Why the Trump administration will have to accept a Hormuz toll

It wouldn't be unprecedented, and Gulf countries are already seeking alternatives to the strait, which means its importance will eventually diminish

Dan DePetris

Aug 10, 2026

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/straight-of-hormuz-toll/

In the weeks since the U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding collapsed, Washington and Tehran have used the time to strengthen their respective positions in the event negotiations resume.

For the United States, this has largely taken the form of overt threats by President Donald Trump himself and hints that an even more comprehensive U.S. bombing campaign against Iranian strategic targets is on the table. For Iran, the strategy is familiar: ensure maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is kept to an absolute minimum.

U.S. and Iranian officials continue to give conflicting accounts of where negotiations stand. Despite Trump’s repeated declarations that Tehran is begging for a deal, the Iranians stress no talks are occurring with the United States. Still, both sides seem to agree that any pending agreement will center on the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has proved capable of shutting down at will.

Various schemes have been proposed between Iran and Oman, the two countries on either end of the strait. While a deal is not finalized, Iran will most certainly retain more power over the strait’s traffic than it did before the war began in February.

The question now is whether tolls or fees will accompany any arrangement worked out between Tehran and Muscat. The Trump administration is dead set against acceding to any fee structure because it would provide the Iranian government with additional revenue and represent visible proof that Trump’s preventive war was a strategic mistake. Referring to the Strait of Hormuz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated the U.S. position in July: "If we create a precedent in the Middle East where a nation-state can decide that they are going to control an international waterway, charge a toll…we have created a very dangerous precedent which will repeat itself in other parts of the world.”

Of course, permitting an Iranian toll or fee structure isn’t ideal. Before the war, such a hypothetical would have been difficult to imagine. The strait at that time was free and open, and roughly 120 to 150 ships relied on the route each day to get their products to customers worldwide.

The United States wants Iran to return to this status quo. Yet Iran has no intention of doing so — and to expect otherwise is to be completely ignorant of how events have played out since.

Trump’s war handed Iran the perfect excuse to leverage its geography, and the Iranians didn’t hesitate to do so. Originally, Tehran’s shuttering of the strait aimed to increase the cost on Washington and eventually convince U.S. partners in the region to pressure Trump into ending the war. But over time, the Strait of Hormuz, in addition to Iran’s more aggressive posture toward its neighbors writ-large, has become something far more valuable: a strategic card Iran can play whenever Trump threatens to accelerate military operations.

Re-opening the strait is now as important to the United States as containing Iran’s nuclear program, if not more so. The question is how to do it.

Trump originally tried to pursue this objective through military force, hoping U.S. strikes could degrade Iran’s military capacity to such an extent that the IRGC would have to stop shooting at ships. The strategy overestimated the U.S. military’s power to force a change in Tehran’s strategic calculus and underestimated Iran’s ability to manufacture and launch cheap drones and missiles at scale. Every U.S. strike merely reaffirmed the Iranian government’s belief that the war was existential for them. Instead of capitulating, Iran fought back, targeting vessels that used the southerly route near Oman’s coast and making it clear that heavier U.S. bombing would compel more Iranian attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure.

U.S. military attempts to bring the strait back to its pre-February state have failed and will likely continue to fail. If the Trump administration seeks to extricate itself from a war without end, its best option is to accept a toll or fee structure in the regional chokepoint. Hawks on Capitol Hill would no doubt scream bloody murder, and some of Trump’s own political allies will have a difficult time explaining how such a scheme is appealing. But if the choice is between swallowing fees or endless conflict, then the former is the better option. The Trump administration may not like paying for the privilege of using the strait, but its decision to go to war in the first place created the situation the United States is now in. Bad policies have unintended consequences.

Fortunately, fees in the strait would not be the end of the world.

This wouldn’t be the first time a country located next to a critical trade chokepoint received some form of compensation. The most obvious case is the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia, where shipowners contribute to a voluntary fund, administered by Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, for navigational assistance, maritime safety, environmental protection and search and rescue. A similar arrangement in the Strait of Hormuz would thus not set a precedent. In fact, shipping companies and the insurance carriers that underwrite them might even view these voluntary payments as in their own interest if it helps prevent even costlier disasters or accidents.

There’s no use brushing the obvious under the rug: U.S. acceptance of Iranian tolls or fees would be an embarrassing acknowledgment that Iran is now a principal arbiter of the strait. Moreover, depending on how high the fees are — Tehran is reportedly demanding 7% of the value of a ship’s cargo — the Iranians would be collecting revenue they wouldn’t have had prior to the war.

