Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza demands atonement from Palestinians for the horrific acts of 7 October, not from Israel for the barbarity that followed. It calls for Gaza’s deradicalization but not an end to Israel’s messianism. It micromanages the future of Palestinian governance while saying nothing about the future of Israel’s occupation.
It is riddled with ambiguities, devoid of timetables, arbiters or consequences for inevitable eventual violations. If all goes according to plan – if the deal’s vagueness is not exploited to torpedo it; unavoidable clashes over subsequent phases do not get in the way of the first stage; Arab and Muslim states maintain pressure on the United States and the United States gets Israel to comply – life for Gazans will transition from utter hell to mere nightmare. Their condition will shift from defenceless prey to twice-dispossessed refugees in their own land. And still, it would be a momentous achievement.
Israel seldom has enjoyed such unrivalled regional military dominance and has never been more isolated. The Palestinians have rarely benefited from such widespread support, and their national movement hardly ever been more adrift. Neither side managed to convert the tremendous assets they accumulated into tangible political gains.
It took an American president unbound by traditional domestic constraints, immune to laws of political gravity, willing to break with convention, engage with Hamas and tackle Israel, to get this done and provide the parties with what they could accept. For Israel, the return of hostages, a continued military presence in Gaza, and the end of a war that was sapping domestic resources and draining global support. For Hamas, a halt to the brutal slaughter, an influx of humanitarian aid, release of prisoners, ruling out deporting Gazans and annexing the West Bank, and a de facto recognition of the movement as chief Palestinian interlocutor on matters of war and peace.
For both, this was validation for an imperfect deal. Little of the plan’s provisions mattered beyond those. As it has in the past, progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict depended less on textual details, about which Trump knew nothing, or on intellectual contortions, which he disdains, than on the exercise of raw power – which he relishes. That this ought to have happened long ago, that so many lives could and should have been spared, is beyond dispute. It is a burden those responsible must bear and for which they ought to be held accountable.
Then there is the involvement of Turkey and Qatar, states that Hamas trusts and upon which it depends. They could get the Islamist movement to agree to what it previously had rejected and accept guarantees it earlier discarded. This was not a deal between Israel and Hamas. It was a deal among President Trump, the Turkey president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Qatar’s emir, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. The United States provided guarantees to Israel, and Turkey and Qatar provided guarantees to Hamas.
Where direct American assurances to Hamas that the war would not resume after the hostages were released proved lacking, indirect assurances through Ankara and Doha did the trick because Hamas views Washington as less likely to betray states about whom Trump cares a lot than an armed movement about which he cares very little. Israel basked in having vanquished an Iranian axis of resistance. It inherited a Turkish/Qatari axis of Islamists instead.
A striking feature of the landscape has been the utter absence, the invisibility, of the recognized Palestinian leadership. These were talks about the Palestinians’ future with no official Palestinian representative in the room. Like a bystander pleading for a role in a play written and staged by others, the Palestinian Authority offered a running commentary on the horrors of a war in which it did not fight and then applause for a deal with which it had nothing to do. Unable to rule the West Bank, it volunteers to govern Gaza. What greater proof of irrelevance than having to beg for relevance.
Israel set out to break the Palestinians’ will, to crush their resolve. Instead, out of memories of atrocities, mass killings and widespread destruction, more radical elements may sprout, seeking vengeance and resorting to desperate acts. Images of 1948 helped summon the Palestine Liberation Organization; the realities of these past two years could give rise to more lethal outcomes. It may take some time, but to listen to Palestinians in general, and to Gazans in particular, is to sense an ominous inevitability: that history is gearing up for revenge. Tomorrow may indeed be yesterday.
Trump’s unorthodoxy helped create this fragile truce. Greater heterodoxy will be required for a sturdier answer to the matter of Gaza, greater still for a path to peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. Adroit plans or clever language will not help. Each of the confrontations between Israel and Hamas – in 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021 – spawned intricate blueprints to open crossings, ease restrictions, begin reconstruction and stop arms smuggling. Not one was implemented. The same holds for innumerable proposals for a two-state solution that, since at least 2000, skillfully resolved issues of territorial allocation, the division of Jerusalem, and security arrangements, but consistently failed to resolve the conflict. If the problem were purely technical, Americans would have an impressive record of success, not a desultory catalogue of failures, for no one can top their semantic ingenuity. Elaborate plans will not yield progress. Wielding power, playing politics, and understanding and shaping the sensitivities of both sides may.
An unorthodox approach would eschew the quick fixes of the past that fixed nothing: those that obsessed about technical solutions; banked on more “sensible” Israelis and more “moderate” Palestinians who enjoyed little domestic sway; focused on bilateral engagements between parties whose uneven power guaranteed failure; excluded influential third parties; and clung to rigid notions of partition that failed to address deeper grievances and aspirations. This has been tried in vain for more than three decades. The futile pursuit of those illusions and deceits brought us to where we are.
This conflict is not a technical dispute over territory, boundaries or security arrangements. It is a deep, abiding, emotional, struggle between two peoples. It serves no purpose to pretend otherwise. The pretence may make some feel better. It will not improve the lives of a single Israeli or Palestinian. No good has come from misinterpreting reality. Some good may come from facing it.
Hussein Agha has been involved in Israeli–Palestinian affairs and negotiations for more than half a century. He spent more than 25 years as a senior associate at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.
Robert Malley is a lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. He served in in senior Middle East positions in the administrations of presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Agha and Malley are the authors of Tomorrow is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine.
