EDITORIAL: The guns may have fallen silent, but few are under any illusion about how this ceasefire came about. Hamas’s acceptance of the Trump-brokered Gaza peace plan was less negotiation than surrender under duress. The threat was explicit: disarm voluntarily or face renewed assault.
That the White House calls this diplomacy says much about how peace in such situations is actually manufactured – not through compromise, but coercion. Yet even this uneasy pause deserves recognition. Hostages are returning to their families; thousands of Palestinian detainees are being freed; aid convoys are finally crossing the Rafah and Kerem Shalom gates. After nearly two years of carnage, any reprieve is a cause for relief.
But the plan itself bears the hallmarks of imbalance. It imposes total demilitarisation on one side while preserving indefinite Israeli security control over the other. There is no mention of Palestinian sovereignty, no roadmap to statehood, and no binding mechanism to prevent future Israeli overreach which, everyone knows, is bound to come, that too sooner rather than later. International analysts are right to call it a peace enforced at gunpoint and tilted, as expected, decisively toward Israel. What it guarantees in calm it risks losing in legitimacy.
The appointment of Tony Blair to the so-called “Board of Peace”, too, compounds that imbalance. For much of the Arab and Muslim world, Blair’s name is synonymous with the Iraq invasion and the erosion of trust between the west and the Middle East. His inclusion signals tone-deafness, if not outright provocation. The region remembers his unwavering alignment with Washington and Tel Aviv, and his post-premiership ventures that blurred the line between diplomacy and consultancy. Installing him as an arbiter in Gaza is an insult to those who still live with the consequences of policies he once championed.
Still, peace – however flawed – is preferable to the annihilation that preceded it. Gaza’s humanitarian crisis demands immediate relief. More than 10,000 remain missing under the rubble; hospitals function at a fraction of capacity; food and medicine are scarce. International agencies can now resume work, and the return of aid convoys will expose the full extent of Israel’s devastation. Independent observers already describe systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure amounting to war crimes. As reconstruction begins, the evidence of deranged brutality will become impossible to hide.
Netanyahu’s coalition, too, faces its reckoning. The far right that cheered his assault now decries his “concession.” The inquiry into the October 7 attacks – particularly Israel’s own use of the Hannibal Directive, which allowed its forces to fire on captured Israelis – could yet upend the political order that sustained this war. The same army that flattened Gaza may soon be forced to answer how many of its own citizens it killed in the fog of vengeance.
For now, the ball lies in Tel Aviv’s court and Washington’s court. Whether this truce evolves into a durable settlement depends on whether the victors can restrain their appetite for dominance. Gaza needs reconstruction, not recolonisation. The moral ledger of this conflict cannot be rewritten by press releases or photo-ops at peace summits. History will remember who bombed hospitals, who buried children under concrete, and who called that “self-defence.”
The relief is real, but Trump’s “golden age” remains a mirage – peace built on submission, not justice, never lasts.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025