“If you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Davos, 20 January 2026

It may already be too late to avoid ending up on the menu of Trump’s so called colonial council, branded as the “Peace Council”. In truth, we have been sitting on the dining table of modern colonial powers long before that, since the Nakba and the establishment of the colonial project on Palestinian land in 1948, followed by decades of subordination and dependency on the United States and Western powers, through the invasion and destruction of Iraq, and reaching, though this is not the end, the Israeli war of extermination against the Palestinian people in Gaza, the annexation of East Jerusalem, and the accelerated swallowing of the West Bank.

The mere act of labeling this council as one of peace, while standing on the land of Gaza’s people and their remains, is enough to reveal the ugliness of the coming colonial scene. Yet US President Donald Trump insists on deepening the insult and enforcing submission by presenting the council and its founding statement at the Davos Economic Forum, as if it were his personal board for ruling the world, without partners or allies. The most obscene image, however, came with the presentation by his son in law, Jared Kushner, an official member of what can only be called the “Gaza Plunder Council”, who showcased a map of “New Gaza” projects under the label of “Tourism in Gaza” to buyers and investors, a vision in which there is no land and no homeland.

Frankly, Davos, the annual gathering of the world’s wealthy and rulers, is the appropriate venue for such a shameful operation. Even so, members of the forum themselves appeared uneasy, perhaps even embarrassed. This explains the warm applause that followed the speech of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who tore the mask off the game in a historic address, openly rebelling against Trump and acknowledging the falseness of the global order that has prevailed since the end of the Second World War. He admitted the complicity of all Western states in pretending to respect laws and conventions while maintaining silence over their violation, and even participating in the plunder of rights and peoples to divide spoils and profits.

The problem with Carney’s speech was not its content, much of it would suit an internationalist revolutionary or a radical thinker. The flaw lay in his failure to call for an end to the farce of global plunder unfolding before his eyes, as if Gaza and Venezuela existed on another planet. Instead, he called for solidarity and the unification of efforts among “middle powers”, by which he meant his own country, the main Western European powers, and Australia, to confront an unrestrained American power.

But what about the rest of the world? Carney located salvation in an alliance of “capitalist and more moderate powers”, focused on protecting their interests. Confronting Trump, in his view, requires engagement through policies that fortify these economies so they do not end up on Trump’s menu. As for us in the Global South, and for most working classes in Europe and the Americas, we do not factor into Carney’s calculations, nor into those of Western powers. Our only aspiration, it seems, is to be listed on the menu of the American empire.

What we are witnessing in the lamentations of Western officials and liberal intellectuals over the decline of the global order is nothing more than fear. Trump has stripped away the civilised mask that concealed the plunder of peoples, invasions, silence over massacres, and the genocide in Gaza, all in the service of accumulating profits and wealth from the arms trade, and even from so called humanitarian aid institutions. This is merely an extension of old colonialism, whose methods evolved after the Second World War. Trump has taken it a qualitative step further, openly looting peoples and states and subjecting them, with the full participation of the American system.

Any serious discussion of Trump’s council, under whatever name, and of the role of a Palestinian administrative committee, cannot be meaningful without understanding the dimensions of turning Gaza into a model of an American Israeli colony.

Most objections raised by Western voices today stem from being excluded from profits, and from losing the ability to continue pretending to uphold humanity, human rights, and civilisation against “savages” like us, who demand rights, sovereignty, and freedom. These values, in their view, are the monopoly of those skilled at performing a civilised role while trampling rights. This leads to a clear conclusion, Trump and his circle of investors have not changed their view of Gaza since the first month of the Zionist war of extermination against its people. What Kushner, Witkoff, and Trump see is a real estate project that demolishes, and buries, the rights of the indigenous population, the Palestinian people, not necessarily through total physical annihilation, but by erasing national and collective consciousness and severing ties with the Arab environment.

The entire idea behind the Abraham Accords signed between Israel, the UAE, and other states is to terminate collective awareness of the Palestinian cause, and to suffocate the very identity that constitutes an existential threat to Israel. Israel’s importance here lies in its role as a representative of a settler colonial identity, an extension of Western colonial dominance.

Accordingly, any serious discussion of Trump’s council, under any label, and of the role of a Palestinian administrative body, is meaningless without grasping the transformation of Gaza into a prototype of an American Israeli colony, ruled by a small group of investors included in the project, alongside the Israeli and American militaries. This may partially contradict the ambitions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but Trump’s primary concern is not the fulfilment of the Zionist project, rather its exploitation in his own service. The establishment of a Palestinian state, or the end of Israeli occupation, are not on the agenda. There should be no illusion that the United States is prepared to rebuild a Palestinian society with a national identity in Gaza. What is required are residents who serve an investment colony.

Gaza has not only exposed the complicit and the hesitant, it has laid all the cards on the table. Yet the solution is not purely Palestinian. It requires Arab awareness that participation in what is called a peace council does not make them partners. Trump wants them to serve as false witnesses, and as financiers of his investment projects and their extension into the Arab world and beyond.

For precision’s sake, the reality is that the American empire seeks Arab money to finance the liquidation of the Palestinian cause, and joint projects with Israel that erase any Arab claims to rights, by binding all vital sectors to them. This objective is not new. What is new is the level of American arrogance that leaves us isolated, despite the resentment of Western states that feel excluded, even if there remains a narrow window for cooperation with them to halt the dismantling of international institutions.

The real challenge lies in Palestinian unity, as a necessity rather than an option to be debated, and in Arab, indeed regional, coordination. Proposals such as forming an Egyptian Saudi Turkish coalition are essential, without excluding or ignoring Iran. What the Canadian prime minister called for in terms of uniting “middle powers” can be mirrored regionally. The situation demands, as it always has, the unification of efforts with countries of the Global South, which are the primary targets of the empire. Yet we are the most negligent. No reaction, no solidarity, followed what happened in Venezuela, as if we were guaranteed not to share its fate, while Trump continues to threaten Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico, countries that took the initiative in international solidarity against the war of extermination.

Perhaps the first condition for expressing our rejection of what is being plotted for the Arab world is the expansion of freedoms and the involvement of societies in thinking and decision making, so that our actions rest on a solid internal front and genuine legitimacy in confronting colonial schemes, and in moving toward unifying efforts with the rest of the Global South.

For now, however, our states continue to seek Trump’s approval and that of his circle. The question remains, how long will we continue to appease America without turning into a dish on the empire’s table?

Translated from Al-Araby Al-Jadeed