On the same day that Nikolai Mladenov, the High Representative of the Board of Peace, condemned Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, he released a separate document worth a closer look: a “roadmap” for the future of Gaza. Its stated components: the disarmament of Hamas, expanded humanitarian aid, the installation of a technocratic council, a new Palestinian police force, an international stabilization force, and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
A template that has never worked.
The list reads as a summary of points that have been written down repeatedly — and have repeatedly failed. “Disarming Hamas” appeared as the lead item in the 2002 Road Map, in the rationale for the 2005 Gaza disengagement, after Operation Protective Edge in 2014, in the 2018 talk of “restoring Abu Mazen’s sovereignty,” in the 2020 “Deal of the Century,” and in Blinken’s 2024 plan. Not once has the item been delivered — not because no one was willing to take it on, but because the executor does not exist.
Euphemisms in place of mechanisms.
“A new Palestinian police force” is a polite phrase for a Palestinian Authority capable of operating inside the Strip. No such authority has existed there since 2007. “A technocratic council” is a polite phrase for a group of people no one elected and no one will accept. “An international stabilization force” is a polite phrase for something that does not exist.
Ben-Gvir in the concrete.
To the inventory of polite phrasings that make up the document, the context adds a thoroughly un-euphemistic scene. Mladenov’s condemnation of the Minister of National Security followed Ben-Gvir’s publication of reels showing detainees from the Sumud flotilla — the people who had tried to break through to Gaza. In the footage, the minister cast himself precisely as a minister: he showed the detainees their place — on the floor, in handcuffs, on Israeli soil. If technocrats, police, and stabilization are euphemisms for a future that does not exist, Ben-Gvir on those reels is a direct statement of the Netanyahu government’s political priorities in the present. No euphemisms: a minister, detainees, the floor, handcuffs, a demonstration of sovereignty.
The plan as marketing.
Mladenov’s roadmap is not an operational plan but a virtualization of process. Its function is to plant in the public field the parameters of the “day after,” so that every future Israeli decision — military or political — is measured against them. In the attention economy, the release of a document is at times more consequential than the existence of a mechanism to enforce it. Here it is plain that no enforcer exists; it is equally plain that the document will be cited. The combination of those two certainties — impossibility of enforcement, ease of citation — is what explains the genre.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The condemnation of Ben-Gvir and the release of the roadmap on the same day are not a coincidence but the single logic of Trump’s Gaza plan. Dr. Jekyll is the peaceful virtualization: technocrats, police, stabilization, withdrawal. Mr. Hyde is the public display of an Israeli minister carrying out precisely the functions the Netanyahu government treats as priorities. Mladenov as Dr. Jekyll constructs the legitimate horizon of a virtual future; Ben-Gvir-Hyde attacks the shifting present. As always with Trump, both narratives run in sync. The effectiveness of the construction depends solely on the weight of the information pressure behind it and on Trump’s own standing.