But even this scenario is not as dire as many assume. In practice, Iran’s leverage dissipates with every month that passes by. The Gulf Arab states are not sitting still and watching the new status quo helplessly. Rather, Tehran’s neighbors are increasingly adapting to Iran’s machinations by tapping into pipelines that bypass the strait altogether and exploring future projects that make their energy infrastructure more durable and less vulnerable to a single chokepoint.

Saudi Arabia is using its cross-country east-west pipeline to export more crude oil through the Red Sea. While this alternative route remains vulnerable to strikes by the Iran-aligned Houthis and doesn’t fully compensate for the loss of normal traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, it has still allowed the kingdom to avoid shutting down production entirely. Ditto the United Arab Emirates, which is sending more crude through its Fujairah export terminal, located outside the strait. Fujairah’s share of UAE exports increased to 66% in July from 51% a month earlier. Iran’s actions during the war will only reinforce Persian Gulf oil producers’ desire to diversify their routes, reducing Tehran’s ability to obstruct energy flows in the future.

Negotiations on reopening the Strait of Hormuz continue. If there comes a point where fees for passage are unavoidable, then U.S. policymakers should keep a cool head. Ceding the point would be the most efficient way for the United States to remove itself from a foolish conflict at minimal cost.

West Bank approaching 'point of no return': Russia

Russian envoy says Israeli creeping expansion in occupied Palestinian territories driving crisis

Elena Teslova

12 August 2026

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/west-bank-approaching-point-of-no-return-russia/4025598

MOSCOW

Russia warned on Wednesday that the West Bank was approaching a “point of no return,” and that further escalation could destabilize the wider Middle East.

Russian UN Amb. Vassily Nebenzya attributed the trend to Israel’s “creeping expansion” in occupied Palestinian territories.

“The West Bank is approaching a point of no return, with risks of deep destabilization of the military and political situation throughout the region,” he said at a UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East, including the Palestinian question/

He urged Israel to refrain from unilateral steps, including settlement activity, that could undermine prospects for a two-state solution.

The diplomat also urged Israel to take effective measures to curb settler violence and return to implementing relevant UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.

Nebenzya also voiced concern about the situation in the Gaza Strip, saying implementation of the US peace plan for the enclave had effectively stalled.

He welcomed the role of mediators in helping halt large-scale fighting in Gaza but said the ceasefire continued to be violated, primarily by Israel.

Citing casualty figures, Nebenzya said nearly 1,300 Palestinians had been killed in less than a year since the ceasefire formally took effect, including almost 300 children, according to UNICEF reports.

The Russian envoy said the success of any peace initiative in the Middle East should ultimately be measured by whether it leads to the establishment of an independent and contiguous Palestinian state comprising the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

“The Palestinian question, as well as the entire complex of Middle Eastern issues, cannot be resolved in one stroke or through situational, closed-door schemes,” he said, arguing that sustainable stability required coordinated international and regional efforts.

Nebenzya also criticized attempts by "individual countries" to assume the role of the sole mediator in the conflict, particularly when the mediator "openly favors one side."

He said a lasting settlement should be based on the existing international legal framework and the principle of “two states for two peoples.”

Why is Latin America becoming a breeding ground for 'fanatics of Israel'?

Joseph Bouchard

7 August 2026 

Propelled by disinformation, arms deals and surveillance tech, right-wing governments have helped to increase Netanyahu's reach, undermining the region's historical alliance with Palestine.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-is-latin-america-a-breeding-ground-for-israel

A split is happening across Latin America. Poll after poll shows the region’s publics turning against Israel, whose three-year assault on Gaza is widely considered a genocide by leading scholars and human rights groups.

Yet a wave of new right-wing governments - in El Salvador, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Honduras, Costa Rica and now Colombia - signals a shift in the opposite direction, deepening the region’s security, diplomatic and technological ties with Israel, while denying Palestinians the most basic right to self-determination.

The clearest illustration came last month in Colombia. Gustavo Petro, the former guerrilla and outgoing leftist president who addressed a pro-Palestine rally in New York last year before Washington revoked his visa, lost power to Abelardo de la Espriella, a lawyer who has defended paramilitary groups and has ties to military dictatorships and US President Donald Trump. 

