UN housing expert raises concerns about ‘land grabs’ in Trump’s Gaza plan
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on the right to housing, has raised concerns about details included in Trump’s plan, including a proposed “permanent buffer zone”.
“This so-called ‘peace plan’ by Trump and Netanyahu is abominable on so many levels,” Rajagopal said in a post on social media.
“Among the worst: a ‘transitional authority’ headed by the war criminal Tony Blair [and] land grabs through a permanent buffer zone.”
“Palestinians must drive this process!” Rajagopal said.
A map of the Gaza Strip shared by a White House social media account shows a plan for the Israeli military to withdraw in stages, but maintain a “security buffer zone” inside Palestinian territory after a third withdrawal.
The Chilcot report into the UK’s role in the Iraq war found that Blair had committed to war before peaceful options had been exhausted, and that the legality of his case for war against Iraq was questionable.
President Donald J. Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict:
1. Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.
2. Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough.
3. If… pic.twitter.com/veqhr9MW28
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 29, 2025
Trump’s Gaza proposal contains ‘poison pill’ of continued occupation of Gaza territory
Omar Baddar, a Palestinian-American political analyst based in Washington, DC, said it was difficult to assess at this point the likely Hamas response to the proposed Trump plan for Gaza.
There are some good points in the plan, such as language excluding the possibility of annexation of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of its population by Israel.
However, there was still a “poison pill” in the proposed deal, “which basically says that Israel gets to indefinitely occupy a so-called security perimeter inside Gaza, with no timeline for withdrawal and, basically, Israel gets to decide on its own when it might feel like leaving, which might, in fact, never happen,” Baddar said.
“Palestinians are being asked, once again, to live as a captive population under complete and total Israeli control and domination, with no prospect for being a free people in their own country.
“And that is simply a recipe for long-term failure. It is difficult to imagine what incentive Hamas has to accept that in the short term, despite what I am sure is enormous diplomatic pressure against them”.
Potential Gaza ‘board of peace’ to include Iraq war ‘architect’ Tony Blair
“Certainly, Netanyahu’s coalition would not be happy with the prospect that Gaza is not going to be taken over. This is what his coalition has been talking about for a very long time,” Baddar told Al Jazeera.
“So, putting an end to those dreams is certainly going to be a tough sell,” Baddar said.
“I think that Netanyahu inserted language in there that ensures indefinite Israeli dominance of Gaza, because he knows that is going to make it very likely for Palestinians to actually reject that prospect,” he said.
“When you are looking at the elements of who could govern Gaza, we are having an entire conversation about a so-called ‘board of peace’, that is going to include people like Tony Blair and Donald Trump. Those are people with records that are frankly nothing short of criminal towards the region,” he said.
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who joined the US in its attack on the regime of Saddam Hussein, was an “architect of the invasion of Iraq and the lies that it was based on, and the lives that were destroyed as a result”, Baddar said.
And Trump has endorsed illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s illegal takeover of the Syrian Golan Heights, and the granting of Palestine’s Jerusalem over to Israel – “just one atrocity after another”, he said.
