Trump's Peace Deal Will Soon Be Tested

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to the terms laid down for ending the war in Gaza and freeing the hostages, which included both an Israeli withdrawal to agreed-upon lines inside the Strip as well as a painful release of imprisoned terrorists with blood on their hands.

But aside from releasing the living hostages and presumably also the bodies of slain captives they've been holding, it's far from clear that Hamas has any intention of fulfilling the rest of the demands put upon them by Trump, including disarming and giving up their control of Gaza. That's despite the fact that those points were essential to getting Israel to agree to ending its offensive into Gaza City aimed at wiping out the remnants of the terrorists' forces.

Instead, we're told that Hamas's surrender will only come about as part of negotiations that have been put off so as not to have them interfere with the achievement of the hostages' release. That was the upshot of an interview with the prime minister of Qatar published in The New York Times the day before the hostage release.

Many observers have assumed that the hostages were the only leverage that Hamas still had in negotiations with Israel and the United States. But it's clear now that this might be wrong. Perhaps with the prodding of their Qatari funders and allies--who have, with the help of Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, wormed their way into Trump's good graces--the terrorists have realized that their cruel insistence on holding onto the hostages was actually an impediment to their potential survival.

How is that possible? It's simple. The advantage that Hamas now holds is twofold.

One is that Trump is eager, even desperate, for the ceasefire to hold to keep playing the role of the world's leading peacemaker. That is a title he will lose if, as he has also promised, he will give the green light to Israel to "obliterate" Hamas if it fails to disarm and give up control in Gaza.

It needs to be stated that Trump deserves enormous credit for the release of the hostages and the ceasefire. Only an American president who was prepared to lay down terms for the war's end that mandated both the elimination of Hamas and the immediate freedom of all the captives could have done it. And that's exactly what Trump did, in stark contrast to his predecessor, President Joe Biden, who was more interested in appeasing supporters of Hamas than in liberating Gaza from Islamist control. In this way, Trump seemed to reconcile two goals that had seemed mutually exclusive: the freedom of the hostages and the eradication of the terrorists.

The hostages would not have been freed without Trump, as well as Netanyahu's tough-minded refusal to be pressured into letting Hamas win the war it started on Oct. 7.

Yet the hard part in implementing the vision of the U.S. president is what follows the release of the hostages. If Hamas thinks that it can talk and negotiate its way out of surrendering Gaza--and the terrorists have every reason to believe that Qatar will back that up--then Trump's diplomatic triumph will fall far short of the claims being asserted by the administration.

The thing is, even if we allow for the usual Trumpian hyperbole with which he speaks about anything, it's clear that the president really wants to believe that he has done the impossible.

In his statements in the last week and those made in his speech to the Knesset after flying to Israel to be on hand to witness and take justified credit for the hostage release, he spoke as if he had not only solved the riddle of how to end the post-Oct. 7 war. He also seems to think that this agreement will allow the revival of the 2020 Abraham Accords--the signature foreign-policy achievement of his first term--and that this will lead to peace breaking out throughout the Middle East. He even mentioned the possibility of a peace deal with the Islamist regime in Iran.

We should all pray that he's right about the prospects for peace. Still, the odds are--notwithstanding assurances from Qatar--that the conflict with the Palestinians and Hamas is far from over. So long as Palestinians, whether supporters of Hamas or the supposedly more "moderate" Fatah Party that runs the corrupt Palestinian Authority, still believe that their national identity is inextricably linked to a war on the Jews and Zionism, all the Trumpian optimism in the world won't matter.

Hamas is doubtless counting on Trump not being willing to admit that the peace he seeks is likely to require continued fighting until the last Hamas operatives have disarmed, fled or been killed. If the talks stall as Hamas digs in its heels, will the president be willing to be smeared as the fomenter of Palestinian "genocide" and to give up the praise that he's gotten for brokering a deal from many of even his most bitter political opponents?

Those who want a Middle East free of Islamist terror, let alone a secure Israel or a Palestinian political culture freed of its obsessions with destroying Israel, should hope that he's sufficiently tough-minded to stick to his insistence that the terms of the deal are non-negotiable. But the Qataris will likely be urging him to demand that the Jewish state not restart the war under any circumstances, even if Hamas doesn't disarm. 