Petro has accused the Israeli cyber-intelligence firm BlackCore of deploying half a million bot accounts to flood Colombian voters with disinformation ahead of the June run-off, which De la Espriella won by less than a single percentage point. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t wait for that dispute to settle before celebrating online, congratulating the president-elect and declaring that “Israel’s friends continue to win”. The region is home to some 700,000 Palestinians and 500,000 Jews.

De la Espriella has already signalled that he will suspend plans for Colombia’s embassy to Palestine, and pledged to restore relations with Israel, including by moving Colombia’s mission to Jerusalem, thus stripping Bogota of its role as one of the more forceful voices behind South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Colombia is just the latest domino to fall. Bolivia, the first Latin American country to sever ties with Israel after the 7 October 2023 attacks, restored full diplomatic relations in December under new centre-right President Rodrigo Paz, a rapprochement Netanyahu personally sealed by phone shortly after Paz’s election.

Washington's puppet in Caracas

Venezuela’s nominally socialist government - under sustained American pressure, and effectively operating as a US-backed colonial regime - has hosted American congressional delegations, while keeping Israeli humanitarian and diplomatic channels open, and it recently announced plans to leave the International Criminal Court. Caracas has become a de facto puppet of Washington’s interests in the region, tilting ever-further right.

Cuba, destroyed by decades of US suffocation and now pursuing American-promoted economic reforms (met with even more sanctions), may not be far behind.

Mossad once operated out of Havana, helping the CIA track leftists and Soviet operatives across the region during the Cold War - a legacy of Israeli entanglement in Latin America that long predates Gaza.

Underpinning all of this is a security relationship in which Latin American electorates don’t get a say. Pegasus, the intrusive Israeli spyware sold to governments across the region, has repeatedly been used to target journalists and opposition figures, rather than terrorists and criminals. 

Brazilian police, among the most lethal in the region, use a plethora of Israeli weapons in the favelas. Police violence across the country results in thousands of deaths annually. And in recent years, Israeli intelligence operatives have worked alongside Brazilian authorities to investigate an alleged Hezbollah presence in the country.

Israeli tourists in the region have become a flashpoint in their own right: blamed by Argentine officials for wildfires in Patagonia, detained by Brazilian police after violence against pro-Palestine protesters, and courted at tourism fairs in Sao Paulo that marketed occupied Palestinian land as Israeli destinations. 

Crucial test ahead

There is a clear test ahead with Brazil’s October election. Flavio Bolsonaro, son of the convicted former president, launched his campaign against incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva with a video endorsement from Netanyahu and fiery support from Argentinian leader Javier Milei, who has called himself a “fanatic of Israel” and plans to move Argentina’s embassy to Jerusalem. Every right-wing candidate in the race has competed over being more pro-Israel and anti "terrorist" than the next.

Lula, the sitting president, remains by contrast one of the last major heads of state in Latin America still willing to call Israel’s campaign in Gaza a genocide. He has even compared it to the Holocaust, drawing public outrage in some quarters. 

Both Brazil and Mexico, the latter now governed by a leftist president of Jewish heritage, Claudia Sheinbaum, face mounting pressure from Washington over their posture - including economic warfare, threats of strikes, sanctions, and terrorist designations that open the door to incursions.

Ironically, Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s Maga darling dictator, is himself of Palestinian descent - but he has nonetheless built his repressive security state partly on Israeli weapons and surveillance equipment, now turbo-charging repression across Latin America. 

The new president of Honduras, Nasry Asfura, who was pushed to power with Trump’s intervention, is also a deep ally of Israel, despite being of Palestinian descent. He has visited Israel and met Netanyahu.

Leaked audio recordings dubbed “Hondurasgate” allegedly captured former president Juan Orlando Hernandez, Asfura and Milei discussing plans to use Honduras as a staging ground to target leftist governments across the region - a plot that reportedly involved Netanyahu’s assistance in securing Hernandez a pardon from Trump after a drug trafficking conviction. 

These new right-wing, mostly populist governments have helped to increase Israel’s reach, propelled by surveillance firms, arms deals and disinformation campaigns, despite the region’s populace growing increasingly wary of Israel. 

This issue has become another front for elite-citizen divides in the region. The Brazilian election may help bridge, or deepen, that rift.

