RW Johnson: Gaza and the Trump plan

Key topics:Israel's military dominance and Middle East balance shiftGaza's devastation, Hamas rebuilding, reconstruction hurdlesFragile Trump peace plan, uncertain ISF and Iran's influence.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..By RW Johnson.It has not gone unnoticed that the passionate advocates of the pro-Palestinian cause seem less than thrilled by the great denouement in the Middle East in the last few days. Perhaps this is hardly surprising. Given their attachment to the Palestinian cause they would have preferred a climax in which that cause won – or at least gained universal sympathy. But pictures of Trump endlessly boasting before the Israeli Knesset, of cheering Israeli parliamentarians and a smiling Netanyahu were hardly what they had in mind. As for the meeting of world and Arab leaders at Sharm El-Sheikh and all the talk of a wider Middle East peace, this feels distinctly awkward if the side you support has lost. And that is, after all, the situation. Nobody is now congratulating Hamas on 7 October 2023 and world attention has mainly been fixed on the returning Israeli hostages. Hamas has taken a battering and many of its leaders are dead. Hezbollah has suffered the same fate and the Lebanese president is trying to disarm what remains of it. Iran has also taken a walloping and the Syrian provisional government is taking care not to provoke Israel. For the fact is that both Iran and Syria have been largely stripped of their air defence systems and are completely vulnerable to whatever action Israel might decide to take. There is no way of avoiding the fact that the war has left Israel triumphant and the fact that the fighting has stopped in Gaza – a wasteland of ruins – is small consolation..Read more:.Israel’s military triumphs reshape Middle East, sows seeds of global backlash and future risks.Trump, having declared “eternal peace” for the Middle East, has returned quickly to Washington before the situation can unravel, which is what seems likely to happen. For Hamas shows no sign of agreeing to disarm and it is already killing and kidnapping anyone in Gaza that it sees as a rival or opponent. And if Hamas continues on that path it is difficult to see how the reconstruction of Gaza can even begin. The only real hope that this dismal scenario can be avoided lies with the various Arab heads of government who have helped pressure Hamas to agree the present truce and who retain the leverage that they alone can provide the resources with which to rebuild Gaza.Part of the answer to this conundrum lies with Iran. Of its so-called Axis of Resistance only the somewhat battered Houthis remain intact. Will Iran try to revive Hamas and Hezbollah and start up all over again ? If there is any sign of that Israel will surely try to nip it in the bud. But Iran’s all-out hostility to Israel has been almost self-definitional. But now that much of the Arab world fell in behind Trump’s peace plan, the question is whether Iran will want to flout that. It is of crucial importance: without Iranian arms and money neither Hamas nor Hezbollah are likely to be able to mount much of a challenge.The other side of this is that one of the chief reasons why Hamas attacked when it did was its growing worry that Israel was about to break out of its isolation, exchange ambassadors with Saudi Arabia and that after that there would be a procession of other Arab states doing the same. As I pointed out at the time, Hamas seems to have been panicked by news of the planned India-Middle East Economic Corridor (IMEC), an ambitious scheme backed by the US for a land-bridge connecting India through the Middle East to Europe. Israel was to be a cornerstone of such a plan, as would Saudi Arabia. This was bound to involve the normalisation of Israel’s diplomatic relations with its Middle Eastern partners – something Hamas was desperate to stop. Certainly, it succeeded in putting it on ice for two years but in principle, at least, there is now no reason why this scheme should not go ahead. It’s worth pointing out that when October 7 occurred Prime Minister Modi of India communicated his regrets and sympathies to Israel, saying that India has also had much experience of Muslim terrorism. However, it is not the case that everything can now just resume from where it was before October 7. The war has changed the Middle East, profoundly altering the balance of power. Not only are Syria, Iran and Hezbollah all much weaker now but Israel is quite obviously the greatest military power in the region. The superiority of its intelligence service and its air force is evident to all and it is also one of the richest countries with a GDP per capita in 2024 of over $54,000 – considerably higher than France and almost exactly the same as Germany. Its technological prowess is well known and its universities and research institutes are by far the best in the Middle East, and are comparable indeed with some of the best in Europe. Israel may be a country of only ten million in population but its dominance in its region is such that it is becoming increasingly absurd for its neighbours to shun contact with it. In that sense the Abraham Accords of 2020 have merely recognised the inevitable. Certainly, the war in Gaza has put Israel’s foreign relations under considerable strain but it is striking that none of the Middle East countries that have opened diplomatic relations with Israel broke them off in the course of the war – despite very considerable pressure to do so. The fact that peace