There’s a Glaring Hole in Trump’s Gaza Peace Announcement

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President Donald Trump appeared before the White House press corps Monday, proclaiming it “one of the great days ever in civilization … a historic day of peace … let’s call it eternal peace” for Gaza and the entire Middle East. But then, after 45 minutes of mutual back-rubbing, he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they would not take questions because they were waiting for “signatures and approvals” on many documents.

So does this mean the two leaders and the Arab powers in the Middle East didn’t make peace in our time?

Most crucially, Trump and Netanyahu admitted that Hamas had not agreed to any of the 22 articles^[2] in a peace proposal written mainly by Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff; Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who helped write the Abraham Accords in his first term; and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, who has been involved in several Middle East peace ventures.

If Hamas still refuses to sign, Trump made clear, Israel would have the right to finish the war any way it wants—and the United States would support the assault.

That should probably be the lede here—Netanyahu got Trump’s endorsement for extending the war in Gaza to some vision of total victory—because, first, Hamas has rejected most of these terms in the recent past and, second, it is not clear that the Arab and Muslim powers in the region have agreed to all of the articles either.

The peace proposal’s planks include the release of all hostages (and the remains of all hostages who have died) within 72 hours, a ceasefire with Israeli troops holding their positions, the disarming of Hamas and all other terrorist groups, their removal from any political positions, the destruction of their tunnels and all other military infrastructure, and the creation of a new international body to rebuild and reform Gaza, with all plans funneled through a “Board of Peace” to be chaired by Trump.

Some of these planks are nonstarters for Hamas—namely the release of all hostages within 72 hours (a practical matter, as some of their locations are unknown), but also, more to the point, its surrender of all arms and power, especially given that the proposal does not call for the withdrawal of Israeli troops. In fact, it allows Israel to occupy parts of Gaza for an undefined duration.

Who supervises this disarmament if there is resistance, who provides the resources and workforce for rebuilding, who besides Trump sits on the Board of Peace to hammer out political reforms, what happens to the Palestinians who want to stay and those who want to leave, what role will the Palestinian Authority play—all these questions, none of them trivial or merely technical, are left open.

In other words, at best, Trump’s announcement opens a new set of negotiations, which will be more complicated and involve more players than the negotiations that have rumbled on for the two years since Hamas’ deadly invasion and massacre of Oct. 7, 2023.

Among many other complications, some Arab leaders^[4], notably the Saudis, have said their involvement hinges on Israel’s agreement to resume at least the negotiations toward a Palestinian state—and Netanyahu has insisted he will never accept, or even pretend to work toward, such an entity (a point he repeated at Monday’s press conference).

Trump spent much of his monologue in the press room boasting, as he has many times, that no other president could have done this, especially “Sleepy Joe” Biden, whom he condemned or ridiculed three times. He also spent a few seconds moaning once more about the U.N. teleprompter that malfunctioned right before his speech to the General Assembly. (He noted that he delivered remarks “from the heart” anyway, adding, “Could Biden have done that? I don’t think so.”)

One lesson of Benny Morris’ magisterial tome Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001^[9] (quite a sobering subtitle!) is that most of these wars—all of those that have erupted since the founding of the Israeli state in 1948—have ended as the result of outside pressure: from the United States on Israel, from the Soviet Union on the Arabs (during the Cold War), from the United Nations on all the combatants, or some combination.

If Trump and the Arab leaders are serious about making peace in Gaza, they will have to mount the same sort of pressure: Trump on Netanyahu, the Arabs (especially Qatar) on Hamas. Nothing in this proposal or in Monday’s press conference indicates that any of the outside powers are ready to impose such pressure. So the war is likely to thunder on.

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