First, let us agree that ending the war on Gaza is a significant and positive development. Everyone who has been contributing to this effort and facilitating the cessation of hostilities is owed our gratitude. We hope that this step succeeds and genuinely introduces a new chapter, ending the war and finally alleviating the suffering. Nonetheless, solving the riddle behind Hamas’s approval of Trump’s twenty-point plan means weighing its attempt to project full endorsement of the plan while hiding behind divergent interpretations of its statement. Did Hamas respond with several voices, or was it a single, centralized answer made in accordance with the movement’s hierarchy and chain of command?
Was Hamas’s response and approval really a “no cloaked as a yes,” as the former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog put it? This sentiment has been echoed by many others, and it reflects an extreme interpretation of Hamas’s statement: its approval was nothing more than an attempt to ride out the storm, a political ruse, or even a form of “Taqiya?”
The Palestinian and Arab negotiators have every right to be wary of Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, he has already betrayed Hamas’s leadership while they were negotiating in Doha, by bombing their site of the talks. This unprecedented act proved that, for him, there are no red lines and no real guarantees, despite his subsequent apology to Doha after the treacherous strike failed.
The plan calls for a gradual withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. However, Israel has a long habit of taking each phase piecemeal and walking away from its commitments. That is the primary source of apprehension, especially since the American guarantor is fickle and Trump refused to give a clear-cut guarantee that Israel would not annex the West Bank, even as figures in Netanyahu’s government call for the annexation of what they call the biblical lands of “Judea and Samaria.”
In fairness, however, one cannot definitively claim that Hamas’s approval is merely a political ploy. True, Hamas’s statement included many messages that could be interpreted in various ways. Nonetheless, Hamas’s ultimate interest remains to end this war aimed at its annihilation and at erasing its very existence in the Gaza Strip, as the Hamas statement itself indicates.
The truth is that Hamas issued this response because of heavy pressure from Gazan society, as well as the persistent efforts of the regional parties engaged in ending the suffering of Gaza’s people. Accordingly, it cannot be described as a play or an attempt to buy time. Indeed, its acquiescence was the result of a joint Arab effort to safeguard the fundamental principles of the Palestinian cause above all else: chief among them the two-state solution, preventing the displacement of the people of Gaza, ending the war, and ending the genocide.
Netanyahu did not want a solution born of negotiations and a political process. He wanted a solution imposed by military operations, mass killing, and destruction, leveraging the far-right elements within his government to this end. The collective Arab effort was nonetheless successful. It managed to turn the tables on Netanyahu, his extremist allies, and their plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza. This Arab effort presented a plan in coordination with the Americans, along with Trump’s new proposal, leading the latter to abandon the idea of buying Gaza and expelling the Palestinians.
Naturally, concerns about the devils in the details remain. Israel has made a habit of submerging negotiations in minutiae and diversions, leading to the collapse and failure of the talks and dragging them into the swamp of Henry Kissinger–style negotiations.
Another question remains: Has Trump’s plan itself changed? He had previously said that Palestinians will live safely somewhere other than Gaza, pursuing a project to displace Gazans and resettle them in Jordan, Egypt, or even Libya. Displacing the Palestinians from their land, aside from being irrational, ties into a painful history of earlier displacements whose victims have not returned to this day.
Bringing this war to an end is a positive step. It clears some of the clouds over the bleak sky of Palestinian suffering in Gaza. The past two years of war, displacement, killing, and destruction have weighed heavily on this population whose only crime was being the target of a genocide at the hands of Israel’s so-called Defense Forces, and of the obstinacy of the Hamas old guard , most of whom now lie in the ground.
Setting political bravado aside, realism remains the key to a solution. Today, the people of Gaza are in dire need of peace, and they are desperate to end the war at any cost. Peace, despite any losses, remains a positive step- the losses are innumerable, time can heal wounds, and compensation is always possible.