Israeli media eye Rebeca Grynspan's Jewish identity as she emerges as UN chief frontrunner

The Costa Rican diplomat has emerged as an early favourite, attracting cautious approval from Israeli media

Elis Gjevori

Published date: 10 August 2026

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-media-eye-rebeca-grynspan-jewish-identity-un-secretary-general-frontrunner

Israeli media have highlighted the Jewish background and family ties of Rebeca Grynspan to the country as she emerges as the early frontrunner to become the next United Nations secretary-general.

If selected, the Costa Rican economist and diplomat would become the first woman, first Central American and first Jewish person to lead the organisation.

Grynspan secured 10 "encourage" votes, four "no opinion" votes and one "discourage" vote in the Security Council's first secret straw poll held on 30 July. 

The five permanent and 10 elected members assessed seven candidates, without publicly revealing how individual countries voted. Although further rounds could reshuffle the contest, receiving only one objection places Grynspan in a strong opening position.

The Security Council is expected to settle on a candidate by October. Any of its five permanent members can effectively end her campaign with a veto.

Antonio Guterres, the current secretary-general, will complete his second term on 31 December. Under the UN's informal regional rotation, his successor is widely expected to come from Latin America.

Israeli family ties

Israeli coverage has focused heavily on that history and her relatives in Israel.

Her sister, Frida Greenspan, moved to Israel at 17 and lives in Mevaseret Zion, near Jerusalem. Her children served in the Israeli military, including as officers.

"We are Zionists by birth," her sister told Ynet.

The Israeli newspaper described Rebeca Grynspan as "one of the distinctly pro-Israel candidates" and reported that she has relatives living in the occupied West Bank.

Ynet added that "she herself is proud of her Jewish heritage and has maintained close ties with officials in Jerusalem over the years".

Those family connections do not, however, establish how Grynspan would handle Israel and Palestine as secretary-general.

She has rarely placed Israel at the centre of her public political identity, leaving her approach to longstanding UN positions on Palestine largely untested.

Ynet acknowledged that her perceived closeness to Israel could also become a liability in a contest requiring support from governments with sharply differing positions on Israel's occupation and war on Gaza.

Grynspan, who leads the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), was born into a Jewish family in Costa Rica in 1955. 

Her parents were European Jewish refugees who fled persecution in the lead-up to the Second World War, while members of her extended family were killed in the Nazi Holocaust.

Record at the UN

Under Grynspan, UNCTAD has continued producing some of the UN system's strongest assessments of the damage Israel has inflicted on the Palestinian economy.

Its reports have examined the costs of occupation, Israeli restrictions across the occupied West Bank and the destruction of Gaza's economy, linking the collapse of Palestinian economic life to Israeli policies and military operations.

In January, Israel's foreign ministry cut ties with several UN agencies and international organisations over their reporting on Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. Israel included UNCTAD on the list and accused the bodies of publishing "dozens of virulent anti-Israel reports".

Yet Israeli officials have not publicly targeted Grynspan in the way they have repeatedly attacked Guterres and other senior UN figures.

Israel Hayom, a newspaper widely regarded as supportive of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, paid closer attention to her public position on Gaza. Grynspan has called for "humanitarian agencies to have unrestricted access to Gaza" and said aid must not become politicised or weaponised.

The newspaper concluded that, "despite the candidate's identity", she continued to represent the UN system's traditional position.

An Israel Hayom opinion piece went further, arguing that "Grynspan's candidacy is quietly being sold to select member states, especially the US and Israel, wrapped in a carefully crafted personal narrative: daughter of Holocaust survivors, familiar with Hebrew, with close family living in Israel".

Ynet suggested that Israel could influence the contest indirectly because "what Israel thinks of a particular candidate seeps into the place where decisions are really made - with the US, Britain and France".

It also reported that "several of the candidates have already sent envoys and courtship messages to Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon".

Trump and Israel are demanding that Palestinians disarm. Here is why that is wrong and unjust.

Demands that Hamas disarm follow decades of international calls for a "demilitarized Palestinian state." These demands insist that Palestinians surrender their right to self-defense, a right no people should relinquish.

By Mitchell Plitnick  August 7, 2026

https://mondoweiss.net/2026/08/trump-and-israel-are-demanding-that-palestinians-disarm-here-is-why-that-is-wrong-and-unjust/

Among many buzzwords in diplo-speak around Palestine is the support for “a demilitarized Palestinian state living side by side in peace next to Israel.” This condition is repeated so often that it goes unnoticed most of the time.

That premise, and its inherent injustice, dysfunctionality, and lack of pragmatism, was highlighted this week by no less an entity than Donald Trump’s Orwellian “Board of Peace.”

