What Trump’s Peace Deal Really Means for Gaza

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Daniel J. Wakin: I’m Dan Wakin, an international editor for New York Times Opinion.

There’s relief across Gaza and Israel — relief that there is a cease-fire, relief that the killing has stopped, relief that the Israeli hostages are home and relief that close to 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners have been released.

The cease-fire came in the first phase of President Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which Hamas and Israel have agreed to. But so many questions remain — on the fate of Hamas, on the Israeli presence in Gaza, on the future of the Palestinian cause.

To talk about this, I’m joined by Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization. Diana, welcome.

Diana Buttu: Thanks, Dan. It’s nice to be here.

Wakin: You’re speaking to me from your home in Haifa now.

Buttu: Yes.

Wakin: What have the last few days been like for you, as a Palestinian living in Israel?

Buttu: Where do I begin? It’s been a mix of emotions. The first is that I’m relieved that the bombs have stopped. I don’t think there was any Palestinian who wanted to see that continue, particularly because we’ve lived through two years of watching a livestreamed genocide.

And at the same time, I’m very worried. I’m worried about the future. I’m worried about what this agreement means, I’m worried about what it means for me, and I’m worried that we’re just going to be papering over what’s happened over the past two years and that for many people, it’s just going to return to life as usual — except for Palestinians, in particular, Palestinians in Gaza. It’s a mix of emotions, a real mix.

Wakin: Do you have any friends in Gaza? And if so, what have you been hearing from them?

Buttu: Yes, I have a lot of friends in Gaza. I lived in Gaza for a year and a half, and it’s been such a hard two years because over the course of two years, I didn’t have words. I didn’t know what to say to them. I felt totally helpless.

Today, when I checked in on my friends, their reactions were mixed. Every one of them had their home destroyed. Every one of them was displaced more than once. Every one of them had at least one member of their family killed. So this impacted them very deeply.

There was definitely relief that the bombs are over. But as they were going back to their homes, particularly those who live in Gaza City, they were going back to just rubble and thinking about all of the ways in which they’re going to have to rebuild, how they’re going to rebuild and how they’re going to start their lives again. How do we begin? And who’s going to help us?

Wakin: As far as the deal itself, the various provisions of the deal — you were an adviser, as I mentioned, to the P.L.O. You’ve seen peace negotiations up close, and you know what goes into them, and you know what the result can be. What do you think about this deal?

Buttu: You know, there was something really troubling about this agreement, and it’s the fact that Palestinians had to negotiate this agreement. It’s just never been in history that people need to negotiate an end to genocide.

We’ve had everybody from international human rights organizations to two U.N. reports to the International Association of Genocide Scholars to a number of genocide scholars to the International Court of Justice saying that there’s a plausible case for genocide to two Israeli human rights organizations, all calling it genocide.

And yet, rather than there being sanctions put on Israel or an arms embargo put on Israel, we instead forced Palestinians to go down the path of negotiating. That in and of itself is very troublesome. We forced Palestinians to be negotiating an end to famine with the very people who have been starving them in the first place.

Leaving that aside — and it’s important for me to say that — leaving that aside, when you look at the text of the agreement, it’s so problematic because embedded in this agreement, there are no guarantees that are given to Palestinians that Israel isn’t going to resume this. Remember, Israel has never abided by any agreement. They haven’t abided by U.N. resolutions. Not having any guarantees makes it such that you’re leaving Palestinians once again to negotiate with the stronger party, and it’s akin to negotiating with a gun to your head.

I would have hoped that after all of this, instead of just pretending that these two years didn’t happen, that there would have been a recognition that there was a root cause to all of this — which is the occupation — and instead there would have been recognition that this occupation must end and sanctions put on Israel until this occupation ends. Instead, they just papered over it and pretended as though these two years didn’t happen.

Wakin: When you say that Palestinians are being forced to negotiate with a gun to their head, I think from the Israeli side, you might hear it said, “Well, Hamas was the organization that launched an attack that killed 1,200 innocent people. And why should Israel, therefore, give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to negotiating?” How would you respond to that?

