On my home office wall hangs a framed poster with the word peace in English, Arabic and Hebrew.
I acquired it in Jerusalem in November 1977 when I was covering Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic visit there, a stunning event that truly changed the Middle East. Once Egypt — then the Arab world’s foremost military power — signed a peace treaty with Israel, any prospect for a future Arab-Israeli ground war came to an end.
The President Donald Trump-brokered ceasefire-for-hostages deal in Gaza, for which he deserves full credit, could be the first step toward a similar radical shift in the region. But for now, it is only a bare beginning. It won’t “end the war in Gaza,” nor will it create “peace, hopefully everlasting peace,” as the president promised.
We can celebrate the freeing of brutalized Israeli hostages and feel relief that starving Gazan civilians will finally gain access to food and medicine. Yet, this is only Phase One of Trump’s 20-point peace plan.
It is Phase Two — which calls for rebuilding Gaza and offering Palestinians a political future — that will determine whether the ceasefire-hostage deal marks more than a brief respite before the next wave of bloodshed.
Having spent decades covering unsuccessful Mideast peace efforts, I am trying to tamp down my cynicism. But here are a few points from history which, if ignored, will likely add Trump’s current triumph to that sad list of failures.
1) If the president is serious about peace and not just investments in a “Gaza Riviera,” he will need to keep his attention and pressure on both Israel and Hamas for the long run.
Trump achieved the hostages-for-ceasefire deal only after he became furious enough at Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to use American leverage. The reason: Israel had conducted a bombing raid on Hamas negotiators in Qatar just as they were meeting to discuss Trump’s peace proposal.
Not only did the president force the Israeli leader to apologize to Qatar’s ruler, but he squeezed the prime minister to halt his bombing campaign to raze Gaza City.
No U.S. leader has ever successfully applied such pressure to Israel. But Trump cannot stop now. Netanyahu pulled out of a phased ceasefire-for-hostages deal earlier this year, resuming the war after a partial release. Israeli media is full of speculation that he might well do the same after all the hostages come home.
Meantime, Netanyahu’s radical-right government partners insist that the war is not over. In a post on X, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stressed that Israel must ensure the deal is not “hostages in exchange for stopping the war, as Hamas thinks.” He added that after the hostages return, Israel must continue “to pursue the true eradication of Hamas and the demilitarization of the Strip, so it no longer poses a threat to Israel.” Translation: Restart the war.
Trump is tasking moderate Arab leaders, along with Turkey, to ensure Hamas disarms, to set up a multinational peace force, and to pay for Gaza. He can’t expect them to do their part if he doesn’t check Netanyahu and prevent him from concocting excuses to end the ceasefire.
2) There can be no economic renovation of Gaza without a political horizon for Palestinian self-determination, which Netanyahu vehemently opposes.
Israelis have frequently derided the West Bank and Gaza for not developing a Singapore-like economy. But so long as Israel controls all entrances and exits from those territories, by land, air and sea, it can hold up imports and exports for political reasons. Workers can be blocked from reaching workplaces. Palestinians aren’t allowed to upgrade their internet networks. Electricity flows can be shut off from Israel.
Palestinian business owners can’t attract investment, farmers and factories can’t move their produce to international markets, Gazan fishermen aren’t allowed to fish for security reasons — the list of restrictions could fill up my column.
Even if Hamas disappears, these restrictions won’t end if a government of Palestinian technocrats is set up in Gaza, as called for in the plan.
When the widely praised technocrat Salam Fayyad became Palestinian prime minister in 2013, based in the West Bank, his reforms were constantly thwarted by Israel for political reasons.
Bottom line: If Trump truly embraces fantasies of a Gaza Riviera without offering the Palestinians hope of emancipation, his plan will soon collapse.
3) Palestinians need a genuine political alternative to Hamas. Trump’s plan calls for the reform of the Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank, and which Arab leaders hope will eventually take control of Gaza. The PA despises Hamas, and its police in the West Bank have helped Israel keep it under control there.
But Netanyahu has spent years trying to destroy the PA (even as he was asking Qatar to fund Hamas in Gaza). He insists the PA will never play a political role.
If similar groups to Hamas are not going to spring up, Palestinians need an alternative political movement. And they need to be convinced that the occupation will someday end.
Trump and a genuine negotiating team would have to press Netanyahu on this, all while convincing Israelis he can shepherd them to peace with the greater Arab world. Too much to hope for? No doubt. But it’s hard to admit that right now.
4) Trump cannot ignore the West Bank. He has told America’s Arab allies that he won’t support Israeli annexation. But radical Jewish settlers are carrying out de facto annexation, leveling villages, uprooting farmers, creating West Bank refugees and building new settlements. All with the complicity of Netanyahu’s government.
There can be no peace in Gaza if dispossession is in full force in the West Bank. The only politician with the leverage to stop that is Trump.
5) The president must press Netanyahu to control messianic groups in Israel that could, literally, blow up any peace process. In 1982, a Jewish terrorist organization known as the Jewish Underground plotted to destroy the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the third-holiest site in Islam.
The plan was eventually abandoned, but messianic groups are growing in strength in Israel. The country’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet (which eventually arrested members of the Jewish Underground back in 1984), will soon have a new head who is unlikely to pursue Jewish extremists. He is a follower himself of one of Israel’s most extreme messianic rabbis.
Again, just as peace requires hindering Palestinian religious extremists such as Hamas, it also requires impeding Israeli Jewish counterparts. This means leaning on Netanyahu to thwart extremist agitation.
In sum, Phase Two of Trump’s plan doesn’t stand a chance unless the president foregoes his tendency to claim victory and move on to the next photo op. Although he has little interest in briefings, he can’t ignore the missteps that tripped up previous peace efforts (about which he probably has no knowledge).
However, if Trump wants that Nobel Peace Prize next year, he will have to learn fast.
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