By Mustafa Makumba 

Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza is being paraded as a path to peace. However, in reality, it is nothing short of a recipe for further subjugation. The plan demands Gaza’s complete demilitarization, the dismantling of local authority, and governance under foreign technocrats, all this while Israeli security continues to control borders and movement. It offers vague promises of reconstruction but strips Palestinians of sovereignty. This is not peace. It is controlled under another name.

Islam is clear that peace must rest on justice, not oppression. The Qur’an reminds us that “Allah commands justice and fair dealing, and forbids oppression” (16:90). Any plan that places all burdens on the oppressed while rewarding the oppressor is a betrayal of this divine command. Another verse warns: “Whoever kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell, to abide therein” (4:93). How can a plan that ignores decades of killing, siege, and dispossession claim moral ground?

Muslim tradition has always insisted that oppression must be resisted, not legitimized. Yet this pact demands the opposite as it asks a battered people to surrender every means of defence, every shred of autonomy, in exchange for crumbs of aid. It is not a negotiation; it is an ultimatum dressed in the clothing of diplomacy.

History shows the futility of such arrangements. From Oslo to Camp David, Palestinians have been promised statehood while receiving checkpoints, settlements, and sieges instead. Each plan has spoken the language of peace while deepening the reality of occupation. Why should Gaza believe this one will be any different? The plan’s transitional arrangements, external boards, and international oversight amount to stripping Palestinians of political agency in their own land.

If implemented, the pact would institutionalize suffering. Gaza’s youth would grow up not in freedom, but in a prison with taller walls and tighter locks. Mothers would continue to bury children while foreign powers debate “reform.” Fathers would struggle to provide under a system where every resource remains hostage to Israeli approval. Far from healing wounds, this plan keeps them open and bleeding.

The Islamic duty is not silence but truth. Scholars through the centuries have taught that a society built on injustice cannot last. Ibn Taymiyyah said that even an unbelieving state can endure if it is just, but no state can endure if it is unjust. By that measure, this pact, rooted in inequality, is doomed to collapse.

To those promoting this deal as “realistic”: realism without justice is only another word for surrender. To the Muslim world: the Qur’an commands us to stand firmly for justice, even if it is against ourselves or our allies. Gaza does not need another foreign-dictated pact. Gaza needs freedom, dignity, and justice. Until these are delivered, no plan—whether twenty points or two hundred—will end the relentlessness of its suffering.