Donald Trump has surprised us again, this time with the Gaza peace deal. Give credit where it’s due. When people are killing each other, they don’t stop easily. And the living hostages are home.
Congratulations are in order. However, whether the “peace” holds or not is an open question.
Watching the peace agreement festivities gave me the same feeling I had in 2001 when George W Bush decided to use local Afghan allies to catch Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora. You knew the celebration was premature.
And I felt the same in 1991 when George H W Bush stopped the Gulf War against Iraq 48 hours too early – and gave us another couple of decades of misery in the region. And before that, in 1982, one knew US Marines evacuating Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) forces from Beirut – when the Israelis wouldn’t or couldn’t finish them off – wasn’t going to solve anything. And it didn’t.
In this part of the world, you must unequivocally and publicly vanquish your enemy before you’ve actually won. Western standards of victory and defeat don’t apply. As it is, some number of Hamas fighters have come out from underground in Gaza and are already reasserting control, including settling scores with local clans and hunting down “turncoats.”
Hamas political bureau member, Hossam Badram, said the group won’t disarm. One can hear Hamas saying now: “The Jews threw everything they had at us, and the Americans were helping the Jews. We’re still here. We won. October 7th worked.”
But maybe something’s different this time. Despite its bold face, Hamas has been hit hard. There might be some of Hamas left in Gaza with their AK-47s, but time is not on their side. The map has changed drastically in two years.
A hobbled Iran
Iran’s nuclear program has been set back and Tehran was told by the strikes that the US and Israel – at least for the next three years – won’t hesitate to attack again and the Mullahs are powerless to stop it.
Hezbollah has ceased to exist in any real sense and, for the first time, is being hunted by the Lebanese army. Assad is gone in Syria.
Perhaps the most important change – Doha was bombed by Israel. It was a clear and direct message to Qatar (another major backer of Hamas) and led directly to this peace deal.
Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States, as well as Turkey, are also on board. And even Egypt, which propped up Hamas, appears willing to cooperate with the peace effort.
The Europeans who provided huge amounts of money that made its way to Hamas are at least talking a good game about supporting the peace deal – and presumably not funding terrorism. Hamas has a lot fewer friends than it did.
But for those events, and how drastically they have shifted the map, one would and could fairly expect this deal to fail like the rest of them.
Yes, Hamas remnants are still in Gaza. But how long can they hold out when no money is flowing in and they don’t control Gaza like they used to? This, of course, assumes the money actually stops, that China doesn’t quietly make up the difference and Hamas does not tap into the “reconstruction” money.
Only time will tell. But the Middle East is very different from what it was on October 6, 2023. Cutting Hamas’ funding and political support is relatively easy if the parties to the peace deal live up to their promises – or are forced to – so don’t lose focus on Trump.
Money, weapons and ideology
It will also be useful to cut funding for the other non-Hamas parasitic corrupt Palestinian leadership, who, for decades, looted relief funding and deposited it in Gulf and Lebanese banks.
Disarming Hamas and Gaza will be even harder. The “International Stabilization Force” that will oversee Gaza has its work cut out for it.
Its mandate can’t just be traffic control and distribution of relief supplies. It should include the confiscation of every single weapon. This likely will require force. Trump has said that if Hamas won’t give up its weaponry, the US will take it from them. That’s quite a commitment.
Take away the guns and take away the money, and an outfit like Hamas dissolves. But even if Gaza is disarmed and Hamas’ funding is cut, a bigger challenge is somehow deprograming local populations so they do not rejoice at the idea of Jews being slaughtered.
This may be impossible. The Palestinians are not the first people in history with a grievance, nor even the most aggrieved, even if they act like they are.
However, the source of their grievance should be their own corrupt and hate-filled leadership, who has sabotaged opportunities to move forward and used the resulting pain of their own people to accrue even more money and power.
Credit where credit’s due
Additionally, some of the “credit” for the deal goes to outside parties – some of whom are signing on to the peace agreement for now – who have been glad to stoke the corruption and hatred for their own ends.
Getting to this point was hard enough. Establishing lasting peace will be a lot harder, almost making Northern Ireland look easy. But Northern Ireland was done. And Trump has at least gotten farther than anyone else on the Gaza imbroglio.
Now, if the Arabs and the Western nations (including Japan) – and the Palestinians themselves – want peace, they can and will have it.
Grant Newsham is a retired US Marine officer and former US diplomat. He’s a fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute, and is the author of “When China Attacks: A Warning to America.” Follow him on X @NewshamGrant