Trump’s Palestine is worse than mandate Palestine

In September 2025, United States President Donald Trump unveiled a 20-point “peace plan” for Gaza, calling for a ceasefire, the release of Israeli captives and the creation of a US-led, transnational authority of Gaza, including a “stabilization security force” that would double down as a military body, reminiscent of the imperial police that implemented the counterinsurgency doctrine in the colonies during the 19th and 20th centuries, notoriously in the Indian Subcontinent, for instance.

The proposal drew mixed reactions: Egypt, Qatar and Turkey cautiously welcomed it, while China and Russia voiced general support for de-escalation. But Palestinian rights groups criticized the plan for its coercive nature, its undermining of national sovereignty and its legitimization of occupation. While Hamas agreed to release hostages and renewed its commitment to withdraw from the strip’s administrative control, it said the rest of the plan has to be discussed within a national Palestinian framework.

Despite the fascism stigma often attributed to Trump’s US, the plan does not reflect the brute, iron-handed approach typically associated with fascist regimes. Rather, it is a consummate expression of liberal imperial politics: replacing overt violence and plunder with slow, institutionalized systems engineered to achieve the same ends.

In that sense, several scholars have begun to draw parallels with the League of Nations’ mandate system.

Trump’s proposal aspires to replace a 19th-century model of direct foreign domination — marked by economic exploitation and plundering and systematic violence, at times genocidal — with a bureaucratized version of the same. The language and logic closely echo the mandate doctrine of the League of Nations.

Following the First World War, the victorious powers imposed the mandate system via the League of Nations to administer the non-sovereign “colonies and territories” formerly under the sovereignty of the defeated powers — notably Ottoman and German empires. These lands and colonies were inhabited by “peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world” (Article 22, the Covenant of the League of Nations). Such territories were stripped of sovereignty and placed under “mandatories,” supposedly responsible for shepherding them toward independent governance.

The post-war plan mirrors this: points 9 and 15 propose foreign-controlled civilian and police authorities to administer a Palestinian territory “until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program.” The similarity in language with the Covenant of the League of Nations is striking: “Certain communities […] can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone,” Article 22 of the covenant states.

In the mandate era, subjugated peoples were not legally recognized as states — they were “communities” lacking sovereignty, which justified their tutelage. The rationale rested on then-accepted assumptions that non-Western peoples were incapable of self-governance. The view of western states was that the peoples of Africa and Asia lacked a proper political entity capable of organizing their societies into a state; that is, the absence of powerful, organized state institutions — a government that controls a territory and a population, and is capable of entering into international relations. This perceived lack of “sovereignty” was, under the international law of the time, sufficient enough to place them under the control of a “trusted” sovereign to guide them toward “sovereignty.”

Unlike the League of Nations, Trump’s proposal seeks to subordinate to foreign political control a people whose right to self-determination has already been recognized by the World Court, as the International Court of Justice stated in its Advisory Opinion report in July last year. More significantly, it seeks to subordinate the territory of a sovereign state, recognised by 157 UN member-states, to foreign control. Unlike the peoples subjugated to foreign domination by the mandate system, the Palestinians of Gaza are not proto-communities, they are citizens of a sovereign state, recognised by an overwhelming majority of the world.

The 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law states that “the territorial integrity and political independence of the state are inviolable.” If accepted, the plan would violate Palestinian self-determination and sovereignty — an argument that international lawyers in the first half of the 20th century could not have made regarding the British Mandate for Palestine, as Palestinians were not recognized as possessing sovereignty at the time.

And while the mandate system did not explicitly outlaw native resistance, the 20-point plan places Palestinians' right to resist occupation up for negotiation, and even seeks to outrightly eliminate its possibilities, despite its entrenchment in modern international law [1].

Moreover, today, the situation is different. The mandate system, in theory, concerned the administration of peoples who possessed no international legal personality, i.e., their forms of political organization were not recognized as sovereign states. Their consent did not count by the standards of international law at the time. This is no longer the case.

It is recognised under treaty and customary international law that agreements procured by coercion, especially emanating from the unlawful use of force, contrary to the principles of international law, are void. This is a universal rule that governs all international agreements, one that has been recognized in the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, the Vienna Conference Declaration on the prohibition of Military, Political, Economic Coercion in the Conclusion of Treaties and the ICJ Fisheries Jurisdiction case.

To contextualize the proposed agreement, it is necessary to recall that the world’s highest legal authority, the ICJ, concluded in 2024 that the continuing occupation of Gaza (among other Palestinian territory) in and of itself violates the UN Charter, in particular the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. Occupation in itself is therefore a form of unlawful use of force.

Given the ruthless continuity of occupation, as well as its expansion and assertion not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank and Jerusalem, Trump’s proposal without a doubt seeks to procure agreement by the unlawful use of force in violation of the UN Charter, and is thus invalid.

Furthermore, the 72-hour ultimatum that Trump gave Hamas is significant, as it entails a threat to continue the use of force in Gaza if Hamas was to reject the proposal. If Hamas accepts, then its consent would have been procured by the unlawful use of force in Gaza. This is because the “war” in Gaza constitutes genocide, according to the UN Commission of Inquiry’s report. Even if it were not a genocide, it is already accepted that the ongoing use of force in Gaza is in violation of the prohibition of the use of force under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, as it cannot — or at least can no longer — be justified under the framework of self-defence provided for in Article 51 of the Charter, which Israel sought to present during the first months of the genocide.

At first glance, one might think that the illegitimacy of Trump’s plan stems from the fact that the mandate system is perceived today as a colonial practice wrapped in legal terms, but illegitimate, nonetheless. It is well-documented that, in practice, the mandate system enabled plunder and exploitation, denied peoples’ right to self-determination and entrenched practices now recognized as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide.

