Abandoned and Betrayed
The Palestinian People Face Erasure as Arab States Prioritize Power Over Principle
The state of Palestine is a lie. Not the aspiration, not the people’s claim to their land, but the diplomatic construct wielded by Arab powers who speak of Palestinian independence while engineering its impossibility. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Secretary of State Anthony Blinken: “Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do, so I need to make sure this is meaningful.” This admission cuts through decades of rhetoric to highlight the cynical heart of Arab policy toward Palestine.
Independent analyses estimate 680,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. As of today, more than 500,000 people throughout Gaza are living under Phase 5 famine conditions, the highest level characterised by starvation, destitution and death. Israeli forces have systematically killed over 1,800 Palestinians seeking aid since May, implementing what soldiers called “Operation Salted Fish”, shooting unarmed aid seekers to keep them away from distribution centers. Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world, with over 4,500 amputations conducted with little or no anesthesia due to Israel’s blockade. In no Arab country surveyed do more than 13 percent of citizens support normalisation with Israel, yet their governments persist in negotiations that treat Palestinian self-determination as one variable in a broader regional equation. The Abraham Accords began this process in 2020, with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan recognising Israel without any meaningful Palestinian gains. Each agreement weakened Palestinian leverage while strengthening Israel’s strategic position. Palestinian statehood rhetoric provides domestic legitimacy for Arab leaders while normalisation serves their strategic interests.
The Biden administration assembled an Arab contact group: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority, ostensibly to develop post-conflict arrangements for Gaza within a broader peace process. This framework shows the fundamental deception, Palestinian liberation reframed as regional stabilisation. The proposed agreements explicitly link any Palestinian state to empowering a reformed Palestinian Authority to eliminate the resistance and dismantle resistance infrastructure. Palestinian statehood becomes contingent on Palestinian surrender. Israeli officials have admitted that many included in their combatant killed counts were “Palestinians who never held a gun in their lives”. The systematic targeting of hospitals, schools, and civilian infrastructure serves a broader objective than military victory, it renders resistance impossible through demographic and social destruction. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced plans to build settlements that would divide the West Bank and disconnect it from East Jerusalem, actively undermining any viable Palestinian state while normalisation talks continue. More than 150 countries now recognise Palestine as a state, yet this diplomatic progress occurs alongside systematic elimination of Palestinian presence. Recognition without enforcement becomes performative politics that enables continued occupation. The proposed Palestinian state follows the Bantustan model fragmented territories lacking sovereignty, military capacity, or economic viability. As South Africa’s UN representative warned, this creates “not one viable State and a Bantustan” rather than genuine two-state solution. The convergence of these diplomatic maneuvers with Trump’s Gaza takeover plan exposes the nakedly commercial nature of Palestinian dispossession. Trump’s proposal to take over and own Gaza, transforming it into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” represents the final stage of Palestinian erasure, not just political elimination but literal real estate appropriation. His son-in-law Jared Kushner, architect of the Abraham Accords and now advising on Gaza’s day after scenarios, described Gaza’s waterfront property as very valuable and has been developing luxury seaside resorts across the Mediterranean through his investment firm Affinity Partners, which manages billions from Gulf states. The proposed GREAT Trust (Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation) plan, involving Kushner and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, envisions luxury hotels, an Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone, and complete demographic restructuring funded by the same Arab states claiming to support Palestinian statehood. Palestinians who refuse displacement would receive $5,000 relocation packages while their land gets converted into a private equity playground. This represents the ultimate synthesis of imperial violence and real estate speculation genocide as urban renewal. The international community treats Palestinian suffering as acceptable collateral damage in pursuit of regional arrangements that serve great power interests. Arab publics describe Israel’s assault on Gaza using terms like genocide, massacre, or ethnic cleansing, yet their governments pursue deeper integration with the perpetrators while positioning themselves as future partners in Gaza’s corporate colonisation. Western powers frame Palestinian self-determination as a negotiable commodity rather than an inalienable right, subordinating justice to profit margins.
Palestinians face coordinated abandonment by the international system that claims to champion their cause. Arab states deploy statehood rhetoric to justify normalisation deals that entrench occupation while secretly positioning themselves as investors in Palestinian dispossession. The Palestinian Authority collaborates in its own marginalisation, accepting the role of administrator over fragments of occupied territory in exchange for international recognition. Palestinian resistance provides the pretext for elimination campaigns that Arab states tacitly support, knowing that Palestinian defeat opens Gaza to the real estate speculation their sovereign wealth funds are prepared to finance.