has been formally declared will doubtless be a source of great relief in many capitals other than Jerusalem. Israeli trade with the UAE has grown particularly fast and in 2024 increased by 11% to $3.2 billion. Non-oil trade alone between the two nations is expected to reach $10 billion by 2030. Nonetheless, the taboos have been weakened but not broken: Israeli tourists flock to Dubai but very few UAE residents visit Israel.The fact that Israel is now so much more technologically advanced than most Middle Eastern countries means that trade between them struggles to balance. Thus, for example, in 2024 Israeli-Egyptian trade was exactly the same value as the UAE-Israel trade at $3.2 billion, with Egypt importing $2.9 billion of Israeli goods but only selling just under $300 million of goods to Israel. In that sense it is clear that Israel’s most lucrative relationships are likely to be with wealthy oil-producing states, with Saudi Arabia the great prize. It is notable that Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state, is thought to be keen to establish relations with Israel. It is a fast developing economy and its actions could be very influential.Of course, these are medium term perspectives but currently attention is fixed upon the question of what happens in Gaza now. It has to be stated forthrightly that Trump’s peace plan is flimsy almost beyond belief. This is typical of Trump who is happy to invent whatever “facts” he needs and is, at the best of times, not a man much interested in detail. He likes to work with a very broad brush and, above all, to insist on his own genius and shining merit. So Trump has convinced himself that Hamas will be disarmed and Gaza will be de-militarised. Yet at the same time he has ordained that the only force capable of doing that – the IDF – must retreat and stand aside. And that the 200-strong force that America has sent is not going to get involved in fighting.The immediate result is that Hamas is back on the streets, heavily armed, enforcing its rule by typically ruthless methods. Already Hamas has murdered 28 members of one rival clan, publicly executed seven “collaborators”, and kidnapped and tortured others. Already the flow of relief and food into Gaza has been cut back because nothing is more certain than that Hamas will plunder it if it gets the chance and then use its possession of these desperately needed goods for further leverage over the population. Whatever might have been said in the negotiations, Hamas is now emphatic that it will not disarm, let alone surrender its weapons. When Trump was faced with that fact he responded that in that case “we will disarm them”, but that seems to have been said unthinkingly. There is no way that the miniscule US force present could even attempt such a thing without taking staggering casualties.Worse still, the plans for some sort of interim force to be installed to keep order in Gaza are still hazy. All we really know is that it is to be called the International Stabilisation Force (ISF). Nobody knows who will volunteer for such a job and it emerges that it will, at the least, take several weeks to assemble such a force and create some sort of neutral administration. That means there will be a fatal gap of several weeks in which Hamas will be free to re-impose its brutal rule. Israel is believed to have killed at least 10,000 Hamas fighters and, doubtless, wounded many more. But, from what we can tell, Hamas has recruited another 15,000 or so young men, no doubt all burning with hatred for Jews and eager to gain a Hamas salary. As yet they are untrained but Hamas will have that in hand. And provided a young man knows how to fire his weapon he is well able to bully civilians.It is difficult to imagine who is going to volunteer his country’s soldiers to play a part in the ISF, a horribly dangerous job if there ever was one. Despite its overwhelming force and relentless air cover, the IDF lost 550 men dead in its Gaza operation. And the so-called Peace Board (Tony Blair et al.) will depend entirely on the ISF. There must be serious doubt whether the whole enterprise will ever get off the ground. But unless there is peace and a competent administration in Gaza it is difficult to see how the promised reconstruction of Gaza, funded by the Saudis and UAE, can take place..Read more:.Trump's Middle East triumph: Israel, Hamas reach hostage deal in Gaza breakthrough.Then there is the question of the Hamas tunnels. The IDF thinks it has only destroyed about one third of them and that as much as 350km worth of tunnels still exists. The IDF is utterly determined to destroy them all and has got this agreed as part of “de-militarisation”. The IDF probably doesn’t mind if the ISF is willing to do this for them but it has to be done. For Hamas these are essential constructs and they will doubtless use force to try to protect them.It would be surprising if Netanyahu hadn’t already realised all of this and he probably understands better than anyone how hard it will be to make the Trump plan work – which may be why he is currently always seen wreathed in smiles. His problem is that the right wingers in his cabinet will not be satisfied until Hamas has been completely annihilated. Netanyahu, knowing that that may be well nigh impossible, might be satisfied provided Hamas can simply be bottled up forever in Gaza. But that is what he thought he had achieved prior to October 7. And that didn’t work out too well....

RW Johnson: Gaza and the Trump plan

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