On June 17, 2026, Presidents Donald Trump and Masoud Pezeshkian signed a fourteen-point memorandum of understanding to end the war between the United States and Iran. This lifted the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, waived Iranian oil export restrictions, enabled the unfreezing of Iranian assets, established a “de-confliction cell” for Lebanon, and set a sixty-day deadline to settle the nuclear question.
By June 21, negotiators at Lake Lucerne had agreed on a roadmap to a final deal. By the 25th, the Gulf’s foreign ministers met American Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Bahrain to seal the framework. The next day, in Washington, Israel and Lebanon signed a trilateral framework of their own, a major formal step toward ending decades of conflict between them.
I have read the memorandum closely, the way one reads a document that will shape the lives of people one loves. The word Palestine does not appear in it – not even once. In a moment such as this, it is tempting withdraw into grievance, but grievance is not analysis. So let me state the argument plainly:
the roadmap agreed upon rests on the premise that the Palestinian question can be handled as a side issue, to be addressed later, by lesser officials, through technical committees. That premise is fundamentally wrong. It will cost everyone, including the people now congratulating themselves over Swiss lakes and in Gulf palaces. A regional settlement forced upon the Palestinians top-down is not peace. It is procrastination.
The cause that Iran has instrumentalized remains as unresolved as it had been before the first American bomb fell on Tehran
The Vacuum Was Not Filled – It Only Shifted
I wrote some months ago that political vacuums do not remain empty, and that Iran had moved into the one left by the hollowing out of Palestinian political life. The corollary is now clear: when the power that exploited the vacuum is itself defeated, the vacuum is not filled. It waits for the next occupant.
Iran entered 2026 weakened by sanctions, by its 2025 confrontation with Israel, and by the erosion of its regional clients. The American and Israeli attack in February-March 2026 finished the job by shattering Iran’s leadership. However, even before the question of its military strength had been settled, the ongoing confrontation with the United States and Israel pushed Tehran to concentrate its resources on its own security, while gradually relegating the Palestinian issue to the margins, both rhetorically and in practice.
On 25 June, the Gulf states and Washington jointly declared that lasting peace requires “addressing the full spectrum of Iran’s threats, including its ballistic missiles, drones, and support of proxies.” Note again the glaring absence of the Palestinian question.
None of this has affected a single Palestinian in any way. The cause that Iran has instrumentalized remains as unresolved as it had been before the first American bomb fell on Tehran. The difference is that the people who have exploited our suffering as a strategic asset are gone, and the people who have stood by and watched us being bombed and starved are now drafting the peace. We have exchanged a cynical patron for an indifferent custodian. That is not liberation. It is a reshuffle.
A force that cannot find soldiers, a fund that cannot hold money, a committee that cannot enter Palestine… this is the apparatus on which the future of two million war-torn people has been staked
Lebanon Sets the Tone
The 26 June Israel-Lebanon framework deserves close reading, because it is the clearest model yet of the order being built, and of its blatant oversights. On paper, the deal restores Lebanese sovereignty over Lebanese land. It establishes a sequenced process, a trilateral military coordination group, and a pilot handover of two small areas to the Lebanese army.
The Israeli Ambassador to the US summarized its logic with unusual candor: “Iran is out, Hezbollah is out, and the road to peace is in.” It is a performance-based security architecture, conditioned on the disarmament of a non-state actor before the occupying power withdraws. According to Netanyahu, this means Israel would keep its buffer zone as long as Hezbollah has not disarmed.
The resemblance to the postwar situation in Gaza is complete: disarm the militants first; restore sovereignty later, conditionally, according to the occupier’s timetable; and let an external power set the pace.
The Lebanese state at least exists to be the beneficiary, however contested. In Gaza, there is no equivalent, no recognized Palestinian sovereign waiting to receive the territory, only a committee of technocrats stranded in Cairo and a board chaired by an American president in his personal capacity. The result is a framework that can return land to a state, applied to a nation prevented from having one by the very powers meeting in lakes and palaces.
