There is no need to embrace ecstatically all of Donald Trump’s hyperbole in order to welcome his peace plan for Gaza. Perhaps, if we are fortunate, it will secure the everlasting peace the president dreams about. That is not an ignoble aim, however easy it is to mock.
If the plan succeeds, it will not just bring peace and security to Gaza: it will clear a path to a two-state solution and the creation of a state of Palestine, coexisting alongside a more secure Israel. That, in turn, would help to defuse wider conflicts in the Middle East, and ease the “clash of civilisations” between the Islamic world and the West that assorted terrorists have done so much, for decades, to foment.
If President Trump’s plan does have the potential to grant some justice to the Palestinians after so long, and to make safe the state of Israel within agreed borders, then that alone is cause to support it – but the yield could be much more far-reaching. The likes of al-Qaeda have for a long time cynically exploited the plight of the Palestinian people in their efforts to recruit members. That is yet another powerful reason to end Palestine’s suffering. Israel-Palestine is an issue that has even disfigured politics in parts of Western Europe. For a change, Mr Trump may be forgiven for his bombast.
The president and his team, including Sir Tony Blair, have built a formidable diplomatic alliance behind the initiative, and – as Sir Tony has said – the plan is an intelligent one and has been well thought through. It deserves to work. (Of course, there was a previous endeavour – in July, France and Saudi Arabia presented a detailed roadmap to peace that would see all hostages returned, Hamas relinquish power, and a transitional administration appointed with the assistance of the UN. It did not seem to capture the world’s imagination in quite the same way.)
The Trump plan has its flaws, as is inevitable in such an exercise. The Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, have not yet been given proper status, or a proper role. Despite Mr Trump’s wishful remarks about involving Iran and its semi-autonomous proxies – Hezbollah, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen – all are obviously absent. There is no mention of the occupied West Bank, although Mr Trump has bluntly said that Israel will not be permitted to annex the territory in order to frustrate the creation of a viable Palestinian state in time.
The most grievous error in the construction of the peace plan, ironically, is the role it has ascribed to Hamas. Yes, the plan is to disarm the militant group, and to debar its members from having any role in the governance of Gaza or the future Palestinian state. But the mistake in President Trump’s initiative is that its progress is contingent on the leaders of Hamas agreeing to it, and releasing the hostages, when they have no obvious incentive to do so.
If they definitively reject it out of hand, ruling out even conditional participation, then, on the basis of what Mr Trump says, the plan will be dead almost as soon as it has been born. If Hamas does say “No, not ever”, then Mr Trump has publicly promised Benjamin Netanyahu that he can instead “finish the job”, with the full military and economic backing of the United States. That would be the end of Gaza, with further grim consequences for the Palestinian people, including the threat of expulsion from their homeland. Hamas says it will respond to the peace plan on Wednesday.
In other words, the Trump initiative has no “plan B”, and it needs one. Hamas should not be permitted to prevent the US president’s plan from progressing, even if it has to be adjusted to allow for such resistance. This is, in fact, the normal course of such peace processes, as has been witnessed in Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and the locations of other seemingly intractable conflicts. Sir Tony and the other dignitaries on the Board of Peace, all of whom will have experience in conflict resolution, will need to advise their chair, Mr Trump, about how long, uneven and frustrating a quest for peace can be – and certainly will be in this case.
President Trump has many well-publicised flaws – including some that ought to have disqualified him from office and seen him sent to jail – but among those defects there does seem to lurk a genuine personal revulsion at war. He is vain, and would no doubt love to surpass the peace agreements achieved by presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama. He is also an impatient man, with only a weak grip on geopolitical realities and a fatal attraction to perceived “strongmen”, such as Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mr Netanyahu.
That is all the more reason for the president to be encouraged by his allies in the West to keep up the pressure he’s exerted on the Netanyahu administration to end this war, and to use all means at his disposal to keep working for peace. An unlikely man on an improbable mission – but, as things stand, Mr Trump and his plan are all there is.