Buttu: When we look at Oct. 7, it didn’t come out of a vacuum. The Israelis have lived now for decades completely ignoring Gaza and at the same time maintaining a very brutal occupation over Gaza.

That’s the problem — that there’s been this brutal occupation that has been made invisible not only to Israelis but has been made invisible also to the rest of the world. And in making it invisible, they somehow ignore the harm and dehumanize Palestinians.

There’s been a lot of emphasis placed on the Israelis, but I think it’s important to talk about what has been happening to Palestinians. On Monday the Israelis released 1,700 Palestinians to Gaza. These were Palestinians who were hostages. These were Palestinians who were picked up in the aftermath of October 2023. They were used as bargaining chips. And by the way, there’s still roughly a thousand people from Gaza who remain in Israeli prisons.

If you look at the history of the ways in which Palestinians have been used, nobody ever really looks at these numbers of how many Palestinian prisoners there are and how it is that these people are never, ever released. It’s a system that just keeps going and going.

These are the nameless, the faceless that we never hear about. And my fear is that in this agreement, we’re just going to go back to the way it was before. It’s just going to be yet another papering over the harm that has been caused by these decades of occupation.

Wakin: There was a summit on Monday in Egypt, and it was focused on ending the war and bringing peace to the Middle East. The Egyptian president, el-Sisi, stated openly that he advocated a two-state solution. That is a state for Israelis and a state for Palestinians in the region. But Trump didn’t mention that at all. Do you see a disconnect here between the political future of Palestinians and what Trump and Israel see in the future?

Buttu: Most definitely. This 20-point plan looks like, sounds like, feels like an Israeli plan that was rebranded as an American plan. In fact, a Trump plan, not just an American plan. And in this American/Trump plan, it doesn’t mention freedom for Palestinians.

If Palestinians behave, if Palestinians reform — and, by the way, their reform means that if the Palestinian Authority drops all of its claims in the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu and against Gallant, the Israeli defense minister at the time — if all of that is done to President Trump’s satisfaction, then maybe we can start talking about a Palestinian state, which he acknowledges that Palestinians aspire to. That’s what’s written in the 20-point plan.

There’s nowhere in this plan the idea of a Palestinian state. There’s nowhere in this plan an end to the occupation. And one of the strangest things, for me, was seeing all of these states that just a few weeks ago announced that they were recognizing a Palestinian state come forward to this agreement. It left me puzzled and thinking, “Well, what exactly did you recognize?”

So it’s completely off. It’s completely off. That’s why I’m very worried about it. I’m very, very worried.

And, of course, the other thing is that this agreement still leaves Israel with all of the room to decide Gaza’s future. It gives Israel the ability to decide what gets into Gaza, how much gets into Gaza and when it gets into Gaza.

Over the past two years, we’ve seen that Israel has bombed roughly 98 percent of Gaza’s farmland, which means that the population of the Gaza Strip is now almost entirely dependent upon Israel for its food supply — whether that means the quantity or the quality, it’s going to be practically dependent upon Israel.

Wakin: I hear you that many think this is a deeply flawed agreement, but would it have been better to not reach an agreement at all and stop the killing, just because these other aspects were not included?

Buttu: I don’t think that we should be looking at it in such binary terms. I think that there was a way to stop the killing, and I think that there is a way to address the root causes, and I don’t think that they addressed either, to be honest.

I don’t think that they have stopped the killing, particularly since we’ve seen over the past few days that the killing has not stopped. The major bombs have stopped, but the killing has not.

And I don’t think that they have come up with a way — “they” being the United States, Israel and the rest of the international community — to actually end the occupation to address the root causes. So it was neither here nor there. The only thing that they addressed was the one side of the equation, which was the Israelis, and that was it.

Wakin: You mentioned what appeared to be empty recognitions of Palestinian statehood. That is, in the past few weeks Britain, France and Canada all recognized a Palestinian state. Do you think that those acts of recognition will have any impact on things?

