The art of the deal: Trump’s bold peace gambit likely to meet fatal resistance
Trump, like previous US presidents, won’t be able to bring long-term peace and stability to the Middle East. Large parts of the Middle East, unrelated to Gaza, are a smoking ruin.
But it looks all but certain that Trump has brought an end, at least for the moment, to the fighting and killing in Gaza. He has secured the return of the Israeli hostages, perhaps as early as Monday, although the price is the release of a ridiculous number of 2000 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of murderers. Trump has brought an end to major Israeli military operations within Gaza.
These are huge achievements and Trump deserves a lot of credit. This is the good Trump. Israeli and Hamas negotiators could not even go into the same room together, their negotiations had to be indirect, but Trump got them to a deal. He injected great White House energy and applied pressure on everyone, on his Israeli ally Benjamin Netanyahu and on Hamas through bloodcurdling threats, but mainly through adroit diplomacy that recruited the Arab and Muslim worlds to his plan. The involvement of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, one of the most competent figures in his first administration, was important.
Of course, Trump wildly, almost beyond parody, overstates what has actually been achieved. He proclaimed the phase one agreement on Truth Social in the following terms: “I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first phase of our peace plan. This means that ALL of the hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a strong, durable and everlasting peace. All parties will be treated fairly! This is a great day for the Arab and Muslim world, Israel, all surrounding nations and the United States of America, and we thank the mediators from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, who worked with us to make this historic and unprecedented event happen. BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!”
We should enjoy the good news while we can get it. For the truth is, it may not last. A few days before the deal was signed, Trump posted: “Based on the statement just issued by Hamas, I believe they are ready for a lasting peace.”
Alas, there’s simply no evidence of this at all. The great US general and one-time secretary of state Colin Powell believed optimism could be a force multiplier. But not if it’s fantasy optimism.
There’s every chance Trump gets phase one completed. There’s little chance he gets phase two, though it’s certainly worth trying for. There’s no chance at all that he gets his “everlasting peace”.
Ehud Yaari is a legendary Israeli journalist, author, think tank scholar, international analyst, perhaps the most sagacious strategic thinker in Israel. He tells Inquirer: “There are two separate issues here which are both part of the Trump outline. The first is the release of hostages, the release of Palestinian prisoners, the withdrawal of the Israel Defence Forces to lines within Gaza. That’s been agreed.
“The second part is not agreed, and that is what happens in Gaza next.”
Gregg Roman of the Middle East Forum puts it this way: “The framework (Trump’s plan) speaks optimistically of Hamas agreeing to disarm, to leave Gaza, to accept peaceful coexistence. But Hamas has committed to none of this. They’ve agreed only to phase one – the hostage exchange … Points two to 20 of Trump’s plan remain aspirational, contingent on Hamas’s voluntary compliance with demands no genocidal movement has ever accepted without military defeat.”
Roman is too negative. There’s a chance for long-term peace, but it’s a small chance. But phase one is beneficial itself and, even if the peace bid fails, the situation could still be vastly better than it has been during the past two years.
Trump’s 20-point plan boils down to a few simple propositions. Hamas goes out of business, surrendering its weapons while its remaining personnel commit to peace and enjoy an amnesty, or go and live somewhere else. An apolitical committee of Palestinians runs the utilities and basic services of Gaza. It’s overseen by an international Board of Peace, chaired by Trump himself and involving former British prime minister Tony Blair. The peace plan doesn’t say it but Blair would be boss of this outfit.
The various parties, chiefly the US and the Gulf Arabs, organise an international stabilisation force to provide basic security for Gaza and train “vetted” Palestinian police. The IDF, having withdrawn to internal lines of control, gradually withdraws further and hands over territory to the stabilisation force. All remaining terror infrastructure, such as tunnels and missile workshops, is to be destroyed by the international force.
After the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform process, which presumably involves getting rid of corruption, holding elections and a few other things, it takes over Gaza. Finally, the peace plan says, this may form the basis of the aspirations for a Palestinian state, presumably a long way off.
That’s a very good plan but there’s no indication Hamas or the other key players in Palestinian politics, or indeed Israel’s Arab neighbours, are up to playing their assigned roles.
The first question: who will control the parts of Gaza the IDF will now be withdrawing from? That’s not a question for six months’ time but for next week. There are clans, mosques, local associations that could perhaps, with help, do the job. But all Hamas needs to reassert control in these areas is people with guns, or at least more people with guns than any other party.
It never figures in the Western media but Hamas is vicious and murderous towards any dissenting Palestinian. There’s no evidence Hamas has changed one speck of its ideology.
People should google and read the inaugural Hamas charter. It’s full of deranged anti-Semitism. Hamas hates Jews as a core part of its ideology, cosmology, demonology. Hamas was created by Iran, which regards America as the Great Satan and Israel as the Little Satan. Hamas does not fear death. It accepted the first part of the Trump plan because Israel put it under such intense military pressure and because one of its key international backers, Qatar, joined the rest of the Arab world in demanding it do so.
But it remains an open question whether Hamas will accept in reality any significant element of the second part of the Trump plan.
The second problem: will any Arab government really commit troops to a stabilisation force? Most of the so-called peacekeeping forces in the Middle East are tourists and observers. I’ve visited and talked to so-called peacekeepers on Israel’s border with Lebanon and with Syria. I found them good people who would like to help the cause of peace. But they’re neither equipped nor commissioned or willing to undertake any military action at all.
If the Arab members of a stabilisation force in Gaza are to have any consequence they have to enforce the observance of international agreements. That means, among other things, they must prevent Palestinian terror attacks against Israel. To do that, Arab soldiers would have to be willing to shoot Palestinian militants to protect Israeli lives. It’s a very difficult scenario to imagine. And if the international stabilisation force doesn’t perform that security role, the IDF will perforce perform the role itself.