On August 1, the Board released the full text of its plan, outlining the latest scheme to create an actual ceasefire in Gaza, begin rebuilding, allow a Palestinian body of technocrats to start assuming some small authority in Gaza, and, above all, to disarm Palestinian armed groups.

It is worth noting, briefly, that such a plan should not have been necessary, since such a plan was supposed to be part of the so-called “ceasefire” that was declared in October 2025. 

This new plan was presented as the second stage of the October plan, ignoring the fact that Israel has not fulfilled any of its obligations in stage one, and in fact, has never stopped killing Palestinians and has gradually occupied more and more of Gaza, pushing the survivors ever closer to the sea.

Palestinian factions reportedly had some very difficult consultations regarding this latest plan. In the end, they decided to accept the plan and put the ball in Israel’s court.

The key to that acceptance was one particular clause in the agreement, which tied Palestinian disarmament to Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, to be accomplished in phases, and stated that the Palestinian weapons would not be destroyed but would be handed over to the Palestinian board of technocrats. 

Those conditions were in the Board’s plan. Article 8 described a “process to decommission and store heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels, shall begin after completing the remaining commitments under Sharm Sheikh Protocol, the entry of NCAG and deployment of ISF.”

The NCAG is the proposed Palestinian technocratic board, and the ISF is the often-discussed “International Stabilization Force” that would handle security in Gaza. The “remaining conditions” that need to be fulfilled refer to Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians and its advance beyond the so-called “Yellow Line,” which splits Gaza in two, with Israel occupying 53% of the territory. It has since advanced well beyond 60% and, by some estimates, is nearing control of 70% of the territory. 

The Board of Peace clause continues: “…This process shall be linked to an Israeli withdrawal, in phases, from the areas under its control in Gaza and the decommissioning of armed militias in accordance with article 10 of this Roadmap. …The Palestinian factions shall take part in this process, and no weapons shall be transferred or handed to Israel or non-Palestinian parties.”

There’s no ambiguity there. All weapons would be held by the Palestinian technocrats, and the handover of weapons was explicitly tied to Israel’s withdrawal, not just from ahead of the Yellow Line—which is immediately required—but, in gradual phases, from all of Gaza.

Hamas and the other Palestinian factions called the American and Israeli bluff by agreeing to this. And, if they expected that it was a bluff, they were proven right very quickly.

Despite the clear wording of the agreement that linked Israeli withdrawal to Palestinian disarmament, Israel refused to accept the agreement, which should have come as no surprise to anyone. Yet almost immediately, the chair of the Board, Nickolay Mladenov, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Board sent out a “clarifying statement” which stated that Israel would only withdraw after the Palestinians had completely disarmed. 

This swift reversal didn’t merely confirm that the Board of Peace is nothing more than a tool for continuing the project of crushing the Palestinians; it doubled down on it.

Palestinian self-defense is the core of the issue

The Board of Peace is a Trump initiative, and there is no more reason to expect it will ever seriously consider Palestinian welfare than there is from any American, much less Israeli, idea. Yet the speed with which the Board reversed itself so completely raises a more fundamental question about international diplomacy on Palestine in general.

Diplomacy around Palestine continues to focus on a two-state solution, and while many advocates for Palestine rightly argue that the two-state solution is not viable, it is necessary to examine some of the assumptions that undergird this failed pursuit.

The formulation for two states has been expressed as two states for two people, with an Israeli state living side by side in peace with a demilitarized Palestinian state. The idea that a Palestinian state would not have the ability to defend itself was long assumed, but officially unstated until U.S. President Bill Clinton described a “non-militarized Palestinian state” in his Clinton Parameters of 2000. 

Clinton envisioned an international border force that would defend Palestinian borders and deter attack, but this was, of course, never realistic. What international force would actually repel an Israeli force if it decided to invade this hypothetical Palestinian state? The inability of UNIFIL to prevent Israeli infiltration in Southern Lebanon is a case in point. 

As time went on, all allusions to such an international force were simply forgotten. But the idea that a Palestinian state would be demilitarized has endured and become an essential part of the envisioned two-state framework. 

As we can see from the way the Board of Peace and the Trump administration are operating in Gaza, what this notion really means is that Israel and its allies will insist that Palestinians give up the means to resist Israel by force. 

