Trump gets Gaza ceasefire trophy at beginning of game

Israel and Hamas are blaming the other for failing to keep Gaza Strip ceasefire agreements negotiated by US President Donald Trump, putting both the flow of humanitarian aid as well as the relative calm in the enclave at risk.

The disputes are coming as no surprise to observers who have begun to parse details of what Trump described as an “historic” peace plan.

Trump responded to doubts with bombast, a tactic he frequently uses when challenged by critics. “Premature? What do you want, more people to be killed?” he asked a reporter who questioned his self-congratulatory opinion. “So you mean let them fight for another couple of years? I think the timing was perfect.”

Trump had issued a 20-point outline designed to end not only the war in Gaza but also conflict throughout the region. He traveled to the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, to celebrate fulfillment of three of the goals he set out:

• a ceasefire,
• the exchange of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in exchange for the freeing of Palestinians jailed by Israel and
• full resumption of aid deliveries to the 2.3 million civilians living among Gaza ruins.

The first two goals were largely accomplished, although news reports said five Palestinians had been killed by Israeli fire Wednesday and three on Thursday. The aid delivery is sporadic, and Israel blocked the entrance of supply trucks from Egypt into Gaza on the grounds that Hamas had yet to return the corpses of 20 of its citizens who died in captivity.

A broad set of goals was left in a rhetorical haze. Trump specified no concrete means of disarming Hamas, ending its reign in Gaza, forcing Israel’s withdrawal from the territory or setting up some sort of peaceable government that might herald creation of a Palestinian state covering both Gaza and the West Bank, which is partially occupied by Israeli troops and civilian settlements.

Skepticism abounded. The Guardian, a British newspaper that is frequently critical of Trump, was circumspect in offering praise. “Any opportunity to end this war of annihilation must be seized,” it wrote. “Something better may emerge from this path if – and that’s a huge if – Mr. Trump and others apply sustained pressure on Mr. Netanyahu and forge a deal that Arab nations can fully support, ensuring pressure on Hamas.”

Opinion Juris, a US law journal, published a harsher judgment. It said the Trump proposal “proclaims that ‘Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza.’ In reality, it provides no guarantees.” The appraisal declared the outline to be only “a plan for a plan for a plan” that “seems to create conditions on only the possibility of an Israeli withdrawal and only within the Gaza Strip.”

“But lasting peace,” it added, “Should not, and cannot, be built upon the abandonment of Palestinian rights.”

So far, Trump’s concrete achievement mirrored a short January agreement for a ceasefire, prisoner exchange and civilian aid relief. That accord was supposed to lead to full prisoner exchanges, a total Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and eventual comprehensive peace talks.

Israel refused Hamas’s demand that the second stage begin promptly in March as planned. The war resumed.

That is not to suggest that circumstances surrounding the fresh effort are the same as in January. Two differences prompted Trump to try again.

First, Trump had done Israel a favor that ought to have given him exceptional leverage over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Earlier this year, he had dispatched rockets he said destroyed Iran’s program to produce nuclear weapons. Netanyahu had often warned Iran not to develop atomic bombs. Trump made it impossible, at least for now.

Instead of simply thanking Trump, Netanyahu ordered a missiles attack on Qatar, which was a go-between in negotiations involving Iran and Trump. Trump had hoped, from a position of strength, to end decades of simmering hostilities with Tehran. Israel’s attack killed one Qatari official and five local bystanders. The Hamas negotiators escaped unharmed.

Initially, Trump made light of the attack. Observers were flummoxed. “The response was contradictory, did not make sense, lacked in diplomacy and it lacked in substance,” said Khalil Jahshan, director of the Arab Center think tank in Washington DC. “It is not befitting a superpower.”

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, research fellow at the Baker Institute, a US-based think tank, said the Israeli attacks diminished the credibility of the US in the Middle East. “Certainly, the US as a state that can negotiate in good faith is being called into question,” Coates Ulrichsen told Al Jazeera TV news.

It turned out that Trump was only biding his time. Last month, when Netanyahu made a scheduled visit to the White House, Trump ordered him to phone Qatar’s then-Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani and apologize – in Trump’s presence. He then organized the Sharm el-Sheikh conference. Among the invited dignitaries was Mahmoud Abass, head of the Palestinian Authority, which governs part of the West Bank.

Netanyahu had said that Abass, along with Hamas, would have no place in a post-Gaza War future. He turned down the invitation to attend the Sharm el-Shaikh conference.

In any event, Trump’s unorthodox style of diplomacy will be put to more tests as he tries to herd Israel and Hamas in a single direction, long lasting peace.

He apparently did to want to browbeat Netanyahu too much. For instance, Trump stopped short of endorsing creation of a Palestinian state, a move that would have further upset the Israeli leader. When questioned by a reporters whether he favored one, Trump stated he hadn’t thought about the “two-state solution,” shorthand for providing Palestinian sovereignty over Gaza and the West Bank.

“I’m not talking about a single state or double state or two state,” Trump told reporters as he left the Sharm el-Sheikh conference Tuesday. “A lot of people like the one-state solution, some people like the two-state solution. I haven’t commented on that. We’ll have to see.”

It was an odd evasion, given that Egypt’s President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi opened the meeting by touting “the two-state solution as part of a shared vision” of the participants. Sisi went on to stress “the Palestinian people’s right to an independent state..

Trump also soon found himself having to criticize Hamas, which had flaunted its rejection of a different element of the peace plan: disarmament of Hamas altogether. Online videos showed armed Hamas gunmen policing the ruins of Gaza. One of the videos recorded them executing eight alleged Palestinian collaborators with Israel. They were shot as they knelt on the ground facing away from their executioners.

Disarming Hamas would ease Netanyahu’s concerns that, although Hamas has been battered, it is still organizationally intact and ready to Gaza rule again. During a TV interview, Trump angrily warned Hamas that it “will disarm. And if they don’t do so, we will disarm them, and it’ll happen quickly and perhaps violently.”

It was unclear if he meant US troops would disarm Hamas or that allied forces might take up the chore if needed.

In any event, walking the diplomatic tightrope has already become a repeating practice, even tactic, given the different priorities of Israel, Hamas and Trump’s Arab allies take to the negotiating table.

There is some question whether Trump, known for his short attention span, will stay his own course As a case in point, once he arrived back in Washington from Egypt he proceeded with new proposals that would put the US at the center of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

First, he suggested the US might supply low-flying, speedy Tomahawk missiles that could strike targets deep into Russia. And then, on Thursday, he spoke with Putin on the phone and they agreed to meet soon. Will Ukraine War developments take Gaza off the front pages of world news, and maybe out of Trump’s mind?