The recent international summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, has been sold to the world as the end point of a two-year siege and the culmination of the “peace” process for Gaza.

The official narrative, co-chaired by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and US President Donald Trump, seeks to impose a story of diplomatic success.

However, for millions in the Global South and those fighting for justice, this meeting was nothing more than a geopolitical performance designed to legitimize the conclusion of the Israeli offensive without ever addressing the structural roots of the genocide and occupation.

This agreement comes after Israeli apartheid left a brutal toll: more than 67,800 Palestinians killed in Gaza.

The so-called “peace” was signed at the price of blood and rubble, as the summit coincided with the end of the humanitarian exchange of prisoners/hostages.

Hamas’s allegations about the “most severe forms of sadism and fascism” inflicted upon the released Palestinian detainees underscore that the systemic violence of the occupation does not cease with the truce, but is merely masked.

In this in-depth article, we will thoroughly analyze what the “peace” summit held in Egypt really was.

The Power Summit and the Absence of the Victims

The gathering of leaders in Egypt reveals a deeply unequal power structure. The agreement was arranged and dictated by the Washington-Tel Aviv axis, with key regional actors serving as mediators or, in the worst cases, as mere scenery.

• The Architects of Control

The true architect and central figure, Donald Trump, dictated a triumphalist narrative from his late arrival, following a “round of applause” in Israel.

His co-chair in the summit presidency, Al-Sisi, is the leader of an authoritarian regime that, as host and guardian of the Rafah border, plays a crucial role in controlling access and aid to the enclave.

While the Arab mediators (Qatar and Türkiye) were essential for the negotiation with Hamas, their role was subordinated to the US agenda.

#Live I World leaders meet in Egypt to sign Gaza deal https://t.co/xY4lFCEZ6E

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) October 13, 2025

The presence of EU delegations and leaders like Pedro Sánchez and Emmanuel Macron was, in essence, cosmetic, designed to “multilateralize” a pact that primarily benefits the interests of Israel and its allies.

The presence of Mahmoud Abbas, of the Palestinian Authority, in his first meeting with Trump in eight years, was symbolic. Abbas, somewhat sidelined in the truce process, was instrumentalized to give an appearance of Palestinian representation to the agreement, even though the voice of Gaza was silenced.

• The Absences That Define the Agreement

The agreement is intrinsically illegitimate due to the notable absences from the table. The two main signatories of the truce, Israel and Hamas, were not present.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to attend, citing a religious holiday, a weak excuse interpreted by diplomatic sources as clear internal resistance regarding the political scope of the negotiations.

This absence underscores the disconnect between the summit and the ground reality, allowing Israel to maintain distance to continue operating with impunity.

Israel opted for a lower-level technical delegation, reaffirming its power position where political negotiations are secondary to its military and security decisions.

On the other hand, Hamas, excluded from the table, only participated through Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

This exclusion highlights the nature of the agreement: an unequal negotiation where the occupied and resisting party is denied a direct voice on the main stage.

Even more significant were the absences of states with critical stances. The non-attendance of Iran (Hamas’s main ally) and, especially, Saudi Arabia, evidences the fracture in the regional bloc and limits the effectiveness of the agreement to an axis functional to the US.

The Iranian Foreign Minister refused to “sit in the same place as the people who have attacked the people of Iran,” directly pointing to US allies.

The composition of the summit was a filter: the allies of the US and those who accept the conditions of the hegemonic power were present to bless the agreement; those who seek a solution that fully recognizes international law (like Russia and China) or who are considered direct enemies (Iran, Hamas), were deliberately marginalized or self-excluded.

Trump’s Power Play: Business, Not Peace

For a politician like Donald Trump, “peace” is, above all, business and a tool to relaunch his political image.

• The Business of Reconstruction

Trump’s proposal immediately focused on the reconstruction of Gaza, the part he called the “easiest.”

This focus is brazen: it seeks to channel international funds (largely Western and Arab) in exchange for the total “demilitarization” of the enclave and the creation of a “new honest civilian police force.”

These euphemisms hide the real plan: the total disarmament of the resistance and the outsourcing of Gaza’s security control to actors functional to Israel, as we have mentioned in other articles.

Peace becomes a pretext for a new phase of economic occupation and territorial control.

• Imposition and Conditionality: Criminalizing Resistance

Trump’s “message to the Palestinians” was an imposition of unconditional surrender. He urged the Palestinian people to “turn away forever from the path of terror and violence” and to focus on development, instead of “trying to tear Israel down.”

This statement is a direct affront to international law, as it criminalizes resistance against an occupying power and strips the people of their right to self-determination. In Trump’s vision, peace is the acceptance of submission.

Contradictions emerged immediately: just one day after the summit, Netanyahu approved “punitive measures” against Gaza, including a drastic reduction of humanitarian aid and the decision not to open the Rafah crossing.

This shows that Israel acts with impunity and that Trump’s “peace agreement” is nothing more than a worthless piece of paper in the face of a policy of fait accompli.

From Genocide to Controlled Occupation

The Egypt summit, with the “historic agreement” signed by Trump without its full text being published, consolidates itself as a blank check for domination.

It is not the end of the conflict, but the beginning of a new phase of control and dispossession under the euphemisms of “reconstruction” and “demilitarization.”

True peace, the one demanded by the international progressive movement, will only be achieved with the end of the occupation, justice for the victims, the right of return, and the recognition of the State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital within the 1967 borders.

As long as Trump’s agreement focuses on disarming the victim instead of stopping the aggressor, it will be perceived, and rightly so, as the legitimization of genocide.

IN THIS ARTICLE