In a viral interview last week, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee declared that “it would be fine” if Israel “took” all the land from the Nile river in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq.
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This is the devastating backdrop against which Donald Trump convened the first meeting of his so-called “Board of Peace” in Washington.
Behind the language of reconstruction lies a familiar formula: security control without sovereignty; billions pledged without rights restored; governance structures designed in foreign capitals; economic management tied to compliance. Gaza’s devastated coastline is recast as an investment corridor. Reconstruction is framed as an opportunity for “modernisation”: digital identification systems, tightly monitored financial flows, the promise of a cashless economy administered under external oversight. A liaison office is established to coordinate with a Palestinian Authority stripped of territorial control. Self-determination is deferred yet again.
In this model, occupation is rebranded as redevelopment. Annexation advances on the ground while a new supervisory regime is assembled above it.
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, declined the invitation and called the initiative what it is: a “colonialist operation — others deciding for the Palestinians.”
The description is precise.
What is consolidating is a colonial architecture: territorial absorption normalised; siege maintained through financial and logistical systems; reconstruction conditioned; international law invoked when convenient and ignored when it obstructs expansion. The language may oscillate between messianic fervour and technocratic management; the result converges.
Yet this is not the only architecture taking shape.
Next week, states will convene in The Hague, in an meeting co-chaired by South Africa and Colombia, to advance a different logic: that international law imposes obligations on third states; that arms transfers can be halted; that ports can refuse docking; that vessels can be de-flagged; that public contracts can be reviewed; that universal jurisdiction can be activated. The Hague Group was formed to break paralysis — to translate condemnation into coordinated state action.
Concrete action, not rhetoric, is precisely the world’s demand. That is why days later in Amsterdam, social movements, trade unions, parliamentarians, jurists, dockworkers, journalists, and political leaders from across the world will march to Amsterdam for the People’s Congress for The Hague Group. There, they will map the global supply chains that sustain Israel’s war machine; coordinate organising at ports and transport hubs; plan campaigns to cut contracts and financial ties; pursue accountability through courts; target shipping giants and energy flows; and align strategy across borders.