“Trump’s Promise”… How Can Arabs Foil the “Second Balfour”?

When Trump announced his plan, which represents a pivotal and fateful stage for the region, it became necessary to establish a historical connection that might help us understand the dynamics of this phase. This historical linkage takes us back to the Balfour Declaration, considered one of the most critical turning points in Middle Eastern history, when Britain—the world’s superpower at the time—declared its support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

The Balfour Declaration was issued on November 2, 1917. After that, planning and coordination continued by the colonial alliance and the Zionist movement to achieve this goal. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations issued Resolution 181, recommending the partition of Palestine into two states: one Jewish and the other Arab. On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel.

Thirty years separated the Balfour Declaration from the declaration of Israel’s establishment. This suggests that the colonial alliance possesses resilience, supported by all means of power and fortitude, making time an advantage for its agenda.

More than a century after the Balfour Declaration, Trump, as president of the world’s current superpower, announced his plans or ideas for displacing Palestinians to neighboring countries. Trump’s proposals or ideas are the same ones that emerged during his first presidency under the so-called “Deal of the Century,” which included plans to redraw borders and displace Palestinians. This leaves no doubt that the plan is strategic rather than a reaction to the “Flood,” as some claimed, ignoring the existence of the occupation and its practices as the direct cause of the resistance operation, instead blaming the resistance for Trump’s measures and ideas.

The global colonial alliance, led by the U.S. government controlled by capitalist and Zionist lobbies, has decided to move to the next phase after completing a colonial geographical division and establishing a functional entity stemming from the Balfour Declaration. We can say that the Balfour Declaration and Trump’s plan, despite their temporal distance, are on the same trajectory of the deep world order, making Trump’s plan the “Second Balfour Declaration.”

Despite the bleak outlook this presents, several factors are sufficient to thwart Trump’s plans and prevent the Balfour train from reaching its second station. Among the most crucial of these factors is the seriousness of Arab rejection, which must transcend diplomatic maneuvers constrained by American hegemony and pressure. It must also avoid recycling the same failed solution that grants Israel security by demanding that Gaza be handed over to an incapable authority engaged in endless negotiations, which only means more settlements and soft displacement.

The colonial alliance, or the deep world order—call it what you will—that has governed our region through financial systems, intimidation, tyranny, exploitation, and blackmail, is now preparing to govern it through settlement and demographic replacement, i.e., land appropriation, which ultimately undermines regional regimes. Because Trump’s plan, or the next phase of the new Balfour, came with minimal diplomatic cover, leaving Arab regimes no room for maneuvering, it had to be rejected. The expectation is that Arab governments will hold on to this rejection for as long as possible, which necessitates strong and widespread popular support to bolster these governments and help them resist the plan.

Another crucial factor, equally important in thwarting these schemes, is the resistance, which has proven that it has minimum red lines it will not cross. No matter how intense the pressure, it will not succumb to “realism and pragmatism” but will instead raise the bar of defiance despite the challenges surrounding it.

On the day after the resistance operation, Israel launched an unprecedentedly ferocious war—perhaps unmatched in modern history—targeting civilian populations and employing every weapon supplied by global powers, especially the U.S. The occupation sought to overturn the resistance operation by leveraging its overwhelming firepower from land, air, and sea, supported by the entire colonial alliance, led by Washington. Meanwhile, Gaza stood alone against this onslaught, with only limited external support, which, while appreciated, failed to align with the strategic vision of the resistance due to constraints imposed by parallel strategic calculations.

Nevertheless, the extraordinary resilience of the resistance endured. It inflicted heavy losses on the Israeli army, never wavered, never hesitated, never disappeared, never abandoned its struggle, and never surrendered—until a ceasefire was eventually signed. This agreement was not just between the resistance and Israel, but rather with all parties complicit in the crime of genocide.

Trump’s plan is not an inevitable fate, nor is the occupation itself. This is a direct consequence of the historic battle that the world witnessed unfold moment by moment, where, for the first time since its establishment, Israel found itself facing an existential threat. There is no “next day” other than the day determined by Gaza and its resistance. There is no acceptance of the occupation’s permanence—only continued resistance, engagement with it, and unwavering support for it, in addition to the establishment of a unified Palestinian political leadership rooted in the principle of resistance.