Palestine: Solidarity and resistance against Trump’s desert of “peace”
The imperialist peace plan denies Palestinian self-determination and perpetuates genocide in Gaza.
With the launch of his Peace Council at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22, US President Donald Trump is attempting to carry out his long-cherished and shamelessly publicized project to establish a Middle Eastern Riviera in Gaza by February 2025. Amidst the suffering of the Palestinian people in the face of ongoing genocide, he sees an opportunity to establish his luxury resort in full view of the world, while giving carte blanche to Israel, imperialism’s military enclave, to carry out the final solution in the ongoing Nakba—the Palestinian catastrophe that has lasted for almost 78 years.
Thus, the aforementioned desert of peace council seeks to eradicate Palestinian culture, historical heritage, memory, and identity from Gaza. At the same time, the leveling needed for the construction of luxury towers would put an end to the evidence of the genocide that has already killed at least 71,000 Palestinians, of whom more than 20,000 were children, and destroyed 90% of Gaza’s infrastructure.
The future scene, under Trump’s plan, is depicted in “Gaza Beach 2030” by cartoonist Peter de Wit, in which a couple sunbathes on a paradise beach while their young son happily digs up skulls in the sand. The work was awarded the annual prize for best political cartoon in the Netherlands in 2025.
Trump’s United Nations
By transforming Palestine into a military laboratory for the world, this council can repeat the feat anywhere in the world, turning the globe into a Monopoly board for Trump to play on. Imperialism, unmasked and unrestrained, reveals its ugly face under the megalomania of the far-right leader.
It is emblematic that the council does not mention the Palestinian people, the Gaza Strip, or Palestine in its founding chapter, instead saying that it would be an international body to act in “areas affected or threatened by conflict.”
Trump emphasized this in his launch speech in Davos, stating that its scope could cover other “global issues.” He declared on that occasion: “When this council is fully formed, we will be able to do pretty much anything we want.”
Although he said he would act in conjunction with the United Nations, he deliberately sought to withdraw from 66 international organizations—31 of them linked to the UN. In seeking to weaken the UN and deepen its lack of credibility to justify his underhanded plan to form the council, Trump hypocritically criticizes the UN’s inability to resolve conflicts.
The UN maintained the legacy of the League of Nations by giving it a home in the post-World War II era—in Lenin’s thinking, the League of Nations had been a “den of bandits” where the imperialist powers gathered to share the spoils from their colonial projects and aggressions. The structure of the UN, officially created on October 24, 1945, responded to the goals of maintaining the capitalist international order.
It is worth remembering that already at its second General Assembly, on November 29, 1947, the UN recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state (56.5% of the territory) and an Arab state (42.9% of the territory), and the maintenance of Jerusalem under international administration (0.6% of the territory), delegating more than half of Palestinian lands to the Zionist colonial project, without consulting the Palestinians, the original inhabitants.
It was a green light for Zionist paramilitary gangs, heavily armed mainly by Stalin’s Soviet Union via Czechoslovakia, to implement their plan of ethnic cleansing of Palestine—the most aggressive phase of which began twelve days after the UN’s partition recommendation. The result was the cornerstone of the Nakba—the formation of the racist and colonial state of Israel on 78% of historic Palestine, on the bodies of Palestinians and the rubble of their villages.
What Trump obviously omits is that the US has a decisive role in maintaining the ineffectiveness of the UN it criticizes. In relation to the genocide in Gaza alone, they vetoed the ceasefire in the Security Council six times, most recently in September 2025. The other four nation states that share with the US the status of permanent members in this privileged forum and can exercise veto power within the UN are not far behind. They are: France, the United Kingdom, China, and Russia.
The latter two abstained in the Security Council vote on November 17, 2025, on Trump’s plan for Gaza—an ultimatum to the Palestinian resistance, isolated and criminalized by Zionist-imperialist war propaganda, fighting to stop massive bombs from falling on the heads of its people, especially children and women.
A false dialogue “between the sword and the neck,” to paraphrase the response given by the Palestinian Marxist revolutionary Ghasan Kanafani in a famous interview with Australian journalist Richard Carleton in 1970, on why there is no point in dialogue with Israelis.
The desert of peace council is a consequence of this agreement. Trump’s plan envisages its establishment in the second phase of the false ceasefire. The demilitarization of the resistance, part of this macabre plan, is even supported by the UN, contrary to international law and contrary to its own resolutions guaranteeing the right of resistance, by all means, to peoples under colonization.
