{"id":308872,"date":"2025-12-01T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T12:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=308872"},"modified":"2025-12-01T07:27:48","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T07:27:48","slug":"how-the-us-israeli-peace-plan-will-partition-gaza-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/12\/how-the-us-israeli-peace-plan-will-partition-gaza-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How the US-Israeli \u2018Peace Plan\u2019 Will Partition Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Palestinians walk among tons of piles of rubble in the northern Gaza Strip on 19 Nov 2025, consequence of Israeli genocidal destruction.\u00a0 [Mahmoud Issa\/Reuters]<\/p><\/div>\n

It is tapping into a well-known colonial strategy of isolating and fragmenting an occupied population.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

22 Nov 2025\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0Since the ceasefire was announced on October 10, the division of Gaza into a so-called \u201cgreen zone\u201d under Israeli army control and a so-called \u201cred zone\u201d, where Palestinians have been displaced and contained, has solidified. Separating the two is the invisible \u201cyellow line\u201d.<\/p>\n

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has signalled that reconstruction will be limited to the \u201cgreen zone\u201d where Israel and its allies have been working on plans for so-called \u201calternative safe communities\u201d.<\/p>\n

Although there are reports last week that these plans were dropped<\/a>, colleagues in the humanitarian field have informed me that the first such community is still slated to be built in Rafah, southern Gaza and a further 10 are planned along the yellow line and into the north.<\/p>\n

If plans for these \u201csafe communities\u201d proceed, they would cement a deadly fragmentation of Gaza.\u00a0 The purpose of creating these camps is not to provide humanitarian relief but to create zones of managed dispossession where Palestinians would be screened and vetted to enter in order to receive basic services, but would be explicitly barred from returning to the off-limits and blockaded \u201cred zone\u201d.<\/p>\n

These plans represent a recycled version of what Israel has long wanted to do in Gaza. The creation of \u201cbubbles\u201d \u2013 an initial, telling euphemism that I first heard proposed by the Israeli authorities when I was part of coordinating humanitarian operations in Palestine as a United Nations official \u2013 was the first iteration of areas where Palestinians would be screened and would be conditioned to receive controlled assistance.<\/p>\n

This is the grim reality of the so-called ceasefire deal in Gaza. It will not deliver peace; it will further shatter Gaza and the prospect for Palestinian sovereignty into pieces. If anything, it is a Gaza piece plan.<\/p>\n

On Monday this week, the United Nations Security Council voted to legitimise the plan by endorsing a board of peace to manage Gaza and an international stabilisation force (ISF) to provide security. But what areas will these forces secure? There is no agreed-upon peace for these forces to keep. According to maps I have seen of the \u201calternative safe communities\u201d, the ISF would be positioned along the yellow line and would secure these newly established camps.<\/p>\n

Hamas has unsurprisingly rejected the UNSC resolution. It was obvious that its provisions were not the outcome of a negotiated agreement. In the 20-point Trump plan, which was attached as an annex to the resolution<\/a>, point 17 may now be invoked: \u201cin the event Hamas delays or rejects this proposal, the above, including the scaled-up aid operations, will proceed in the terror-free areas handed over from the IDF [Israeli army] to the ISF\u201d. In this way, the \u201calternative safe communities\u201d may become the only enabled aid delivery centres, thereby prolonging the total blockade on Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The deadly logic of evacuation orders that marked the past two years and which drove Palestinians out of their homes, is now being extended into the UNSC-endorsed plan. Those who remain outside of the alternative communities, in the \u201cred zone\u201d, risk being labelled \u201cHamas supporters\u201d and therefore ineligible for protection under Israel\u2019s warped interpretation of international law and subject to ongoing military operations, as already seen in past days<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The fate of Palestinians in the \u201cred zone\u201d remains conspicuously absent from official planning. In fact, humanitarian organisations capable of saving lives are being squeezed out<\/a> by an Israeli registration process designed to stifle criticism and vet staff for compliance.<\/p>\n

The model of contained communities is not entirely new. The British created \u201cnew villages\u201d in Malaya in the 1950s, the Americans created \u201cstrategic hamlets\u201d in Vietnam in the 1960s, and the colonial authorities in Rhodesia (today\u2019s Zimbabwe) created \u201cprotected villages\u201d in the 1970s during so-called \u201ccounter-insurgency\u201d.<\/p>\n

Civilian populations were coerced and forced into camps where they were screened in return for aid. The plan was to diminish popular support for resistance groups who were fighting colonial rule. It failed.<\/p>\n

In South Africa, the apartheid government created bantustans, pseudo-independent homelands designed to concentrate and control the Black population. They also failed to prevent the collapse of a settler-colonial apartheid regime.<\/p>\n

In Gaza, the peace plan that has been imposed rather than negotiated will leave Israel\u2019s occupation not only intact but emboldened. The UNSC has endorsed something that goes against the rulings<\/a> of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the occupied Palestinian territory<\/a>, essentially whitewashing a genocidal crime scene and creating a monument to impunity.<\/p>\n

All of this unfolds during a so-called ceasefire, in which Palestinians continue to be killed for crossing invisible lines drawn by an illegal occupation.<\/p>\n

The world might hail this phase as an end to the war, and states reluctant to sanction Israel are undoubtedly relieved to revive trade and reduce public scrutiny.<\/p>\n

Moving beyond this dangerous status quo will require the very accountability the US and Israel have worked hard to avoid: implementing the rulings of the ICJ. While Western powers hollow out these institutions, new political coalitions are needed to demand the equal application of international law. At its most basic level, this requires the unhindered delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians wherever they are in the strip and Palestinian-led reconstruction that ensures Palestinians are not perpetually condemned to bare survival.<\/p>\n

The precedent set in Gaza would not be contained within the fences of Gaza\u2019s gated communities sealed by international forces: it would further erode the foundations of a so-called rules-based order. The only way forward is a return to the principle this entire process has so far ignored: the inalienable right of a people to determine their own future.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Jonathan Whittall is a South African humanitarian leader and political analyst. He was a senior UN official in Palestine between 2022 and 2025. Prior to this he worked for 14 years with Doctors without Borders (MSF). He has now established KEYS Initiative, a political affairs and strategic advisory firm based in Beirut.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – aljazeera.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

22 Nov 2025\u00a0– It is tapping into a well-known colonial strategy of isolating and fragmenting an occupied population.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":308874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1854,87,865,88,86,3288,70,965],"class_list":["post-308872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-occupation","tag-real-state","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308875,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308872\/revisions\/308875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}