However, the plan is in fact considerably more illegitimate.

Despite its abuses and inherent illegitimacy by today’s standards, the mandate system was, in theory, a collective regime whereby “peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world” were handed over to a mandatory power, whose legitimacy originated in its exercise of mandatory functions on behalf of the international community and under its oversight. Indeed, mandatory powers were required to submit annual reports to the League of Nations; petitions from colonized peoples could be heard, even if ineffectively, and foreign rulers were compelled to address their grievances publicly, before an international body.

In contrast, Trump’s board would answer to no legitimate international institution and would grant no recourse for Palestinian grievances. The proposed regime is accountability-free.

Not unlike the “collective” rationale behind the mandate system, today's UN has envisaged a system for international security characterized by its “collective” nature, and which was established in the wake of the post-Second World War to protect the sovereignty of states against powerful aggressors. Under Chapter VII of the Charter, the Security Council may take all necessary measures to maintain peace and security, including the establishment of transnational administrations and deployment of forces. Chapter VII of the Charter, therefore, contains the procedure to follow in case a transnational administration of a territory and its population was favorable.

These measures derive legitimacy from their collective nature, which serves to effect a balance of powers between the members of the Council while determining the formation and mandate of authority and/or force to be established within international law’s system of collective security. Historically, the legitimacy and authority of the like-interim administrations of a transnational character have originated within the United Nations system. The Security Council provided the legal basis for all the internationally-led administrations in the past three decades, e.g., in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, East Timor and Cambodia.

Trump’s proposal, however, bypasses the Security Council, offering a unilateral international authority over Gaza. The “Board of Peace” and “International Stabilization Force,” effectively under US control and perhaps Israeli influence, override customary procedures and amount to intervention in a sovereign state. This is a classic violation of the UN Charter’s prohibition of unauthorized use of force and interference.

In his attempt to sideline Europe, Russia, China and the Global South, Trump’s plan proposes an authority that possesses absolute, uncontested political powers, and at the same time accountable to no international body. Hence, Trump seeks to install a de facto US-Israeli government in Gaza outside any legitimate collective framework under international law.

Indeed, Trump’s Gaza government can only be seen as a US- and Israel-led administration lacking authorization from the UN Security Council, and thus effectively a state of occupation without any justification under the Law Governing the Right to War (i.e., Articles 2(4) and 51 of the UN Charter).

One key similarity between the mandate system and Trump’s proposal, admittedly, lies in how both deprive the occupied population of protection under international humanitarian law.

Theoretically, colonized peoples could not join international treaties because they lacked sovereignty. Consequently, they were not covered by the then-emerging international humanitarian legal instruments — such as the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 — which required occupying powers to respect the humanity and liberty of occupied populations, prohibited torture, and protected existing national laws from arbitrary interference by the occupier.

Unlike the mandated-era deprivation of non-white peoples of international legal protections, international humanitarian law today has a universal scope: any people under occupation are entitled to the protections of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Accordingly, any authority exercising control over Palestinian territory and population — in this case, Trump’s “Board of Peace” and “International Stabilization Force” — must comply with the Fourth Geneva Convention’s provisions.

However, Trump’s proposal seeks to obscure the nature of the proposed Gaza government to override the application of the Fourth Geneva Convention. He presents his Gaza administration as a transnational interim government, thereby concealing its real nature. In effect, it establishes a regime of occupation, administered by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and chaired by Trump himself as head of the so-called “Board of Peace.”

Because this arrangement constitutes occupation, Palestinians in Gaza would automatically, by force of law, fall under the protections established by international humanitarian law — primarily those of the Fourth Geneva Convention[2]. The legal rights of the occupied population under international humanitarian law are “inviolable.” Thus, even if the plan were to be accepted, Palestinians would remain entitled to the full protection of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions.

Beyond the bleak implications for Palestine, wherein the plan seeks to institutionalize plunder, exploitation and erasure, and while the mandate system still cloaked itself in political legitimacy and legality, Trump’s proposal openly discards even that veneer. Unlike the interwar powers, the plan does not care for legal pretensions. Accordingly, if adopted, it must be judged not just politically illegitimate but null and void — i.e., without legal effect — under international law.

By attempting to sideline established procedures for collective security and placing absolute political power in a body accountable to no one, in a coercive manner, Trump’s plan threatens to erode the normative architecture of the post-1945 system. If allowed, it would open a precedent for unilateral trusteeships masquerading as peace.

The broader implications for international law and state sovereignty are stark: recognition of such a proposal would normalize a system whereby powerful states can bypass the Security Council, impose indefinite administrations and claim agreements procured under unlawful use of force and genocide as part of international law.

However, this is not the end of the game. Even if the plan is adopted and a transnational US-led Gaza government is established, the inherent invalidity of Trump’s plan will continue to resurface, leaving that government indefinitely anxious about its legitimacy. Every time the Gaza authority violates Palestinian rights under international law and claims to act under its mandate from the “peace plan,” that claim will be challenged by reference to the invalidity of the mandate itself. And that invalidity will remain the starting point — the legal basis and moral ground — for future resistance against the imposed authorities in Gaza, inside and outside of Gaza, peaceful and armed.

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Footnotes:

[1] The right to self-determination under Article 1 of the UN Charter, the General Assembly’s declarations on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples and on Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States, and in the Chagos Islands Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice recognized the customary legal status of the right to self determination and freedom from colonization.

[2] Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “Protected persons who are in occupied territory shall not be deprived, in any case or in any manner whatsoever, of the benefits of the present Convention by any change introduced, as the result of the occupation, into the institutions or government of the said territory.”