After the euphoria and relief of Monday’s prisoner exchange and ceasefire, Tuesday has brought some ominous portents for the future of the Gaza peace deal.
The Gaza peace deal’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness
Trump-style diplomacy made the deal work, and could undo it.
Joshua Keating is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood, an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map.
For one thing, the shooting hasn’t stopped entirely. Five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli drone strike on Tuesday morning in Gaza’s Shejaiya neighborhood. According to the Israel Defense Forces, they had crossed the “yellow line” to which Israeli forces had withdrawn under the peace agreement.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: On Monday, video circulated of the group publicly executing seven men accused of collaboration with Israel. Israel has also decided not to reopen the Rafah border crossing, between Gaza and Egypt, and to continue to limit aid into the Gaza Strip, over Hamas’s failure to return the dead bodies of hostages still in Gaza. Four bodies were handed over on Monday, with 24 still remaining. The Red Cross has said it will take time to locate some of the bodies beneath the rubble.
President Donald 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 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.
In hindsight, this was probably 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 little 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 fucking negative,” and continued to push the process forward. At the same time, Qatar and Egypt reportedly strong-armed Hamas into accepting a deal they had initially viewed as a nonstarter.
All of this worked because many of the 20-point plan’s provisions are 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 make the agreement minimally acceptable 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 reviled in much of the Middle East for his role in the Iraq war, really play a role in governing Gaza? Even Trump has some doubts about the last one.
The deal is designed as something of a diplomatic Rorschach test that 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 general terms.)
In the short term, none of this is a bad thing. 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.
The agreement stopped the carnage, and it 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. But as the events of this week are already showing, it’s an opening that could close quickly.
Will the peace last this time?
It’s worth remembering that 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. (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 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 range of scenarios that could lead to the war resuming.
Give Trump his due: 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.
The provision in the deal that names Trump as the chair of the “board of peace” supervising Gaza’s governance may be intended as a way to keep him engaged. Others hope his pining for the still elusive Nobel Peace Prize may focus his attention.
Trump is never shy about declaring victory regardless of the facts. He now claims to have ended eight wars — several of which involved countries that were not actually at war.
In Gaza, that tendency of his was an asset. A more fact-based and pragmatic approach would probably not have gotten this deal done. But keeping the peace, and preventing more bloodshed in Gaza, may now depend on Trump being able to continue working on a problem even after he’s already gotten credit for fixing it.