The same may apply to members of Trump's administration who helped broker this ceasefire deal, including Doha's business partners Witkoff and Kushner. In addition to Democrats who oppose Israel, those in the GOP who would prefer to withdraw completely from the Middle East, will also be loud opponents of American support for a renewal of fighting to force Hamas's surrender. 

After the hostage release, we should all be prepared for the international community, as well as Qatar and those Americans over whom it exerts some influence, to begin beating the drums again for a process that will lead to a Palestinian state. Trump and most of the Arab states may not actually want that. But it is far from certain that their commitment to a Hamas-free Gaza is greater than their desire to maintain a ceasefire, no matter what the terrorists do.

What's more, flouting a Trump diktat for Israel to hold its fire in the same way that Netanyahu ignored Biden's demands to halt the war at various points during 2024, with Hamas in a far stronger position, is something that the prime minister would be reluctant to do under any circumstances. And after the joy and gratitude of the Israeli people that is being showered upon Trump now that the hostages are freed, it may be impossible.

If so, then what will happen in Gaza in the coming weeks and months will be a reassertion of Hamas control, with the Islamist group looking to rearm and use the large part of the tunnel system underneath the Strip that was not destroyed during the war to dig in, much as they did in the years before Oct. 7.

Even during the days before the celebration of the hostage release, the world already witnessed the way Hamas was doing just that by openly killing dissidents and members of clans that opposed their rule in Gaza.

It's not just that Hamas is doing its best to sell the agreement to Palestinians as a victory for them. That would ring hollow if the Islamists were really going to disarm and/or be forced to flee Gaza. The release of many terrorists with blood on their hands in exchange for the hostages in far greater numbers than the Israeli captives will make that claim seem credible. The homecoming celebrations for the released terrorists are, in effect, Hamas "victory" parties. The growing chorus of nations taking up the demand for an independent Palestinian state to reward them for their Oct. 7 atrocities will only further strengthen Hamas's position.

And that's when those aspects of Trump's scheme that require Gaza to be ruled by what may be an entirely mythical group of nonpolitical Palestinian technocrats and policed by an international force, including some troops sent by the Arab world, will begin to seem more and more unrealistic.

And that leads us to the second reason why Hamas thinks it can still hold onto Gaza even after the hostages are freed.

Israelis are, for understandable reasons, weary of the two-year war they were forced into on Oct. 7. The maintenance of the large army of called-up reservists has placed an enormous strain on these heroic soldiers and their families, as well as on the Israeli economy.

Sending the Israel Defense Forces back into the maelstrom of Gaza to ensure that Hamas doesn't reconstitute the terrorist state they ruled before Oct. 7 would be an enormous letdown for Israelis. It will also likely prompt the same political opponents who have been demonstrating in Tel Aviv's Hostages Square every week--where they acted as if it was Netanyahu rather than Hamas who was the kidnapper--to try to bring Israel to a standstill. 

Even without the cover provided by grieving hostage families, the "anti-Bibi" political coalition will, just as it did throughout the two-year war, prioritize its hatred for the prime minister and its determination to topple him over achieving the national war goal of eliminating Hamas.

Most Israelis agree with Netanyahu's position on ending the terrorist organization and making sure that it cannot make good on its promises to keep on committing more Oct. 7-style massacres to achieve its genocidal goal of Israel's destruction. Yet restarting the war against Hamas once Israelis have had a taste of peace and Trump is basking in the glow of his diplomatic success will be a lot harder than it was to continue it prior to the hostage deal.

These sobering thoughts are not what will be on most people's minds as the freedom of the hostages is celebrated. And it is definitely not something most of them want to hear.

Unless Trump is prepared to be as tough-minded as he often claims to be, and Israelis are ready to resume a war they'd prefer were over, these are the factors that may cause Hamas to refuse to budge from Gaza and to think they can get away with it. 

What follows the release of the hostages will be joy; however, the assumption that it will be peace or anything like it may not only be wrong, but a path toward a revival of the Hamas-run Palestinian state in Gaza that is a guarantee of more massacres like the one that took place two years ago.

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