Buttu: I certainly hope so, but as somebody who was involved for such a long time, I just didn’t see that their involvement ever meant anything.

Let me step back and say, for many, many years, all I heard was this idea of the belief in the two-state solution. I call it the magic pill. It’s like they swallowed this magic pill that everything could somehow be dismissed if you just swallow the magic pill.

So the boom in settlement construction could be dismissed by swallowing the magic pill. Or the construction of the wall in the West Bank, that can be ignored because of the magic pill of the two-state solution. Or the harm that’s caused by the imprisonment of so many people — that can be ignored because of the two-state solution. Or the siege on Gaza — that can be ignored because of this magic pill of the two-state solution.

And that was the world that I lived in for such a long time. For all of those years, all I heard was the two-state solution, but none of these states did anything to actually bring that two-state solution about. They just kept swallowing the pill, swallowing the pill, swallowing the pill. Now the idea of the recognition of the state feels the same — that they have recognized the state and it’s the new magic pill.

Yes, we recognize the state, but we’re going to close our eyes to the continued settlement construction expansion. We’re going to close our ears when one of the Israeli ministers — Smotrich, the minister of finance — says that he’s going to annex the West Bank and is pushing for it. We’re going to close our ears and eyes when we see what they’re doing in Gaza because we’ve recognized the Palestinian state.

This is where it feels so empty and so hollow that they’re not going to do anything about it. They, once again, have swallowed that magic pill and are going to absolve themselves of it.

Wakin: How does the world end the swallowing of the magic pill? What changes that?

Buttu: It requires countries to finally confront Israel. They’re not willing to do that, but they should. That means everything from an arms embargo on Israel — because we’ve seen how Israel uses its weapons; it uses them to bomb hospitals, to bomb schools, to violate international law. It means cutting off trade with Israel. It means ousting Israel from these international arenas.

And it can be done, and it has been done in the past, with South Africa. It’s possible, and it’s possible particularly since they’ve now recognized the state of Palestine.

But, of course, my fear is that they’re not going to do that. My fear is that what we’re seeing in Gaza — they’re watching this genocide unfold instead of undertaking their obligations under the Genocide Convention, which is to prevent genocide or to stop genocide. Instead, it’s like they’re going to give us a cookie by saying we’re going to recognize you. That’s my fear, Dan. That’s my fear. They’re recognizing Palestine as we’re watching it being erased. It’s just mind boggling.

Wakin: Let me ask you some slightly more personal questions. You grew up in Canada and lived in Gaza and the West Bank, and you then moved to Israel in 2010. You’re one of the rare Palestinians who has lived in all three places. So you have a good perspective on the way it feels to be a Palestinian in the region and also the way it feels for the world to look upon Palestinians.

Do you think the perception of the Palestinian people has changed over recent years? And particularly, what impact has Oct. 7 had on that?

Buttu: Yes, I do think that it has changed. The reason that I think it’s changed is because back in the 1990s, with the Oslo agreements, I think that Palestine and Palestinians became an issue that people didn’t have to think about.

And then suddenly and over time, it changed. In particular, in the aftermath of Oct. 7, I think that we’ve seen a groundswell of support for Palestinians. I think that we’ve finally seen that people are aware of what it’s like to live under Israeli military rule. I think they’ve seen what it’s like to live in Gaza, and I do think that public opinion is shifting.

Wakin: You said earlier in our conversation that you’re worried about what this agreement means for Palestinians but also specifically you’re worried about what it means for you personally.

Buttu: Yes.

Wakin: What do you mean by that?

Buttu: You know, I don’t even know where to begin.

There was a poll that came out this year, and the poll said that 82 percent of Israelis approved of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza — like, removing Palestinians from Gaza. And then the next question was, “Do you support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship?” And the response was 56 percent said “yes.” And younger respondents were more likely to say yes as well.

