Getting Israel\u2019s hostages released from Gaza and stopping the war may have taken two years and the direct efforts of the American president and the leaders of several Arab and Muslim nations.<\/p>\n
But that was almost certainly the easy part.<\/p>\n
Getting Hamas to give up its weapons, and demilitarizing the Gaza Strip \u2014 key preconditions for Israel to pull out of Gaza fully, as both President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Monday \u2014 could prove a lot harder.<\/p>\n
Then there are the other issues in Mr. Trump\u2019s 20-point plan, which outlined a comprehensive solution for Gaza. In full, it also called for the establishment of an international force to help maintain security in the territory, an ambitious effort to rebuild Gaza\u2019s economy and infrastructure, and the creation of a temporary Palestinian governing committee, whose work would be overseen by an international board.<\/p>\n
During the talks leading up to the cease-fire in Gaza, provisions for who would run the enclave on \u201cthe day after\u201d the war was over were among the most complicated and vexing \u2014 so much so that they were eventually severed from the cease-fire talks and put off until a second phase of negotiations.<\/p>\n
That phase had at least an air of auspiciousness on Monday evening in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where Mr. Trump and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt gathered dozens of leaders to try to build on the momentum created by the truce and the exchange of 20 living Israeli hostages and the bodies of others for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.<\/p>\n
\u201cPhase 2 has started,\u201d Mr. Trump said. He predicted \u201ctremendous progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s peace in the Middle East,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone said it\u2019s not possible to do. And it\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, Monday\u2019s kickoff in Sharm el-Sheikh aside, it is unclear even when Phase 2 talks will formally begin and where they will be held.<\/p>\n
And both Israeli and Palestinian analysts said it was easier to imagine things going sideways than to imagine Mr. Trump\u2019s plan being fully realized.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main issue still hasn\u2019t been solved: Hamas\u2019s weapons,\u201d said Akram Atallah, a London-based Palestinian columnist originally from Jabaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip. \u201cThe Israelis are demanding Hamas disarm, which is not a simple administrative measure. Hamas was founded on the basis of bearing arms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamas, he said, is effectively being asked to \u201cdismantle its ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the halt to a war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and lain waste to much of Gaza, Mr. Atallah said that the current atmosphere was more optimistic but that it was uncertain how long that would last.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels good right now,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I can see dark clouds in the distance and I don\u2019t know what they\u2019re carrying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israeli analysts and officials said the likeliest outcome was that Phase 2 of the talks would become bogged down. They envisioned the status quo lingering for so long that it takes root, with Hamas still armed, and the Israeli military refusing to withdraw fully from Gaza. In that circumstance, they also foresaw the Israeli military treating the group much as it now treats Hezbollah in Lebanon: occasionally striking Hamas militants or their weapon depots from afar.<\/p>\n
Despite Mr. Trump\u2019s repeated, unqualified declarations that the war is over, backsliding on either side could threaten a renewal of fighting, analysts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there\u2019s a terrorist attack against one of our posts right now, God forbid, and we have casualties, after a minute, it\u2019s over,\u201d said Zohar Palti, a former senior Mossad and Ministry of Defense official.<\/p>\n
Nimrod Novik, a former Israeli envoy and distinguished fellow at the Israel Policy Forum, warned of the influence of domestic politics. \u201cIf it turns out in four or five weeks that the general mood in the country is that this war was an awful round, but only another round, and Hamas is back, I can see Netanyahu trying to correct that,\u201d Mr. Novik said, alluding to the possibility of a resumption of hostilities. \u201cAll you need is a Hamas provocation and a disproportionate Israeli reaction, and you can have a spiral.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was up to Qatar, Turkey and Egypt \u2014 the three Muslim-majority countries that played major roles in mediating the Hamas-Israel cease-fire \u2014 \u201cto pressure Hamas not to provoke,\u201d Mr. Novik said.<\/p>\n
To members of Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s governing coalition, the onus is squarely on Hamas. Several officials described the cease-fire agreement so far as amounting to a simple trade in which Israel gave away roughly half of Gaza in exchange for its hostages. To get Israel to leave the rest of Gaza\u2019s territory, they said, it will need to give up its arms and let another entity step in to govern the enclave.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings are very straightforward,\u201d said Boaz Bismuth, a Netanyahu ally who heads the Knesset\u2019s foreign affairs and defense committee. \u201cIf you don\u2019t want Israel to be there, you know exactly what you have to do. It\u2019s easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
But saying so doesn\u2019t make it so.<\/p>\n
Hamas, experts close to the militant group said, is willing to make certain moves to enable the reconstruction of Gaza, but it still wants to retain some influence over the territory\u2019s future.<\/p>\n
\u201cHamas is willing to offer some concessions to enable the rehabilitation of Gaza, but it will not evaporate,\u201d said Ibrahim al-Madhoun, a Palestinian analyst close to Hamas. \u201cIts focus is on quiet. It wants to be part of the solution, and it won\u2019t be an obstacle to stability.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Palti, the former Israeli intelligence and defense official, expressed skepticism over the Trump plan\u2019s prescription that Hamas be barred from either a military or civilian role in governing Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho\u2019s going to do it?\u201d he said. \u201cIf somebody thinks that with a magic stick you\u2019re achieving this revolution in hours or days, forget about it. It\u2019s not going to happen. Not because I\u2019m pessimistic; because I\u2019m realistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
The deployment of an international stabilization force, as the plan suggests, could lead the Israeli military to withdraw further. But it is still largely unknown which countries would contribute to the force, how it would be funded and trained, and when it would deploy.<\/p>\n
And the Palestinian Authority, which previously governed Gaza and still has employees on the ground, appears to be largely excluded from Mr. Trump\u2019s initiative, barring the completion of unspecified reforms.<\/p>\n
All of which is not to say that Phase 2 is doomed from the outset.<\/p>\n
Mr. Bismuth, the lawmaker from Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s party, took great encouragement from the participation of Arab countries in the peace talks, and even more from Monday\u2019s release of 20 Israelis held in Gaza since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do believe that those who have to do the specific moves expected from them will do them,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you have such results like today, you can believe in the optimistic scenario.\u201d<\/p>\n
Natan Odenheimer contributed reporting from Jerusalem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getting Israel\u2019s hostages released from Gaza and stopping the war may have taken two years and the direct…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1451,1452,662,59,1480,60,1450,9,24,63,1479,160,134,136,135,1069],"class_list":["post-1178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-benjamin","tag-donald-j","tag-gaza-strip","tag-hamas","tag-international-relations","tag-israel","tag-netanyahu","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-palestinians","tag-peace-process","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}