At the Security Council meeting on January 28, which discussed the implementation of the second phase of Trump’s plan, the UN Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Ramiz Alakbarov, stated that this would be a crucial stage for the consolidation of the ceasefire. He also stated that the United Nations is ready to collaborate with the Palestinian technocrats’ Administration Committee, part of Trump’s council.
The farce of the ceasefire as the genocide continues
Beginning on October 10, 2025, the ceasefire has been a farce—in the Zionist dictionary, ceasefire means “you [Palestinian] cease, I [Zionist] fire,” as deciphered by Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
In fact, the genocide, now under the veneer of a ceasefire, continues. Since the ceasefire took effect on October 10 last year, Israel has killed more than 480 Palestinians and continues to prevent the previously agreed upon entry of humanitarian aid—allowing in only around 43% of its stated commitment, deliberately excluding nutrient-rich foods such as meat, vegetables, and dairy products, as well as mobile homes and equipment needed for Palestinians to rebuild Gaza, with 90% of the infrastructure destroyed by massive bombing.
At least 23 children had already frozen to death in the floods and bitter winter, with no homes to shelter them. Viruses are spreading rapidly as a result of the destruction of hospitals and sanitation infrastructure in the ongoing genocide perpetrated by the Israeli occupation with the weapons of European and, above all, US imperialism.
Albanese repeatedly recalled that it is a legal obligation, not a favor or charity, for all nation states to sanction Israel under international law and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This has been solemnly ignored by the majority.
Although the UN brings together a body of qualified and honest experts such as Albanese and provides a rich repository of historical documents that serve as a tool in the struggle against the national oppression of the Palestinian people, it is clear that, given its structure, there should be no illusions that liberation will come from the United Nations. It is worth noting that the organization insists on the false two-state solution—which, even if it were not inherently unjust for failing to consider the entire Palestinian people, including the half that are refugees and in the diaspora––is already dead and buried in the face of aggressive colonial expansion.
Of course, Trump’s parallel UN goes beyond even international law, rewarding Israel. It is a business parlor, where Trump charges $1 billion in the first year for nation states to even have a permanent seat at the table.
Pacification was never peace
While images of Palestinian suffering are seen on social media, Trump seeks to give an air of pacification to sell the idea that he has achieved peace and thus can hand over Gaza to tycoons to build their luxury resorts. Pacification is silencing resistance and controlling the oppressed people, very different from the much-acclaimed peace—which would first require justice and liberation. “Peace without a voice is not peace, it is fear,” as the lyrics of the song “Minha Alma (A Paz Que Eu Não Quero)” (lit. “My Soul (The Peace I Do Not Desire)”) by the band “O Rappa” remind us.
The images presented by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at the launch of the council in Davos point in the direction of this pacification and border on dystopia: dozens of high-standard skyscrapers that look futuristic and bear no resemblance to Gaza—as artificial as the islands in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
On the other hand, there is the confinement of Palestinians in predefined residential areas, especially in the Rafah region in southern Gaza, to serve as cheap labor in Trump’s resort. There, Israel has already begun to implement this evil plan by planning the area to establish a concentration camp for thousands of Palestinians—for millions more, the fate would be death or expulsion. The “New Gaza,” which would include a technology hub in line with Israel’s intention announced years ago, modeled on Singapore, thus re-enacts the Nakba of 1948. As at that time, the aim is to change the local landscape and to erase collective memory, a veritable genocide against Palestinian culture.
At the presentation of the master plan at the Davos launch, the ridiculousness was fully revealed when Kushner presented a slide written in Arabic, but with the spelling reversed, and another with Arab men wearing suits more commonly associated with Gulf countries. Once again throughout history, Palestinians are excluded from their destiny and dehumanized.
Kushner went so far as to declare the properties along the Gaza sea as very valuable. It is worth remembering that Trump’s son-in-law is considered the architect of the Abraham Accords in the first administration of the far-right president, which promoted the advancement of normalization between Arab countries and Israel.
He also announced plans to fully open the Rafah border crossing, including for pedestrians—Israel announced a “limited reopening” on January 26. What this reveals is not humanitarian concern for the Palestinians in Gaza, but rather an open path to their forced expulsion—ethnic cleansing.
The structure of the council
Although this peace council has been presented as having a three-year term, it is up to Trump to disband it, and this term can be extended at his discretion. The lifetime position and absolute decisions coincide with the image he created some time ago, through artificial intelligence, of “king of the world.”
Even more serious is the fact that its Executive Council is made up of tycoons and war criminals. Among the former is Israeli real estate billionaire Yakir Gabay; among the latter is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of the main supporters of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, falsely propagating the lie of non-existent weapons of mass destruction as justification.
Below this would be the administrative committee with Palestinian technocrats, responsible for administrative matters—and therefore without any autonomy in decision-making. A poorly crafted copy of the Palestinian Authority, created as the manager of the occupation following the ill-fated Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel, with the mediation of the US. The Oslo Accords were also sold to the world as a path to gradual peace, then in the perspective of a two-state solution.
The result has been aggressive Zionist colonial expansion, for which genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid are essential. The desert of peace council manages to present itself as a worse version, in which Palestinians simply do not exist, except as pieces on the board of the administration committee to give an air of legitimacy.
Break relations with the State of Israel, end international complicity
Palestinians unfortunately face continued international complicity with Israel’s genocidal project, that allows this racist and colonial project to continue and advance, even beyond Gaza.
In the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem, which, together with the narrow strip, make up 22% of the remaining Palestinian territory occupied militarily by Israel in 1967, the situation is also dramatic, with deepened ethnic cleansing. In the areas occupied in 1948, which today the world calls Israel, the Palestinians remaining from the Nakba (1.9 million) also face institutionalized apartheid: they live under 65 racist laws, there to silence and repress them. In the Zionist dungeons, unspeakable torture, widely denounced, is the norm. Some 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners suffer in these torture centers, including around 350 children and 50 women. Meanwhile, 6 million Palestinians live in refugee camps in Arab countries, denied their legitimate right to return to their lands, and thousands more are part of the diaspora around the world.
Genocide normalized by the international community
The genocide in Gaza should have been the last straw, leading to an urgent break in relations with the Zionist state, in compliance with the minimum legal obligation under international law and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Unfortunately, however, most nation states, including Brazil, continue to have military, economic, and diplomatic treaties and agreements with Israel. The genocide of the Palestinian people is normalized, to the detriment of the necessary international isolation of the genocidal state.
This goes against the main campaign of solidarity with the Palestinian people: BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) against Israel, similar to the boycott campaign that helped end the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1990s.
And, contrary to the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, their voices continue to go unheard. Palestinians have denounced this so-called desert of peace council, which has nothing to do with liberation, justice, or even the slightest bit with the reconstruction of Gaza.
But that has not prevented at least 23 countries, so far, from agreeing not only to join it, but also to share this forum with genocidal Israel. Among the other guests—around 60 in total—seven European countries have so far refused: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Slovenia, and Sweden.
Pressured by the US offensive in relation to Greenland and Trump’s tariff blackmail and strongarming, they fear the dismantling of the UN and so-called multilateralism by its replacement with “Trump’s United Nations.”
In other words, it has much less to do with consideration for the self-determination of the Palestinian people, which is evident when one observes that the European Union as a whole refused to sanction Israel and, above all, when one observes that direct accomplices to genocide, such as Germany, Italy, and France, are among those who responded negatively. The allegation is the format of the council. This is also the position expressed by Brazil, which is among the nearly 60 countries and has not yet rejected the invitation.
In a telephone conversation with Trump on January 26, Lula called for changes to the council: that Palestine have a seat—read: Palestinian Authority (PA)—and be limited to Gaza, without extrapolating its reach to the rest of the world. If a Palestinian representation listened to the majority of the Palestinian people, not the PA, the manager of the occupation, it would reject it all, break all relations with Israel, and call for mobilizations against US imperialism and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
This role, however, is reserved for the effective and concrete international solidarity movement. In the words of Kanafani, “the Palestinian cause is not only a cause for Palestinians, but for every revolutionary, wherever they may be, of the oppressed and exploited masses of our era.”
Free Palestine, from the river to the sea
The time has come to resume large, united mobilizations for Palestine and embrace the heroic and historic Palestinian resistance, an example for all fighters, anywhere in the world.
If Palestine is the world’s military laboratory, whose weapons are tested on the human guinea pigs that Israel turns its people into, and then promotes the genocide of those who are poor and Black in the slums of Brazil, and the extermination of the indigenous peoples, the next Gaza may be much closer than we imagine. As a call from the streets, “if barbarism is international, our resistance must be international.” No to the desert of peace. For a free Palestine, from the river to the sea!
