The End of the Palestinian Myth

Hamas’ “acceptance” of Trump’s Gaza plan exposes the lie of the Palestinian national consensus

Hamas says it has accepted Donald Trump’s new Gaza peace plan. It has not. What it has accepted is a performance, a way to appear cooperative while preserving the one thing it cannot survive without: the myth of the Palestinian national consensus.

Trump’s 20-point plan, unveiled this week, treats Gaza as what it is, a separate entity with a separate future. It calls for the dismantling of Hamas’ military power, the creation of a transitional Arab-backed administration, the release of hostages, and an internationally supported reconstruction effort “for Gazans.”

Yet even Trump’s plan cannot entirely escape the language of the past. It occasionally invokes “Palestine” and “Palestinians,” not out of conviction but convention, the linguistic residue of a lie that diplomats no longer believe but cannot yet stop repeating.

The plan’s strength lies not in an open declaration but in the stubborn intrusion of reality. Gaza now exists apart from the myth, and the only ones pretending otherwise are those whose power depends on it.

Hamas responded predictably. In its official statement, the group said it was ready to hand over Gaza’s administration to a “Palestinian body of independents,” but only if the arrangement were “based on Palestinian national consensus.” They even promised that Hamas would “contribute” to that consensus. This, from an organization that executes rivals, censors journalists, and terrorizes its citizens. The claim would be laughable if it were not so revealing.

For Hamas, consensus means control, and thus what it fears most is independence, the independence of Gazans from the Palestinian myth that gives Hamas the only claim to power.

That is the real story. Trump’s plan has drawn a bright line between two worlds. On one side stands a concrete proposal to rebuild Gaza for Gazans. On the other stands a movement desperate to keep Gazans chained to an imagined nation that never existed.

It should be noted that the divide between Gaza and the West Bank is neither new, nor simply a political division; it is anthropological. Gaza is coastal, mercantile, and historically tied to Egypt and the Mediterranean world. The West Bank is inland, Bedouin in its social structure, and shaped by the desert cultures of Arabia. One grew out of the sea, the other out of the sand. They speak differently, marry differently, and even dream differently. What united them was always grievance, not nationhood.

Two years into this war, the division between Gaza and the West Bank is no longer theoretical. It is complete.

The irony is that the rest of the world has already recognized this separation, whether it admits it or not. Every government, media outlet, and NGO now refers to this conflict as the “Israel-Gaza war” or the “Israel-Hamas war.” No one calls it the “Israeli-Palestinian war.”

Even in the language of diplomacy, Gaza has become a distinct subject: humanitarian aid for Gazans, reconstruction for Gazans, ceasefire for Gaza. The West Bank is rarely mentioned at all. The distinction is no longer political; it is linguistic, cultural, and practical. The world has adjusted its vocabulary to reality, even while many of its leaders still cling to the illusion in principle.

For decades, the fiction of unity was sustained by those who needed it. Western diplomats clung to it because it gave them a process to manage. Arab leaders defended it because it deflected blame from their own corruption. The United Nations built a permanent bureaucracy around it. Mahmoud Abbas used it to stay in power long after his mandate expired. And Hamas fed on it to justify endless war. The Palestinian cause became an industry, not a liberation movement. Its survival depended on failure.

The two-state illusion was the most enduring of these lies. It imagined a contiguous Palestinian state connecting Gaza and the West Bank across Israeli territory, as if geography and culture could be ignored. It was an arrangement that never existed outside the minds of diplomats. Geography made it absurd. Anthropology made it impossible. Yet the illusion survived because it allowed everyone to pretend progress was being made while nothing changed.

Trump’s plan has forced that illusion into the open. By treating Gaza as a separate entity, it has recognized what history and reality already made clear. Gaza’s fate is not tied to Ramallah, nor to any so-called national consensus. It is a distinct society with its own trajectory, one that can no longer hide behind the failures of others.

The future must be built on that reality. The necessary shift is the creation of something post-Palestinian: a society that values survival over symbolism, work over slogans, and local accountability over endless grievance.

Gaza’s next chapter, if it exists, requires the dismantling of the apparatuses that used Gazans as leverage. That means the death of Hamas, the irrelevance of Ramallah, and the burial of the fantasy that the region’s peace depends on removing Jews. Only when that fantasy dies can Gazans begin to live.

Gazans have been given a choice between life and death. Lets hope they choose life.