By Mutaz M. Qafisheh and Mazen Alzaro
- Prof. Dr. Mutaz M. Qafisheh is a Professor of International Law at Hebron University, Palestine
- Mazen Alzaro is a Researcher in International Law, Palestine
ISTANBUL (AA) - The current operational and political dynamics in the Gaza Strip necessitate a rigorous legal and structural examination of the ongoing negotiations mediated under international auspices, most notably the Trump administration’s post-war framework. A meticulous analysis of Israeli conduct in Gaza reveals a classic, recurring pattern of strategic subversion. Within this paradigm, ceasefire negotiations are not utilized as an instrument to terminate hostilities, but rather as a diplomatic smokescreen to buy time, alter facts on the ground, and entrench an illegal status quo created by the genocidal war. Consequently, the Trump peace plan for post-war Gaza has been effectively hollowed out, transformed from a mechanism promising peace into a tactical tool for military repositioning and the delineation of new parameters of permanent control.
Expanding military control on the ground
This subversion is starkly illustrated by recent official Israeli declarations revealing an intent to expand direct military and administrative control over 60% to 70% of Gaza. This geopolitical maneuver marks a structural shift in the conceptualization of operational lines. Far from being temporary demarcations aimed at de-escalating violence, the military-controlled sectors of Gaza have been systematically converted into ongoing, lethal kill zones and restricted spaces designed to fragment and completely asphyxiate Palestinian demographic centers in one-third of the already densely populated strip of the Mediterranean coast with no life-sustaining conditions. What is being executed by the Israeli army on the ground is a ceasefire in name only, a linguistic placeholder deployed to legitimize permanent security dominance while systematically aborting the social, economic, and political prerequisites of a contiguous, sovereign Palestinian state.
Faced with this ongoing Nakba (catastrophe) targeting the Palestinian people, the international community’s stubborn adherence to fluid, ambiguous diplomatic euphemisms such as ceasefire transcends mere political paralysis, which amounts to complicity by inaction, sub specie state responsibility. Under the 1948 Genocide Convention and the jus cogens norms of international humanitarian law, third states bear strict, non-derogable obligations to prevent and punish core international crimes. To maintain a purely rhetorical attachment to conventional diplomatic terminology without enforcing mandatory, punitive countermeasures, such as comprehensive arms embargoes, economic sanctions, the suspension of bilateral trade agreements, and the invocation of universal jurisdiction, may constitute a form of legal omission. This collective inaction obscures the material reality of the crimes being committed and provides the occupying power with a veneer of diplomatic cover to sustain its unlawful acts. This dangerous trajectory, as warned by numerous international organizations, legal experts, and civil society coalitions, signals a profound erosion of the structural integrity and credibility of the global legal order.
Erasing Palestinian sovereignty
Furthermore, the calculated policy of manufactured starvation of Gazans, the forced blocking of vital humanitarian assistance, and the systematic attacks on UNRWA cannot be detached from Israel’s broader demographic and political objectives, which intersect dangerously with the Trump administration’s post-war ‘Board of Peace’. The deliberate deprivation of the essential conditions for human survival, coupled with the denial of entry to the Gaza National Technocratic Committee, designed as part of the Trump plan, is not a transient military tactic; it is an exercise in demographic engineering aimed at demolishing Palestinian political and societal existence. This wholesale destruction of institutional, academic, and civil infrastructure prepares Gaza, both geographically and demographically, for the imposition of external governance structures, such as an international trusteeship or specialized trust funds, including the GREAT Trust model, that weaponize reconstruction capital to strip Palestinians of their political agency. This overlapping vision seeks to replace national sovereignty with corporate-style international management, reducing Gaza to a de-politicized economic "riviera" which inherently invalidates Palestinian statehood, bypasses international legitimacy, and liquidates the inalienable right to self-determination.
The collapse of the current ceasefire in Gaza and the launch of a slow-motion genocide, along with the failure of the so-called ‘Board of Peace’, offer a definitive legal and historical lesson: the shelf-life of transient security arrangements and piecemeal accommodations that preserve the core of the occupation has expired. Grounded in the 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice that declared the illegality of the Israeli occupation of the entire territory of Palestine, and relevant UN resolutions, any future framework must fundamentally move from the flawed paradigm of conflict management to the mandatory termination of the unlawful situation arising from the occupation. Any political process that fails to guarantee the unconditional and total withdrawal of the occupying forces, and fails to establish an indivisible and sovereign state of Palestine over the 1967-occupied land, airspace, and maritime domains, including the unhindered operation of the Gaza port and full jurisdiction over natural gas fields, will merely serve as a recipe for the renewal of the prolonged conflict. It will never yield a just and durable peace.
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu.
