Trump Triumphs

After the euphoria and relief of Monday’s prisoner exchange and ceasefire, Tuesday has brought some ominous signs for the future of the Gaza peace deal wrought by president Donald Trump.

Despite the ringing words of the leaders gathered at Sharm El-Sheikh the shooting didn’t

entirely stop. Five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli drone strike on Tuesday morning in Gaza’s Shejaiya neighborhood. According to the (IDF) Israel Defense Forces, they had crossed the “yellow line” to which Israeli forces had withdrawn under the peace agreement. Hamas is also giving little indication that it plans on eliminating itself as either a political or military force: indeed, video circulated of the group publicly executing men accused of collaboration with Israel seems to underline their determination to reassert control over what’s left of the Gaza strip. Israel is keeping close watch over the Rafah border crossing, between Gaza and Egypt, poised at any moment to continue to limit aid entry and resume hostilities, over Hamas’s failure to return the dead bodies of hostages still in Gaza.

Trump said on Monday that the “hardest part” of ending the war had been accomplished and that rebuilding Gaza would likely be the “easiest.” Right now, it’s hard to find visible justification for that optimism.

What’s becoming increasingly clear as the deal goes into effect is that its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: It put off the “hardest” questions — when, if ever, will Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza entirely? When will Hamas disarm? Who will govern Gaza after they do? — until later, in order to prioritize a ceasefire and hostage release.

Even in hindsight, this was the right approach, and likely the only reason the deal went through. When Trump first announced the parameters of the deal in September, the concern was that the two sides would agree in principle but insist on haggling over every minute detail while the fighting continued. Indeed, that’s what they tried to do. When Hamas replied to the proposal with a qualified “yes, but” in early October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assumed the deal was off. Instead, Trump publicly celebrated Hamas for agreeing to his proposal, told Netanyahu to stop being “so f******g negative,” and continued to ram the process forward. At the same time, Qatar and Egypt reportedly strong-armed Hamas into accepting a deal they had initially viewed with skepticism as a nonstarter.

All of this worked because many of the 20-point plan’s provisions are intentionally vague and have no deadlines attached to them. It’s fair to assume many of them are not actually plans for things that will really take place, but language inserted to give the agreement minimally acceptable denominators to all the stakeholders. Will Hamas members who lay down their weapons really be amnestied and given asylum abroad? Will the Palestinian Authority really complete a “reform program” making it acceptable to Israel as Gaza’s new ruler? Will there really be an “International Stabilization Force” to provide security? Or an “interfaith dialogue process” to change the mindsets of Israelis and Palestinians? Will there really be a “Trump economic development plan” to bring prosperity to the shattered region? Will former Prime Minister Tony Blair, a man held with minimal high regards in much of the Middle East for his role in the Iraq war, really play some sort of role in governing Gaza? Even Trump has some doubts about the last one. In recent days, the president appears to be hedging his bets on taking the ‘Chairman’s role on a ‘Board of Peace.’

The deal is actually designed as something of a diplomatic Rorschach test which allows everyone involved to see what they want in it. This was in evidence on Monday night when Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seemed to disagree about whether the plan calls for a two-state solution. (It does, but only briefly and in very general terms.)

None of this is a bad thing, at least in the short term. If the negotiators had insisted on hashing out a detailed and binding road map for Gaza’s political future before the deal went into effect, the IDF would likely be fighting street-by-street through Gaza City right now and the hostages would still be in captivity, as would the nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees who were also released on Monday. Sometimes in diplomacy one it’s prudent to go for the low-hanging fruit.

That the agreement stopped the carnage and could also be an opening for a political process that leads to a better future for Gaza and the region — or at least a less grim present, is a good, even great start. But as the events of this week are already showing, it’s an opening that could close quickly.

We’ve been here before — and quite recently. A ceasefire deal, negotiated in the waning days of the Biden administration, was still in effect when Trump took office. It’s also worth mentioning that Trump and his envoy Steve Witkoff were involved in the talks that led to that ceasefire. That deal was split into three phases. The first, binding phase, involved a pause in the fighting and the release of some of the Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Phase two, in which the two sides were supposed to begin negotiations for a full end to the war, the release of the remaining hostages, and the future governance of Gaza, never happened. Frustrated with the lack of progress on hostage releases, Israel resumed airstrikes in Gaza in March, and halted food aid into the territory, with Trump’s full support. (At the time, Trump has still in thrall to the idea of “cleaning out” Gaza and turning it into a holiday resort, which probably didn’t much help matters.)

This time is different, mainly because the last of the hostages have been released. (Hamas leaders had reportedly begun to see them more as a liability — giving Israel a pretext to keep fighting — than as a useful bargaining chip.) But if Hamas fighters are still armed and in control of much of Gaza, and if IDF troops are still present within the territory, it’s not difficult to imagine a whole range of scenarios that could lead to the war resuming. And this time, it would be to the death, as radicals on both sides seem to want.

It's more than fair for to give Trump his due. He understood that the “rough” Middle East neighborhood is no place of gentle words and moral suasion. Force speaks louder here than words and the president knows that that to bring some order to the jungle one has to be the apex animal and not be afraid to assert that power. In so doing he has also laid bare the posturing paper tigers than Russia and China are in the region. The United States, in collation with the Gulf states, Egypt and Turkey, got it done.

Over the past few weeks, he has shown that his willingness to put real pressure on Netanyahu and to leverage his close relationships in the Gulf can produce results in the Middle East much more quickly than many experts and peace process veterans thought possible. (Whether he could have achieved it much sooner is another question.) But keeping the deal from falling apart, much less delivering the “new dawn for the Middle East,” may require him to remain as involved and willing to apply that pressure as he has been for the past few weeks.

If that works, the deal somehow holds despite the inevitable “wobbles” that are to come, then give the man his Nobel Prize next year.