Gaza in the Shadow of the Deal
Look at where the diplomatic bandwidth went, and what it left behind. The Board of Peace, Trump’s instrument for “the day after,” launched in February 2026 with $17 billion in pledges, spent six months failing. A mere 0.5% of Gaza’s rubble were cleared. The pledged billions never reached the dedicated World Bank account; the money remains in a private account with no oversight.
The committee of Gazans meant to govern the Strip has been stranded in Cairo since January 2026, never once permitted into Gaza. In late June, its members were reduced to “recalibrating” at a Cyprus resort. Indonesia’s promise to send 8,000 troops for the designated “stabilization force” evaporated when the Iran war broke out, and the Board now courts Georgia and Vietnam to fill the ranks. A force that cannot find soldiers, a fund that cannot hold money, a committee that cannot enter Palestine… this is the apparatus on which the future of two million war-torn people has been staked.
Meanwhile, the killing continues under the guise of ceasefire. More than one thousand Palestinians have died since the fire officially ceased on 10 October 2025, most near a “yellow line” Israeli forces keep shifting, expanding the territory under direct Israeli control from 53 to at least 60 percent of the Strip. American officials privately fear this shifting line would become the permanent border.
In the central West Bank, the plan to settle the E1 area advances, with an Israeli minister boasting it would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”. In March 2026, UN experts called the Board itself an illegal maneuver driven by avarice. Seventy-three thousand dead, and we are the footnote to an afterthought.
Why this Framework Won’t Hold
Watch how quickly the great-power deal is already fraying. Within ten days of the June 17 signing, the parties were disputing whether Iran had agreed to readmit nuclear inspectors; technical talks were postponed; Trump accused Iran of firing drones at Hormuz shipping and threatened to seize the straits by force; and fresh fighting broke out in southern Lebanon. A structure meant to deliver stability is held together by threats, hanging on threads that may not survive sixty days, let alone the years of peace our children need.
This is the structural flaw of the entire approach: it starts by securing the security interests of the powerful, pushes the politics of the powerless for later or never and mistakes the absence of open warfare for the presence of peace. You cannot build a stable order on the suppression of a people’s political existence and expect it to hold.
The blockade on Gaza did not buy Israel security; it enabled seventeen years of deceptive calm, followed by October 7, 2023. A regional deal that treats Palestinian self-determination as a side issue to be administered by clerks rather than a right to be restored by leaders will inevitably produce the next eruption.
With Iran weakened, the temptation now is to conclude that without a sponsor, our Palestinian cause can be downgraded to rubble clearing and police training. Because it will feel – for some, for a while – like success, this is the most dangerous illusion of all.
What the Moment Calls For
I am not writing to grieve, though God knows there is reason to. I am writing because there is a narrow opening here, and openings tend to close. Iran’s weakening over the past years removes a major excuse for ignoring Palestinian political rights: that any concession would supposedly reward Tehran’s axis. Now, no one can credibly argue that recognizing Palestinian self-determination strengthens an Iranian project. For the first time in years, the Palestinian question can finally be addressed on its own terms.
Arab capitals is sharper now. They can let the Iran deal stand as the template – defense for the strong, deferral for the weak – and pay for it later in their own coin
For the Gulf states, the calculus has changed, but the conclusion has not. The instability radiating from Palestinian collapse still intersects with their security, their trade corridors, their diversification plans. What is different is the leverage they now hold. Reconstruction money is the one resource this moment cannot do without, and it belongs largely to them. The Board of Peace has proven it cannot move that money on its current terms.
That failure is a source of power, if only the Gulf chooses to use it: to condition every dollar on a genuine political horizon – on a custodianship that bridges to self-governance rather than a permanent receivership.
The choice before Arab capitals is sharper now. They can let the Iran deal stand as the template – defense for the strong, deferral for the weak – and pay for it later in their own coin. Or they can use this rare interval, with the old excuses exhausted and the reconstruction billions in their hands, to insist that no regional order is built on the ruins of Palestinian political life.
We have been failed by our own leaders, besieged by occupation, exploited by powers claiming to act in our name. We now risk being administered in perpetuity by powers claiming to act for peace. I personally have paid for these failures in a currency I will not mention again here. I ask only this: that the people now drawing the map remember that a peace that writes us out is not peace. It is the prelude to the next war.