And that does not at all surprise me. It’s not at all surprising to me. And the reason that that’s not at all surprising is that over time living here, I’ve seen that people have shifted more and more and more to the right. I wasn’t really around, but in the 1980s, there was discussion about the occupation and the need to end the occupation. Now there’s a sort of a feeling inside Israel that they’re just going to be around forever. And because it’s just going to be around forever, it’s part of the state.

Wakin: What do you mean by “it”?

Buttu: The occupation, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

And because the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is going to be around forever — this was the mind-set before Oct. 7 — it became kind of easy to just ignore the fact that Israel was created through the nakba.

Wakin: Tell our listeners what the nakba was.

Buttu: The nakba is the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Seventy-five percent of the Palestinian population fled or was forced out of their homeland, and hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages were wiped off the map. There were roughly 150,000 Palestinians who remained. My parents were two of them. My father’s town was one of those towns that were wiped off the map and replaced with an Israeli town.

Being a Palestinian in Israel — now, remember, I didn’t grow up here, so I’m coming in as an observer, not as somebody who was born here and lived here and was raised here — so to be a Palestinian who lives in this country means to be a survivor of the nakba. It means that you, yourself, were a survivor or your parents were survivors or your grandparents were survivors of the nakba. As a survivor, you do things that survivors do, like you learn to adapt. You learn to find a community that is yours. You sometimes learn to make yourself small and invisible.

And for years and years, this is what this community did. It now numbers two million. Incidentally, it’s roughly 20 percent of the population. They find themselves always finding coping mechanisms to adapt. But the Israeli state doesn’t treat them as just normal citizens. The Israeli state targets this community, and it targets it through discriminatory laws — everything from land laws to immigration laws, etc.

So now, in the aftermath of all of this, you see these public opinion polls and the way that it’s going, and you just know where it’s going next. You have Israeli leaders who are saying things like, “The only reason that you Palestinians in Israel are around is because David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, didn’t finish the job in 1948.” And it very much feels existential at this point.

Remember for people who lived here in the aftermath of 1948, they had to live with people who carried out the nakba, who were apologists for the nakba or who denied the nakba. Now we’re going to be living with the people who carried out the genocide, were deniers of the genocide or apologists for it. And it’s heavy. I just know what’s going to come next. I know what’s going to come next.

Wakin: You’ve painted a very bleak portrait of what it’s like to be Palestinian in Israel. Do you have thoughts of leaving?

Buttu: You have to ask me every hour of every day. Overall, no. And the reason is, I keep saying, “This is where I’m from.” This is where my grandparents are from. This is where my parents are from. My grandparents, my great-grandparents — all of my family is here. All of my extended family is here. My group is here. My loved ones are here. So overall, no.

But then there’ll be certain times where I think of my son — I have an 11-year-old boy — and I worry. I worry all the time. I worry about what it’s going to be like for him. I remember my late father telling me about what it was like for him in the aftermath of the nakba. My father was 9 years old during the nakba. My son was 9 in October of 2023. So I am always thinking about the similarities. And I’m always thinking about “What’s it going to be like for him? What world is he going to be living in? How’s it going to be for him when he gets older?”

Wakin: I guess here’s the point where we ask the obligatory question: What gives you hope? It seems like it’s not really an appropriate question right now. But there has been a global shift in opinion regarding Palestinians and what constitutes justice for them. Do you see anything optimistic there?

Buttu: Yes, definitely, and there are a few things. First is, I think there’s finally starting to be an awakening that we can’t just ignore what’s going on with Palestinians. These leaders may try to ignore it, but I think that there’s a real awakening, at least on the street level, that this isn’t going to go away anytime soon.

The second thing is, I’m also beginning to see that there’s the start of — even among diplomats — a recognition that they have to do things a different way. But the thing that gives me the most hope is that even over the past two years, what I saw when so many of the Palestinian hostages were being released is they kept saying, “They tried to break us, they tried to break us, they tried to break us, and they couldn’t break us.” There’s a resolve that Palestinians have that is really there. It’s unbreakable.

Wakin: Diana, thank you so much. I really appreciate this conversation.

Buttu: My pleasure.

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This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

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