Few ask what Palestinians think of that idea, but when the Palestinian polling firm The People Company for Polling and Social Research asked in June 2026, it found that only 20% of Palestinians accepted the idea of a demilitarized state.

Indeed, when asked about not just this condition, but the sort of package that the two-state solution usually includes (such as Palestinian refugees only being allowed to return to the Palestinian state, with only a token number returning to areas within Israel), 59% were opposed to it, even though 51% still said they were supportive of the idea of a two-state solution in general. 

But the issue is not the two-state solution itself; the real issue that has been exposed again in the past week is the idea that Palestinians, even in a post-genocide, post-occupation world, would be denied the right of self-defense. 

Of course, Palestinians reject this, but no one, even the ostensible Palestinian leadership in the quisling PLO, debates the issue in the diplomatic arena. The notion of a “demilitarized Palestinian state” is repeated often and rarely, if ever, challenged.

It is, in fact, debated even less frequently than the right of return, another condition that it is simply assumed Palestinians will relent on, an assumption made seemingly by everyone except Palestinians themselves, who seem never to be asked about it. 

But the right of return is so fundamental to Palestinian nationalism that many Palestinians have raised so loud a voice that it is more difficult to ignore, though much of the world still earnestly tries.

The issue of self-defense has been less prominent, in part because it is inherently associated with a two-state solution, so opposition to it is often subsumed under opposition to that solution in general. 

The question of the right to resist has become more prominent, however, since October 7, 2023. 

Right of self-defense

October 7 villainized Palestinian resistance even further than it had been in the minds not only of Israel and its western allies, but also in the Arab capitals that had been working to find ways to establish relations with Israel despite Israel’s refusal to compromise at all on its occupation. 

Rather than learn the obvious lesson that occupation and the denial of basic rights inevitably lead to horrific days like October 7, and to even more obscenely horrifying responses like the genocide that has followed, Israel used the event as further proof that Palestinians had to be disarmed. 

The cooperation in the Board of Peace process and the support not only from Europe but also from most of the Arab official leadership demonstrate the success of that effort. 

That is a powerful consensus that either supports or at least acquiesces to the idea that Palestinians must be unable to defend themselves. It goes beyond the argument that October 7 somehow proves that Palestinians are, stereotypically, “too brutal” to be trusted with weapons, even while the far more violent and murderous Israeli government and settlers are never challenged in their “right of self-defense,” no matter how often that “right” is used to aggressively murder innocent civilians.

No, this is a much broader argument that says that Palestinians are so inherently and uniquely violent that they can never truly govern themselves. Even the patronizing “pathway to a Palestinian state” is always conditioned on someone else having both authority and the means of enforcing it above the heads of the Palestinians. 

How can there possibly be any kind of Palestinian self-determination—regardless of whether that is in one state between the river and the sea, two states, a confederation, or any other arrangement—if Palestinians must trust that Israel, which has so brutally dominated, dispossessed, and denied rights to them for so long, will not decide to do so again?

Even before we consider the absurdity of claiming Palestinians must live next to or with their long-term oppressors in that state of naïve faith, there is the fact that self-determination is inseparable from the right and the ability to defend oneself against attack. 

If the vision was to create some sort of magical, pacified region where Israel could no longer pose a threat to the Palestinians, it would be reasonable to argue that Palestinians do likewise. Given the history and the nature of the real world, neither side of that equation is realistic.

Those among Hamas and the other Palestinian factions who argued for calling the American bluff and accepting the initial offer from the Board of Peace recognized all of this, and that is why they insisted that their weapons be handed over gradually and only to other Palestinians. It’s possible they wouldn’t have even agreed to that much if they expected Israel to accept the deal, but they took the risk because, even if Israel surprised them and cooperated with the Board, the Palestinians’ weaponry would remain in Palestinian hands.

That was and is the problem, and not only for Israel. When confronted with that objection, there was no effort to push back on it from the various “Board of Peace” tools of the Trump administration. That’s because Hamas had been correct: this was not about disarming them, which, under certain conditions, they could accept, albeit reluctantly. But this was about disarming Palestinians permanently, which neither Hamas nor most Palestinians will acquiesce to.

It is just one more example of how the Palestinians are expected to accept terms that no one else would ever be confronted with. And it is another example of how international diplomacy—whether originating in Washington, Brussels, or Riyadh—remains in a hopeless quagmire of its own making, endlessly proposing new ways to dehumanize the Palestinians rather than trying to help chart a path to a better future for everyone between the river and the sea.