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n October 13, leaders of 20 countries, including Pakistan, signed with US President Donald Trump a document on the Gaza ceasefire deal. Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi chaired the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Trump hailed the agreement as a “tremendous day for the Middle East” as he and regional leaders signed a declaration on Monday meant to cement a ceasefire in Gaza, hours after Israel and Hamas exchanged hostages and prisoners.
Speaking at the event, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif said ceasefire in the war-torn Gaza will save many lives in the Middle East. He also lauded the role of Trump, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and other world leaders for their valuable contributions to peace efforts. He once again nominated “great” Trump for the Nobel Prize for bringing “peace” to South Asia, and achieving the ceasefire in Gaza. Pakistan, he said, had nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for his “outstanding and extraordinary contributions to first stop the war between India and Pakistan and then achieve a ceasefire along with his very wonderful team.” “And today again, I would like to nominate this great president for the Nobel Peace Prize because I genuinely feel that he is the most genuine and the most wonderful candidate for the peace prize because he has not only brought peace in South Asia, saved millions of people, their lives, and today, here in Sharm el-Sheikh, achieved peace in Gaza and saved lives in the Middle East,” Sharif added.
Earlier, Trump had made a lightning visit to Israel, where he addressed the parliament, before flying to Egypt.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rooted in the 1947 UN partition plan and the subsequent creation of Israel in 1948, has long stood as one of the world’s most enduring political and moral dilemmas. The displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the Nakba laid the foundations for a conflict that has defied every diplomatic formula. The 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which placed the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli occupation, transformed these territories into laboratories of control and containment. Over the decades, the failure of peace accords — from Oslo to Annapolis — combined with expanding settlements, systemic blockade and economic strangulation, left the Gaza Strip a besieged enclave of despair.
In October 2023, Hamas launched a surprise assault on Israeli targets, a move that triggered an unprecedented Israeli military response. What followed was not a limited campaign but a sustained, two-year war that devastated Gaza’s urban fabric and its social life. Entire neighborhoods were flattened, hospitals and schools bombed and essential infrastructure destroyed. According to Palestinian health authorities and humanitarian agencies, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, with tens of thousands more injured and missing under the rubble. Most of the victims were civilians — women, children and the elderly — caught in a war machine that spared no corner of the besieged strip. Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, settler militias and Israeli forces intensified their operations. Over these two years, hundreds of Palestinians were killed by settler attacks and military raids in towns such as Jenin, Nablus and Hebron, underscoring the growing impunity of Israel’s settler-colonial enterprise. Gaza has been reduced to ruins, and the West Bank is steadily consumed by creeping annexation.
Yet the horror did not provoke decisive international intervention. The United States and its European allies, particularly the United Kingdom and Germany, failed both morally and politically. Despite possessing the diplomatic leverage and military ties that could have restrained Israel, they instead provided cover. Over two years, successive UN Security Council resolutions calling for ceasefire and the establishment of humanitarian corridors were vetoed by the US, thus paralysing global diplomacy. European powers, that routinely speak the language of human rights, issued diluted statements that changed nothing on the ground. This failure was not only strategic; it was moral in orientation. It revealed the double standards of Western foreign policy — fierce in its condemnation of aggression elsewhere, yet silent and/ or complicit when the Zionist regime acted with impunity.
Equally disappointing was the response of the Muslim world’s political leaders. Beyond rhetorical condemnation and symbolic gestures, few states acted with conviction. No meaningful economic pressure, coordinated diplomacy or collective action was mobilised to stop the carnage. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation convened conferences and issued communiqués, but Gaza continued to burn. The gap between the emotional solidarity of Muslim societies and the inertia of their governments reflected a crisis of political will. The war thus exposed two failures: one of Western hypocrisy and another of Muslim incompetence.
The Trump-led peace initiative emerged as a pragmatic attempt to end the bloodshed. The 20-point plan, negotiated in consultation with the leadership of eight Muslim-majority countries including Pakistan, proposed a phased ceasefire, prisoner exchanges, humanitarian access and a framework for Palestinian governance.
Amid this moral vacuum, a remarkable force emerged — the conscience of ordinary people. Across the world, progressive and humanitarian movements challenged state complacency and revived the moral vocabulary of justice. In Western capitals such as Washington, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Madrid and Sydney, tens of thousands marched for Gaza. These demonstrations were not limited to the Muslim diaspora; they included students, trade unions and Jewish peace activists. In the US, university campuses became epicenters of protest, echoing the anti-war and anti-apartheid movements of previous generations. In Germany and the UK, citizens defied restrictions on Palestinian flags and slogans, asserting that solidarity is not a crime.
Even within Israel, anti-Zionist Jewish groups, human rights lawyers and peace activists protested against what they called a state-sponsored moral collapse. They accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet of pursuing a policy of genocide — that sought not merely to defeat Hamas but to erase Palestinian nationhood itself. These voices of dissent, often silenced, reminded the world that moral courage exists even at the epicenter of power.
The activism extended beyond streets and slogans. International solidarity flotillas, such as the Freedom and Sumud missions, attempted to deliver humanitarian aid and break the naval blockade, hence symbolising civil society’s refusal to surrender moral agency to governments. Greta Thunberg and her associates connected the Palestinian struggle to global justice movement, framing Gaza’s destruction as both a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe. Such gestures infused the Palestinian cause with a new universalism. This groundswell of activism eventually forced policymakers to respond. As protests expanded and public opinion shifted, the Western governments began to feel the pressure of their citizens’ moral outrage. For the first time in decades, cracks appeared in the transatlantic consensus on Israel. The UK and France’s recognition of Palestine as an independent state marked a diplomatic turning point, however symbolic. Their decisions reflected not sudden benevolence but the accumulation of moral pressure from below. Meanwhile, the US, under intense domestic and global scrutiny, moved from rhetorical defence of Israel to reluctant engagement.
In this backdrop, the Trump-led peace initiative emerged as a pragmatic attempt to end the bloodshed. The 20-point plan, negotiated in consultation with the leadership of eight Muslim-majority countries including Pakistan, proposed a phased ceasefire, prisoner exchanges, humanitarian access and a framework for Palestinian governance. Although controversial, the plan demonstrated that persistent activism and geopolitical shifts could generate political movement. As I have argued in these pages since October 2023, only the United States possessed the influence over Israeli Zionist regime to stop the war. It ultimately acted not out of moral awakening but out of strategic necessity. The erosion of American credibility in the Global South and the growing appeal of China’s normative diplomacy left Washington little choice but to recalibrate.
Even after the signing of the peace deal by both Israel and Hamas, enormous challenges remain. Israel demands that Hamas fully disarm, a position supported by Washington. Hamas, citing the risk of renewed Israeli aggression, refuses to relinquish its defensive capacity. This disagreement may derail the fragile truce. If hostilities resume, the already fragile trust built through recent negotiations will collapse, plunging Gaza into another cycle of devastation.
For a durable peace, the international community must move beyond short-term ceasefires toward lasting justice. The only viable path is the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state, with guarantees of security and international recognition. Without a political solution that restores Palestinian dignity and rights, peace in the Middle East will remain an illusion.
The writer has a PhD in political science from Heidelberg University and a postdoc from University of California, Berkeley. He is a DAAD and Fulbright fellow and an associate professor. He can be reached at ejaz.bhattygmail.com