The Trump Plan will more likely stall than crash

Today there is much public celebration of president Donald Trump’s diplomatic achievement —apparently irreconcilable parties have agreed to his 20-point plan that not only ends the most horrific violence in Gaza but promises a short-term process of reconstruction and a long-term diplomatic process to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  

Privately, however, most observers are more grim and for all their hope, they still expect the plan to collapse. 

Their pessimism is warranted but is perhaps slightly miscast: things will likely slowly grind to a halt at a cruel but perhaps sustainable point.

The real agreement

The parties have not agreed to the 20-point plan, of course, but only picked out those points they like (and have spun even those in contradictory directions). 

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu repudiated the plan’s mention of a Palestinian state in Hebrew moments after appearing with Trump to laud it; Hamas was more frank and loquacious, grasping at the cease fire and Israeli redeployment but balking at almost all longer-term elements.

Thus the only real agreement is to a ceasefire, Israeli redeployment, and release of hostages and prisoners.

That is an accomplishment to be sure, but it hardly explains all the flattery directed at the American president. 

The new lingua franca of diplomacy — spoken by all sides in almost all recent official statements and many nonofficial ones — is to pursue objectives by saluting Trump, hoping that will coax American diplomacy in the favoured direction. 

Even Hamas no longer describes the US administration as a party to the war in Gaza and expresses gratitude to the same president whose administration has embraced a whole set of policies hostile to Palestinians.

And beyond rhetoric, the Trump administration and its Arab partners have invested substantial political capital (regardless of the motivations).

The deployment of the 200-strong CENTCOM personnel mission (to monitor the ceasefire and act as the foundational kernel and command centre for a potential future international stabilisation mission) is a tangible demonstration of this investment.

Emerging agreements on the distribution of aid are another example where more than platitudes may take hold.

In the end, more whimper than bang

However, the threat of stagnation is real.

The limits in the initial agreement — such as focusing only on humanitarian aid without the crucial reconstruction of Gaza and even more important postponement of political and governance reintegration — mean the overall situation will allow conditions to deteriorate, ultimately leaving it worse than it is right now. 

The parties are simply very far apart on almost every element and have few incentives to close those gaps. 

The agreement can speak of “deradicalisation,” a “peace board,” and suggest that Hamas “decommission” its weapons.

But there are no teeth, procedures, or specifics to support these goals. 

Key provisions of the plan rely on parties to do what they are unlikely to wish to do. It might be possible to cobble together the promised “stabilisation force,” for instance, but it is more likely to function as a human shield against Israeli attacks than an inheritor of the Israeli Defence Force’s mission of removing Hamas’s military capability.

And with fulsome verbiage no substitute for concrete action, the ceasefire will likely join a long series of interim measures designed to pause fighting for now. 

This echoes the historical pattern of avoiding root-cause issues in favour of temporary fixes ('better something than nothing') and then getting 'comfortable' with the status quo and facts on the ground.

So if things do indeed freeze in place, Gaza will be very easy to distinguish from the Riviera: it will be a 'super camp' characterised by a prolonged ceasefire.

Beneath a veneer of stability, Israel will maintain overall security and access control, holding a veto on virtually everything, including the full mandate and composition of that nascent international stabilisation mission the CENTCOM mission is designed to initiate.

Is there a way to avoid one more diplomatic outcome that amounts only to making the unsustainable sustainable? 

Or worse, to focus so much on Gaza that the escalation on the West Bank escapes notice? 

It has long been the case that Gaza and the West Bank have been treated as two Palestinian territories, rather than units of Palestine. The current trajectory on the West Bank territory is a drift toward the archipelago of Bantustans doubters of the “peace process” have always charged would emerge.

A positive future trajectory hinges on a coherent push from external powers to prevent the stalemate from hardening into the 'super camp' and Bantustan reality.

Now over to Europe and Arab states

The responsibility to prevent the process from getting stuck in the stagnant first phase now falls largely to the Europeans and the Arabs.

A key indicator to watch will be whether and how the 'Trump track' connects with the 'New York Declaration track' (promoted by France, Saudi Arabia, the UK, the EU, and others).

The declaration sets an irreversible, detailed framework for a permanent resolution of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, explicitly demanding an end to the occupation and recognising Palestinian sovereignty.

This approach, while less palatable to Israel than the American proposals, gained significant international consensus.

Meanwhile, the recent ceasefire itself has demonstrated that the US administration can apply pressure if it chooses to do so, proving that peace plans driven by external powers can be effective when backed by carrots and sticks.

The challenge is connecting this European approach with the Arab reality — a distinction where Gulf nations may be primarily focused on resolving the Israel problem (e.g., normalisation) rather than the root-cause Palestinian problem.

Without such Arab and European coordination and activism — perhaps expressed with the necessary words to persuade Trump it is all his idea — a slow slide back to tolerating the intolerable is by far the most likely outcome.

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