Legitimizing Genocide: The Israel-Trump Plan and Gaza’s Future

In the wake of the so-called “ceasefire” in Gaza, Israel has continued killing Palestinians, demolishing entire neighborhoods, and entrenching its control over the land. Meanwhile, the UNSC has officially endorsed US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza, effectively granting international legitimacy for perpetual Israeli-US occupation and laying the groundwork for a return to “business as usual” after genocide. But what do these developments actually mean on the ground?

Inès Abdel Razek and Munir Nuseibah joined Al-Shabaka for a conversation on the politics behind the UNSC resolution, the implementability of the US-Israeli plan, and the scenarios now being advanced for Gaza and for Palestine more broadly.

Munir Nuseibah

Munir Nuseibah is a human rights lawyer and academic based in Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, Palestine. He is an assistant professor at Al-Quds University's faculty...

Inès Abdel Razek

Inès Abdel Razek is the Executive Director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD) and its digital platform Rabet, an independent Palestinian organization focusing on international mobilization and digital...

(2025, December 9)

Latest Analysis

Commentary

Civil Society

The World Radicalized by the Gaza Genocide

The global reckoning that followed October 7, 2023, marked a profound rupture in how Palestine is understood worldwide. The Gaza genocide exposed how Israeli mass violence is not exceptional or reactive, but foundational to the Zionist project. What was once framed as a “conflict” to be managed is now widely recognized as a system of domination to be dismantled. It ushered in a shift away from the technocratic language of peace processes and toward an honest confrontation with the structural realities Palestinians have long named: settler colonialism, apartheid, and the ongoing Nakba. The commentary argues that the Israeli genocidal campaign in Gaza has radicalized the world. When crowds march through global capitals demanding a free Palestine, they simultaneously articulate demands for the abolition of racial capitalism, extractive regimes, climate injustice, and all forms of contemporary fascism. In this moment of radical clarity, Palestine becomes a lens through which the underlying architecture of global domination is laid bare—and through which new horizons of collective freedom emerge.

Tareq Baconi· Dec 21, 2025

Policy Brief

Politics

Christian Zionism in the Global South: The Case of South Africa

European empires used Christian missions to legitimize conquest in Africa and advance imperial interests, laying the groundwork for a political form of Christian Zionism. British evangelicals were central in transforming Christian Zionism from a theological belief into an imperial strategy by promoting Jewish resettlement in Palestine as a means of extending British influence. This fusion of religious ideology and imperial ambition endures in contemporary Christian Zionist movements, which frame modern Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and recast Palestinian presence as an impediment to a divinely ordained order. This policy brief shows how these narratives and their policy effects have taken root in the Global South, including in South Africa. In this context, Israeli efforts increasingly rely on Christian Zionist networks to weaken longstanding solidarity with Palestinians and cultivate support for Israeli occupation.

Fathi Nimer· Dec 7, 2025

Policy Memo

Politics

Trump’s UNSC Resolution 2803: Repackaged Colonial Rule

On November 17, 2025, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2803 endorsing US President Donald Trump’s twenty-point plan for Gaza. The vote, pushed through after weeks of US pressure, establishes two supposedly “transitional” bodies to take control of Gaza: a Board of Peace tasked with overseeing aid delivery, reconstruction, and day-to-day administration, and an International Stabilization Force to take over security and disarm Hamas. Notably, the resolution does not refer to the genocide of the past two years, nor does it address accountability for it. Instead, this policy memo shows how the resolution repackages colonial control over the Palestinian people in Gaza, rewards the US—a co-perpetrator of genocide—with control over Gaza and its potentially lucrative reconstruction process, while simultaneously relieving the Israeli regime of all of its responsibilities as an illegally occupying power. Rather than advancing justice, the UN has once again undermined its own legal principles under US pressure.

Yara Hawari· Nov 20, 2025

The World Radicalized by the Gaza Genocide