Trump presents 20-point Gaza peace plan, what questions does it leave unanswered?

Yet another American-sponsored "peace plan" for Palestine has been unveiled, landing with the familiar thud of doomed diplomacy.

A 20-point proposal, emerging from the ruins of Gaza and decades of failed negotiations, is being presented as a serious pathway to stability. But a cursory examination reveals it to be less a roadmap to peace and more a recipe for perpetuating the very injustices that fuel the conflict.
Before the world rushes to applaud this latest US initiative, there are fundamental, glaring questions it leaves unanswered.

WHY THE US, AND NOT THE UN?

The very authorship of this plan is its primary flaw. Why is the United States, a party that provides Israel with billions in annual military aid and consistently shields it from international accountability at the UN Security Council as well as at international courts, still cast as an "honest broker"? This is not mediation; it is imposition.

The United Nations, for all its imperfections, represents a multilateral forum where international law and global consensus should prevail. A US-monopolised process has a decades-long track record of failure, precisely because it has never required Israel to adhere to the same standards of international law demanded of others.

This plan is not a neutral document; it is a reflection of US geopolitical interests.

HOW DOES GLOBAL RECOGNITION OF PALESTINE ALTER THE EQUATION?

The plan deliberately ignores a fundamental geopolitical reality: more than 140 UN member states already formally recognise Palestine as a sovereign state, with many doing so decades ago.

This global consensus places Israel -- and its primary backer, the US -- on defensive footing. The US plan emerges precisely now because Israel finds itself diplomatically isolated, needing a "save face" option. But that pressure also means any plan that treats Palestinians as supplicants rather than equal sovereigns is increasingly untenable.

The moment demands reciprocity, not patronage. By sidestepping this established statehood, the plan attempts to drag the Palestinians back to a starting line the world has long since acknowledged they have crossed.

DOES THE PLAN ACKNOWLEDGE ISRAEL NOW NEEDS A BAILOUT?

The timing is telling, not at all coincidental. Israel, under intense international scrutiny and judicial pressure over atrocities, now faces a profound crisis of legitimacy.

This US initiative appears less a genuine peace offer and more a political and diplomatic bailout: a prepackaged rescue that shifts blame and resets the narrative without addressing core injustices. But a bailout cannot mask the deeper structural fault lines: occupation, dispossession, and inequality under the law.

The plan seems designed to provide Israel with a lifeline from its pariah status, not to deliver justice to the Palestinians.

WHAT ARE THE ACTUAL BORDERS?

The plan is conspicuously silent on the most fundamental issue: territory. Is it based on the pre-1967 borders, the internationally recognised foundation for a two-state solution?

The refusal to state this explicitly is an admission by itself.

It suggests a continuation of the deliberate ambiguity that has allowed illegal settlements to expand relentlessly, carving a future Palestinian state into a non-viable archipelago of disconnected enclaves, an anachronistic idea in today's world.

Without a clear, sovereign, and contiguous territory based on the 1967 lines, any talk of a "state" is a cruel fiction.

WHY THE DUBIOUS CAST OF CHARACTERS?

The reported involvement of figures like Tony Blair is an insult to the intelligence of all involved. Blair, who infamously lied through his teeth about Weapons of Mass Destruction to justify the catastrophic war on Iraq, and who later admitted his "mistakes" only after the destruction was complete, possesses zero moral credibility.

His role signals that this plan is built not on principles, but on the same cynical realpolitik and disregard for truth that have characterised the worst Western foreign policy disasters of this century.

WHERE IS EAST JERUSALEM?

The plan's silence on East Jerusalem is not an oversight; it is a statement.

By failing to explicitly designate occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, it implicitly endorses Israel's illegal annexation. Jerusalem is not just a real estate dispute, it is the heart of the Palestinian national, cultural, and spiritual identity.

Any plan that does not answer this central question is not a peace plan; it is a surrender document.

WHAT IS THE "PRE-SETTLEMENT" VISION FOR GAZA AND THE WEST BANK?

The plan talks of a future for Gaza but ignores the present reality of its utter destruction. Is the idea to return to the pre-Oct 7 status quo of an open-air prison?

Furthermore, does "West Bank in full" mean a full withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces and the dismantling of all illegal settlements, or does it mean a permanent "Bantustan" model under Israeli military control? The devil is in the details, and these details are conspicuously absent.

HAS US LEARNED ANYTHING FROM ITS FAILED HISTORY?

The Clinton-administered talks of the 1990s and the Oslo Accords did not break down due to a lack of Palestinian goodwill. They collapsed because the US-mediated process, as scholars like Norman Finkelstein have meticulously documented, allowed Israel to use negotiations as a cover for continued land confiscation.

The late President Yasser Arafat was not being intransigent; he was recognising a bad deal that legitimised occupation.

The current plan seems to be a repeat of this failed playbook, ignoring the lessons of why past efforts crumbled.

WHO TRULY BENEFITS FROM "REBUILDING"?

The reconstruction plan for Gaza raises immediate red flags. Does it aim to empower the Palestinian people, or does it look suspiciously like a corporate bonanza for US engineering and construction firms, profiting from the rubble that US-supplied bombs helped create?

Reconstruction must be Palestinian-led and internationally supervised, not a no-bid contract for American cronyism.

FINALLY, WHO REPRESENTS PALESTINE, AND WHAT IS THEIR FUTURE?

The plan fails to clarify the role of the current Palestinian Authority. Is it to be a subcontractor for Israeli security, further alienating it from its own people?

And critically, the Palestinian national movement was once a broadly secular cause led by figures like Arafat and George Habash. It was radicalised over decades, a process for which there is ample evidence -- including Israeli statements -- suggesting it was actively encouraged by Israel to undermine the secular PLO.

This plan does nothing to address this historical grievance or offer a path back to a dignified, secular political expression for Palestinian aspirations.
This US plan is not a solution. It is a list of unanswered questions designed to manage the conflict, not resolve it. Until these questions are addressed with honesty and a firm grounding in international law, this initiative, like all its predecessors, is destined for the dustbin of history. The Palestinian people deserve answers, not another American diktat.