Nickolay Mladenov, the former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, now the Board of Peace High Representative for Gaza, is misrepresenting Gaza to the full capability of Western complicity with colonialism.  Over the span of eight months, the Board of Peace is supposed to implement the five stages of disarmament, subject to agreement by Israel and Hamas. Israel has nothing to lose whether the agreement goes through or not. For Palestinians, however, the picture is bleak either way, and no amount of double speak by Mladenov can disguise the fact that disarmament and reconstruction facilitate Israel’s control over Gaza through the Board of Peace.

Stopping military operations and implementing humanitarian protocols constitutes the first stage of disarmament.

While the language used by Mladenov infers the usual concept of both sides, as if equivalence exists between the coloniser and the colonised, the first stage actually points to the failure of maintaining the agreed-upon ceasefire in October 2025 and entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

While the language used by Mladenov infers the usual concept of both sides, as if equivalence exists between the coloniser and the colonised, the first stage actually points to the failure of maintaining the agreed-upon ceasefire in October 2025 and entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Disarming Hamas continues to provide a veneer for Israel’s genocide by various means, including violating ceasefires and depriving Palestinians of humanitarian aid. According to Mladenov, the first phase is based on reciprocity, but reciprocity is not a reality in a colonial genocidal reality. 

The second stage, which Mladenov terms sequencing, refers to the collection of  “the most dangerous weapons” and destroying Gaza’s tunnels. Rhetorical reciprocity is only related to the first stage. While focusing on collecting weapons from Hamas – on a scale from the most dangerous to personal weapons, there is no mention of Israel’s US-made 2,000........

© Middle East Monitor