Continuing acts of terror don’t necessarily require an ongoing big Hamas movement. The next Palestinian who feels moved by grievance, or by Islamist ideology of the type that motivates Hamas, could undertake such terrorism even if he had no affiliation with Hamas.
Here’s another problem. “Reform” of the PA normally includes scheduling new elections. Yet the last time there were elections in Gaza people voted for Hamas. That’s not to say they would do so again, especially after the horrors of the past two years. But in a sectarian society with no tradition of democracy, voters tend to go for the party that most emphatically expresses their sectarian identity. Naturally, sectarian identity among Palestinians will be expressed by being most stridently anti-Israel or, as in Hamas’s case, blatantly anti-Jew. Remember, when the young Hamas operative on October 7 rang home from among the dead in the kibbutz he and his friends had slaughtered to boast of his great deeds, he told his parents to be proud of him because “your son has killed Jews”.
Elections don’t really work in the Middle East. The only properly functioning democracy is Israel. The most stable Arab states are hereditary monarchies. These may or may not have elections but the power lies with the royal family. The other relatively stable states are military regimes such as Egypt. When Egypt held elections during the Arab Spring it produced a disastrous Muslim Brotherhood government.
And then, Palestinian politics cannot be completely immune from the broader trends in the region. The Middle East forces that really hate Israel, such as Iran, have not gone away. The Middle East is in great disarray generally. Three nations, Syria, Libya and Yemen, are essentially failed states locked in chronic civil war.
Even a stable state such as Qatar has backed Hamas for years, sponsors Al Jazeera with its endless cascades of anti-Western, anti-US and anti-Israel propaganda, while also hosting a giant US military base. Like many in the Middle East, it walks both sides of the street
So what might happen next? If through some miracle the Trump plan is implemented in full, that would be the best chance for peace between Israelis and Palestinians we’ve seen in decades. But for that to happen, the Palestinian leadership, and most of the Arab neighbours, have to be fully committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel.
And after all these decades of terrorism and attacks the Israeli public will need to see many years of normalisation in relations with Palestinians before they would look again at a Palestinian state.
If, as is more likely, phase one gets implemented but the deal stalls there, we still might get a much better outcome than the past two years. Clause 17 of the plan even says that if Hamas rejects the deal the other parties can implement it in the parts of Gaza Hamas doesn’t control. That would be difficult.
Israel itself has a strong incentive to stop the fighting. It has lost 900 soldiers killed in the war in Gaza and thousands have been seriously injured or traumatised. That’s on top of the 1200 killed on October 7 two years ago. It’s a citizen army with many soldiers over 40 years of age who’ve been at war or on duty for 500 days or more.
Yaari suggests that if the IDF partly withdraws and Hamas doesn’t disarm and give power to other Palestinian groups, then Israel could treat Hamas as it treats Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. It could allow in food and medicine, and whatever aid is needed to clear away the rubble but prevent any reconstruction aid going in until Hamas surrenders. Meanwhile, if Hamas sticks its head up Israel would strike it, as it does with Hezbollah.
In that circumstance, Israel would not be conducting major operations among large numbers of civilians.
Yaari believes momentum for genuine political development in Gaza depends on how closely Trump and the US generally stay involved in Gaza. The whole Gaza war and the breakdown in the Middle East demonstrate the disaster that comes when a strategic vacuum is created by the US withdrawing or its allies losing faith in it. One of Trump’s weaknesses is that he invests his administration only in things that he does personally. And there’s only one of him. His attention is often fickle.
The decision to send 200 US troops to Israel to oversee implementation of the deal is a very good sign.
He’s intensely focused on Israel and Gaza now. He’ll visit the Middle East, including Israel, for a lap of honour. In a shrewd remark, Trump observed that the conflict has gone on so long that Israel has lost a great deal of international support, but he would get it back for them.
That’s a fine aspiration. But the global crisis in anti-Semitism, which the Albanese government in Australia has never recognised or properly combated, has been greatly worsened by this war. It has been worsened by Albanese government actions. By formally recognising a Palestinian state when no such state exists the Albanese government implied that Israel has been the main obstacle to a two-state outcome, whereas historically that’s the opposite of the truth. By demonising Israel, the Albanese government unintentionally encouraged the demonisation of Jews in Australia.
Which brings us to the most severe and depressing element of this whole saga. Although Trump and Netanyahu secure a victory in this peace agreement, with precious lives saved all round, and while critical Israeli enemies such as Iran and Hezbollah have been seriously weakened, nonetheless Hamas has achieved a great deal of its objectives in this war. Hamas wanted the Palestinian people to suffer. That’s why it was so extravagant and obscene in its terrorism on October 7, to produce the Israeli reaction it got, and why it refused to end the war at any time in the past two years by releasing the Israeli hostages.
Hamas failed in its effort to get Iran, Hezbollah and other forces to join a general war against Israel. But it succeeded in three key aims.
It derailed the move towards Saudi Arabia establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. It produced a conflict that gravely damaged Israel internationally and inflamed anti-Semitism. In 2024, more than 80,000 Israelis emigrated, a big increase on the year before. And it put Gaza and Palestinian grievance at the top of the international agenda. That so many of its leaders have died is no disincentive to Hamas.
This evil war has damaged everyone. The Hamas agenda of hatred has spread around the world.
Trump has now given us a circuit-breaker. Here’s a chance to calm down, for the killing to stop, maybe even a chance, just a chance, for something better in the future.
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