“Previously, Palestinians were subject to Israeli control. Now, there’s a sort of joint ‘condominium’ between the American government and the Israeli government. There’s going to be an interesting struggle between them as to who makes the final decisions. As of this moment, it seems to be the Israelis, but that could change depending on the whims of how Trump wakes up tomorrow morning.” – Rashid Khalidi 

Media Review Network (MRN) condemns the Trump administration for launching a re-colonisation of the Israeli Occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza. Dubbed misleadingly as a “Board of Peace”, the shocking details released in Davos by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, made it abundantly clear that “Peace” is euphemism for “Profit”. 

Far from freeing Palestinians in Gaza from the bloodstained hands of the Zionist regime’s war criminal Netanyahu and his criminal gang of warlords, Trump’s objective is no less than securing economic and political control of the Strip which he described as “Prime Real Estate”. We share the outrage expressed by Palestinians who view this chapter in their century old battle against occupation as a serious impediment.

The fanfare associated with Trump’s ostentatious launch dominated by promises of “peace and prosperity”, sought to sanitise bloody war crimes perpetrated with direct complicity of his administration. Trump’s guilt in the massacre of thousands upon thousands of innocent Palestinians, does not bestow upon him the status of sainthood.

It makes him a war criminal who should be arraigned alongside Netanyahu in the dock at the Hague. While the fanfare at Davos was unveiled with the trimmings and trapping of an inauguration and crowning of a king, no mention was made of the fact that the killings by Israel has not stopped. If the glare had shifted from Davos to Gaza, the graphics displayed would have confirmed that Netanyahu’s US-backed and funded army has in the last few days, killed and injured dozens of Palestinians, including three journalists. That forced displacement continues and the entry of basic materials remains blocked, deliberately obstructing recovery from an ongoing genocide.

The “Board of Peace” does not represent Palestinian aspirations.

“He has assembled a Board of Occupation,” according to Jeremy Corbyn who correctly points out that the future of Gaza is not up to Trump, Blair or Netanyahu, it is up to the Palestinian people.

Media Review Network agrees with the widespread sentiments of outrage among Palestinians who oppose Trump’s imperial venture. We abhor the involvement of Tony Blair, whose bloody history of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq awaits accountability. The danger posed by the “Board of Peace” is that it is likely to mutate into “a permanent system of external control” as per The Guardian’s Aamna Mohdin.

In her interview with Rashid Khalidi on whether there’s a shift to a new era of corporate colonial control, he pushed back on Mohdin’s use of the word new. 

“I don’t think we’re shifting at all. I think the masks are being dropped. If you go back to 19th-century South Africa, you had the mining magnates dictating British policy. The money, the gold, and the diamonds drove it. Today, it’s the investments in oil and the billionaires who are driving it,” said Khalidi. 

While he doesn’t see a huge difference in terms of the broader picture, there is something notable about what Trump is doing.

“We are going back to a pre-first world war era of naked imperialism with a lot of what Trump is up to; not just in Palestine, but in Venezuela, Canada, and Mexico.”

The fact that Palestinians were not consulted about the board, is not an oversight. It is deliberate. The entire exercise is aimed to be a colonial solution imposed on the Palestinians, with dire consequences regarding their right to self-determination. 

To condone it, is to weaponise it as an instrument of empire.

* Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the Media Review Network.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media. 

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