final goals. This pattern of salami tactics goes back at least as far as the Balfour Declaration and continued with its acceptance of the UN Partition Plan of 1947, followed by ‘the Green Line’ armistice in the 1948 War, and in phases up to the present. A way of conceiving of the Trump Plan is another such step in the direction of achieving Greater Israel and having the side geopolitical benefit of whitewashing Israel and those complicit from any responsibility for genocide during the last two years.