British viceroy: Dr Hellyer warns Gaza can’t be run by int’l leaders & a few Palestinian technocrats

As international attention turns to the high-level Gaza peace summit in Sharm el Sheikh, where diplomatic gestures are presented as forward momentum, François Picard is pleased to welcome Dr H. A. Hellyer, Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) for Defence and International Security Studies in London. Dr. Hellyer challenges the notion that a genuine peace process is underway or that a two-state solution is within reach, offering a sobering counter-narrative. “Phase two”, led by foreign actors, marked by big promises of reconstruction, risks functioning as political theatre with little substantive change. Dr. Hellyer warns that such efforts, if detached from a clear pathway to Palestinian sovereignty, may only serve to reinforce existing power structures rather than dismantle them. Recovery, he notes, will take decades, not only in rebuilding cities and infrastructure but in the lives and psyche of a displaced and deeply wounded population. Without structural political transformation, reconstruction becomes merely the rebranding of control. Is what’s being offered peace or neocolonialism?