CRACKING IDEOLOGIES: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF TRUMP’S 20-POINT GAZA PEACE PROPOSAL 2025

Abstract

This study explores Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace proposal through Fairclough's and Van Dijk’s frameworks of critical discourse analysis. The study examines how language is used to construct power, ideology, and representation of participants discussed in the proposal. Political participants are portrayed differently through discourse especially, Gaza, USA, Israel, Hamas, and the Palestinian people. Critical analysis of lexical choices, agency, syntactic and macro-ideological structures frame Gaza as a security threat, USA as prime authority and Israel as sub-authority. This discourse portrays Gaza as passive recipients and USA and Israel as authoritative peace makers. The findings reveal that peace is controlled, conditional, and governed by international bodies. This paper contributes to deeper understanding of people by revealing that peace proposals are not just for the sake of peace, rather those may reinforce dominant ideologies through language.