More than 75,000 Palestinians have been murdered in Gaza, with tens of thousands more still missing beneath the rubble. They did not die to “build a home,” or privatize their beaches. They had homes and free beaches. Gaza was a living city—albeit under decades of Israeli siege—before it was leveled by the most advanced global terror machine on earth, armed, financed, and diplomatically shielded by successive U.S. administrations.

This reality was nowhere to be found at the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington. Sold as a diplomatic initiative, the gathering functioned instead as a spectacle condoning Israeli war crimes, discipline resistance, and remarket occupation as peace. The symbolism was everywhere. Donald Trump opened the meeting recognizing FIFA president Gianni Infantino, as if the gathering were a global sports gala, before he introduced the world’s political leaders. The staging spoke louder than words. The meeting was a performance, where hierarchy trumps humanity and optics replaces accountability.

Trump used the moment as expected. He generously lavished praise on himself, and recycled the same familiar hogwash by condemning Palestinian resistance while silent on Israel’s systematic violations of the ceasefire. In perhaps one the worst troubling moment of his speech, Trump claimed that the war in Gaza was over, but for “little flames.” 

The “little flames” were the lives of more than 600 Palestinians murdered by Israel since the start of his ceasefire. Six hundred human beings extinguished while Trump spoke in metaphors. Peace does not exist where murdering Palestinians is excused and occupation is normalized.

There was no recognition of genocide or Israeli atrocities. To the contrary, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff thanked Benjamin Netanyahu, an internationally indicted war criminal, and spoke exclusively of Israeli captives.

There was no recognition of genocide or Israeli atrocities. To the contrary, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff thanked Benjamin Netanyahu, an internationally indicted war criminal, and spoke exclusively of Israeli captives.

There was no mention of the tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians, the 10,000 Palestinian hostages in Israeli jails, no acknowledgment of mass graves, starving families, or children pulled lifeless from the rubble. Israeli predicament was individualised, humanised, and elevated. Palestinian suffering was erased entirely.

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The people of Gaza, and the rest of Palestine, do not suffer from a lack of homes. They suffer—and continue to suffer—from the complete denial of their historic rights. What Gaza needs is not reconstruction of beachfront real-estate fantasies, but a political solution that recognises Palestinians as human beings entitled to freedom, dignity, and a state of their own. Gaza is neither a development site nor a charitable project.

Treating Gaza as a humanitarian problem to be managed, not a people to be liberated, is precisely how occupation is preserved and why resistance becomes inevitable.

Treating Gaza as a humanitarian problem to be managed, not a people to be liberated, is precisely how occupation is preserved and why resistance becomes inevitable.

Trump claims to champion peace while endorsing Israel, a state that has destroyed or damaged more than 90 percent of the hospitals, 100 percent of the universities, targeted bakeries, water systems, murdered close to 300 journalists and bars international press to conceal its war crimes in Gaza. He condemns resistance to the occupation while excusing the conditions that make resistance unavoidable. He speaks of stability while supporting a permanent system of oppression. For peace in Trump’s vocabulary means institutionalize submission.

Unlike many Arab and Muslim rulers who lined up to kiss Trump’s ring, several foreign leaders, preserving some measure of decency and self-respect, were absent from the Washington extravaganza. The Mexican President declined because Palestine was not invited. The Vatican and others were absent because the forum excluded the very people under occupation. Even European states complicit in enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza, could not bring themselves to join the Washington circus. 

Since the ceasefire was announced, Israel has repeatedly rationed food, fuel, medical supplies, and murdered hundreds of Palestinian. These violations are not disputed. They are documented by humanitarian organizations and international observers. Throughout, Trump and his Israel-first team normalised them through disinformation, omission, and trivialized it as “little skirmishes.” The siege is erased. The occupation rendered invisible. Apartheid denied. Resistance, detached from its political, historical and legal context, and dismissed as a nuisance.

Trump’s portrayal of Palestinian resistance completes the moral inversion. He blames the victims, even as Israel prevents his handpicked civilian “peace committee” from entering Gaza, obstructing the very tools of his supposed peace. No mentioning of decades of military occupation, 17-year siege on Gaza, or an apartheid system that privileges Jewish supremacy while denying Palestinians basic rights. 

What makes Trump’s Board dangerous is its ambition to absolve Israel from the genocide, and license mass killing under the banner of “peace.” By treating Israeli violations as tolerable and Palestinian resistance as illegitimate is not just hypocrisy, rather it is driven by his political impotency to stand up to the power of the Israel-first American Zionist. 

Trump’s Board of Peace will not fail only because it lacks balance or nuance. It will fail because it is never meant to confront oppression. Besides being an aggrandising opportunity for Trump, it is formed to clear Israel of war crimes, discipline the occupied, and anesthetize a public trained to accept Palestinian death as unfortunate background noise. 

When peace exonerates the perpetrators and silences the victims, war rages on. When murder is dismissed as “little flames” to be snuffed out by innocent lives, resistance becomes a moral imperative. Colonized peoples do not achieve liberty by renouncing resistance while their land is stolen and their future erased. Such is not peace, but rather the normalization of barbarism and the impunity of genocide. 

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