Finally some good news for Palestinians living in Gaza and for (families of) Israeli hostages. Donald Trump achieved a big foreign policy success, possibly Nobel Prize worthy, by brokering a peace deal in Gaza. Trump bullied the Israeli government and Hamas into signing a peace plan (or rather a 20-point bullet list) after Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, launched an ill-advised attack on territory of Trump’s BFF in the region, Qatar. Israel already had alienated most of its traditional allies in the West as the war in Gaza, meant to defeat Hamas, descended into genocide, at least according to many experts. The final blow was dealt when the Dutch broadcaster of the Eurovision song festival said it would withdraw from the contest if Israel would be allowed to participate.
A beautiful day…
The agreement that has been reached last week is, of course, very positive but only deals with the first phase of the plan. There will be a ceasefire, allowing humanitarian aid to resume in Gaza, and the hostages by now have been freed after two years of captivity. However, “forever peace” is still a long way off (even though Hamas has been decimated). The two following phases only are described in vague terms and will require extensive and detailed negotiations between the two sides. Hamas wants Israel to withdraw from Gaza, but Israel will only do so if Hamas is disarmed. Hamas, in turn, is only willing to hand over its weapons to a Palestinian state (but not the Palestinian Authority and may keep some weapons to fight off rivaling thugs), but Israel refuses to recognize such a state (a position not only held by Netanyahu but also by more moderate Israeli politicians). Hamas, whose main goal is to destroy the state of Israel, would need to be dissolved and replaced with an interim government of which the make-up is still unknown.
The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, is corrupt and incompetent and has no control over Hamas/Gaza, while it is uncertain whether the people of Gaza are willing to distance themselves from Hamas’s ideology. Israel has (illegally) established settlements in the West Bank with extensive security walls, fences and control points, making a normal life there for Palestinians virtually impossible (in 2014, then U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry described the situation as apartheid). Netanyahu and his government do not appear willing to give up those settlements.
In any case, the viability of a Palestinian state in its current form is doubtful (aside from the fact that Gaza has been bombed to ruins), given its heavy dependence on Israeli infrastructure and the absence of functioning institutions. The Palestinian territories are completely dependent on foreign aid (Trump’s dream to construct a Mediterranean Riviera in Gaza, but without the ethnic cleansing, actually might not be a terrible idea to offer Gazans hope for a better future) and the allocated land for a Palestine state has been much reduced since a British commission (named after William Peel, the chair of the commission) in 1937 first proposed partitioning the territory to create a state for both Palestinians and Jews. The mutual mistrust between Palestinians and Israelis make the negotiations arduous with a high likelihood to break down. Possibly the most contentious issue is whether Israel will give up its settlements on the West Bank. According to a Pew Research poll in 2024, 49% of Jewish Israelis say they help Israeli security. This issue is likely to be highly polarizing in Israel. In our view, a two-state solution currently seems like a mirage, although we hope we are proven wrong.