President Trump’s new Gaza peace plan is a “pipedream” that will fail. While the ceasefire secured the return of Israeli hostages, it leaves a defiant Hamas in power. Hamas officials have already publicly vowed they will “never surrender its weapons” and will continue their “resistance,” even as they reassert control over Gaza. The plan relies on a future international force to dislodge the terror group, a scenario deemed highly unlikely. By failing to remove Hamas, the ceasefire merely sets the stage for the next inevitable war.
“[T]he Hamas movement will never surrender its weapons,” Mohammad Nazzal, a senior official with the terrorist group, said on Al-Mashhad TV a day after President Trump announced that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire, which Trump views as the first phase of his 20-point peace plan for Gaza.
That same day, Hamas joined with its terrorist allies, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to publicly reiterate their “determination to continue with the resistance in all its forms” and maintain their roles in helping to govern all Palestinian territory.
Nor is Hamas feeling remorse for the October 7, 2023 slaughter that, in launching a war with Israel, devastated Gaza. That slaughter, senior Hamas official Fawzi Barhoum said a few days ago, marked “a major turning point… to expose, criminalize, and isolate the Zionist occupation, in the region and the world,” and it “began the real countdown to the end of its existence on earth.”
Such sentiments, of course, belie the high hopes that Trump expressed before Israel’s Knesset and at a peace conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt that a new day has arrived not just for Israel and Gaza but for the region. As he himself noted, his plan rests on the notion that “Gaza will be immediately demilitarized… Hamas will be disarmed, and Israel’s security will no longer be threatened in any way, shape, or form.”
As Israel’s defense forces step back and Hamas reasserts control over Gaza – executing dozens of Palestinians for, among other things, cooperating with Israel during the war – the question is whether the United States or any of the dozens of other countries that back Trump’s peace plan will move forcefully to dislodge Hamas.
If no one steps forward, and if Washington and the wider world oppose a renewed Israeli effort to do so, then the ceasefire will do little more than set the stage for Hamas to regain its footing, regroup its forces, relaunch its terrorism, and, invariably, fight its next war with Israel when the latter responds in kind.
“This is not only the end of a war,” Trump declared in Jerusalem. “This is the end of [an] age of terror and death, and the beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God,” the “start of a grand concord and lasting harmony for Israel and all the nations of what will soon be a truly magnificent region,” the “historic dawn of a new Middle East,” and the “moment that everything began to change… very much for the better.”
Well, maybe. His plan calls for “full” humanitarian and other aid for Gaza, the “temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestian committee” until the Palestinian Authority has “completed its reform program” and can take over, an “interfaith dialogue” between Palestinians and Israelis, and a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
To be sure, while calling (1) for Hamas to play no governing role, (2) for Gaza’s “military, terror, and offensive infrastructure” to be destroyed, and (3) for the strip to become a “deradicalized terror-free zone,” the plan also calls for Washington to work with regional and other partners to create an “International Stabilization Force” (ISF) to deploy to Gaza until “vetted Palestinian police forces” can take over.
By the time the ISF is in place, however, Hamas will be more fully entrenched, resuming a governing role that it seized in 2007 in a violent coup against the Palestinian Authority. Will the ISF be prepared to dislodge Hamas by force, especially with Hamas fighters invariably hiding in homes, schools, mosques, and hospitals to ensure that, just like Israel, the ISF attracts global condemnation when civilian deaths mount? Will, down the road, the new Palestinian police forces even have the capacity to dislodge Hamas?
Yes, Israel has its 20 living hostages back, and only the most heartless observers weren’t moved by the scenes of their emotional return to loved ones. But, at the same time, a revived and recommitted Hamas has a new potential source to bolster its ranks – scores of militants previously imprisoned by Israel, including 250 who were serving life sentences for their attacks on Israelis.
Moreover, in their public vows to continue the “resistance” and destroy the Jewish state, Hamas and its terrorist allies are further radicalizing the Palestinians of Gaza and undermining support for the “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to which most of the region and world pledge fealty.
Yes, in the region and across the West, hope springs eternal as a shaky ceasefire remains in place. But the ugly reality of Hamas’ return, and the miniscule chance that – notwithstanding Trump’s vague threat – the United States or any other nation besides Israel would shed blood to dislodge it, make long-term peace seem like a continuing pipedream.