Historic Trump deal could reshape Gaza and Middle East peace: Katzenellenbogen
Key topics:
US and Muslim countries pressured Hamas and Israel to reach a deal
Trump plan offers hope for Gaza, Israel, and a Middle East peace
Hamas weakened, Gaza reconstruction and ceasefire face major hurdles
Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.
Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.
If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.
The deal that unlocked the release of the remaining 20 Israeli hostages seized by Hamas on October 7th is an extraordinary achievement by President Donald Trump.
Two things have been key in getting this into goal. First has been the heavy pressure from the US on Israel and on Hamas’ patrons, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey. The second big thing going for the Trump plan is that it has strong support from many Muslim countries. That includes Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population. Like Israel and the US, the Muslim countries behind the deal see Jihadism, particularly of the Hamas kind, as an ever present danger. They also fear a nuclear armed Iran.
The Trump plan gives unprecedented hope for Gaza and the Palestinians, Israel and the Middle East. It is big and bold and, besides, there is no other plan on the table at present.
Whether the ceasefire agreement will hold and the other parts of Trump’s 20 point plan will be implemented is in the air. Establishing and ensuring the effectiveness of an International Stabilisation Force, taking away Hamas weapons and ensuring its members are not part of any government is a big ask. And rebuilding Gaza could take ages and not really happen to any great extent for years.
Read more:
The deal is already off to a slightly rocky start with Hamas not releasing all of the bodies of the now dead that were taken as hostages.
As it fights for its survival in Gaza against various armed Palestinian groups trying to step into the power vacuum, Hamas is now resorting to summary public executions. The terror group has clearly lost its once dominant position, and now, should it be largely disarmed, the deal is tantamount to its defeat. But civil war in Gaza is also bound to greatly complicate any efforts at governance and reconstruction.
The Trump vision of what he called a “historic dawn of a new Middle East,” is for a reconstructed Gaza and an Israel at peace with its neighbours. In his address on Monday to the Knesset, Trump also offered Iran a deal. That seems just slightly less far fetched than it was last week. And the deal could also pave the way for some sort of solution to the issue of a Palestinian state.
Both Israel and Hamas came under pressure to do a deal and it worked.
Just weeks ago Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cast doubt on such a deal. And a few weeks ago Bezalel Smotrich, his Finance Minister, who has spoken of destroying Gaza to expel Palestinians, threatened to quit the cabinet if Israel signed the deal. Smotrich has yet to quit his Cabinet position, showing that he now might understand the new political reality.
At the US behest, Egypt. Qatar, and Turkey, brought pressure to bear on Hamas to release the hostages and do a deal. Hamas has had a policy of not giving way on anything. Israel would have had to have ended the war if Hamas had returned the hostages. Yet even in the face of massive civilian deaths it was not prepared to surrender. With Israel’s defeat of Hamas’ supporters in Lebanon, Hezbollah, the fleeing of the Assads from Syria, and the attack on Iran, Hamas’ supply lines largely dried up, and pressure from its patrons worked.
External pressure just might be the way forward for future Israel-Palestinian deals. The Palestinians would have been far better off had there been external pressure to accept a state. In Israel, the religious right , with little voter support, are king makers, making it difficult to reach peace deals. Hence, the need for external pressure. All this might seem to hark back to colonial times, but an injection of reality is often needed to move forward toward more durable political solutions.
It is the fear of Hamas’s sheer brutality and its Muslim Brotherhood ideas that has provided the glue for the political impetus of the Trump deal in the region. One danger is that the view on the Arab street differs from this.
The Muslim Brotherhood is banned in many Arab countries as it advocates violence and the ultimate establishment of a global caliphate under Sharia Law. Many Arab countries regard militant Islam as the primary threat to their own survival. The idea behind Hamas and the inspiration from the Muslim Brotherhood, which is behind many radical movements will not simply disappear. And the war in Gaza, particularly with the immense loss of Palestinian lives, has to have acted as a powerful recruitment tool for may Jihadi causes.
There are multiple sources of pressure that the US could have brought to bear on Hamas patrons, starting with the threat of restricting their access to these countries to the international financial payments system.
Clearly pressure was required from the US for both the Qataris and the Turks to bring Hamas to the table. Rather than ideology they mainly support Hamas out of expediency. They want to build up power and respect for themselves on the Arab street and counter the influence of Saudi Arabia. But they would certainly deal swiftly with any Brotherhood group that posed a threat in their own country.
The party of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) shares ideological strands with Hamas, but takes draconian measures against any threats to its own security. The Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Egypt and Cairo worries about the spillover of radicalism from the Gaza strip.
Read more:
The history of Israel and the Palestinians is littered by what ifs and avoidable tragedies. The tragedy of the Gaza war is that if Israel had paid greater attention to the threat from Hamas it would have been able to avoid the catastrophe of October 7th. And had Hamas quickly handed back the hostages it seized on October 7th, Israel would, at least politically, not have been able to continue the war and devastated Gaza.
The emerging tragedy is around settlers seizing Palestinian land on the West Bank. Is it really necessary for Netanyahu to stay in power for him to satisfy the religious right by allowing settlers to grab Palestinian land? It is asking for big trouble.
*Jonathan Katzenellenbogen is a Johannesburg-based freelance journalist. His articles have appeared on DefenceWeb, Politicsweb, as well as in a number of overseas publications. Katzenellenbogen has also worked on Business Day and as a TV and radio reporter and newsreader. He has a Master's degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission