Finally, a Cease-Fire

But I don't expect it to last long

So history is repeating itself. Just as the American hostages came home right after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, the next release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas will come just as Donald Trump returns to the White House. Forgive me my pessimism, but I don’t think the cease-fire deal agreed to yesterday between Israel and Hamas is likely to be the beginning of peace any more than the release of the Iran’s American hostages was the beginning of a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington.

I don’t even think it’s going to be much of a cease-fire. The agreement is supposed to unfold in stages, with the first stage involving the release of 33 Israeli hostages held in Gaza (some alive, some undoubtedly deceased) and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza’s population centers, allowing refugees in the south to return northward. Will we even get to the second stage, when the remainder of the hostages are supposed to be freed in exchange for a yet-to-be-determined number of Palestinian prisoners, a full Israeli withdrawal and comprehensive cease-fire? I’m skeptical. I think it’s more likely that one side or the other or both will violate the cease-fire before it even formally comes into being.

All sides are already claiming victory nonetheless, however implausible that declaration may seem, but when your war has no clear or achievable aims anything can be called victory. Hamas’s great achievement, apart from killing a bunch of Israelis, was the annihilation of the physical infrastructure of Gaza and the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian people—likely far more than previously estimated. In exchange, they won the likely release of several hundred prisoners. Is there any rational calculation by which that was a good trade? Would any Palestinian on October 6th have favored launching a war that would bring such devastation for such meager returns? Of course not. Nonetheless, though both Hamas and the people of Gaza are far worse off than they were before war, and the war achieved nothing of material value to offset those losses, Hamas are calling this a victory simply because they survived, and never surrendered.

Israel, meanwhile, did an enormous amount of damage to Gaza, and certainly severely degraded Hamas’s fighting capabilities. But they have not eliminated the group nor, more important, achieved any new political arrangement upon which peace might be built. If a cease-fire is genuinely implemented then it is likely Hamas will be able to reconstitute itself over time; more likely, I think, the war will continue in some form. With its attacks on Hezbollah and Iran, Israel has, arguably, helped to create a new political reality in Lebanon and Syria—though what that will lead to remains to be seen. What it has achieved in Gaza, at great cost to themselves and far, far greater cost to the Palestinians, is hard to discern at all—beyond, of course, simple vengeance. Nonetheless, Israel will call this a victory, in part precisely because the deal does not preclude them from resuming the war.

The only clear winner, it seems to me, is the president-elect, who appears to have been the most important figure in bringing this agreement to fruition. On one level there’s less to that than meets the eye; a deal roughly like this has been on the table since May, and all Trump really did was let both sides know that he expected them to agree to it before his inauguration. But it is significant in itself that both sides—and Israel especially—were more interested in granting Trump this boon than they were in doing the same for the Biden administration. It speaks to a general perception of President Biden’s weakness as a negotiator—an accurate perception, because it was rooted first and foremost in his political weakness at home. Biden could not win bipartisan support for his policy on Gaza; he could not even win the support of his own party. He had no credible sticks to use and no credible carrots to offer. Trump, at least, will have his party fully behind him. Both sides appear to think it is worth agreeing to at least a temporary cease-fire in order to find out what else Trump might have to offer.

So what might he offer? To Israel, he might offer American endorsement of the annexation of a portion of the West Bank, a central objective of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s far-right allies. Alternatively or in addition, he might offer American assistance in an attack on Iran’s nuclear program, a key goal of Netanyahu’s. Trump clearly also wants to expand the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia, which would be an extraordinary diplomatic coup for Israel in the context of its international isolation—but this was also a key Biden diplomatic objective, one that foundered on Netanyahu’s refusal to offer a fig leaf of a roadmap to a Palestinian state, a stance which I can’t imagine has changed at all. Would Trump actually supply the kind of pressure necessary to budge him? I don’t see it. And if not, then I don’t see what he has to offer the Palestinians.

That’s particularly true given what might happen next in the West Bank. Hamas only reaped devastation in Gaza, but they won a considerable propaganda victory in the Palestinian territories that they don’t govern. Support for Hamas surged in the West Bank after the October 7th attacks, and while it has declined since it remains elevated, and I suspect will rise further in response to the cease-fire deal. If Israel moves to annex Area C, or the Jordan Valley portion thereof, I would expect some kind of violent response from Palestinians in the West Bank, which Hamas will aim to capitalize on—though, unlike the October 7th attacks, this is an eventuality Israel has been expecting, and is presumably prepared for. But even if it doesn’t lead to widespread violence against Israelis, annexation could lead to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, and it’s not clear what Israel could do to shore it up (or if this government would even choose to do so).

I am very glad, of course, both that at least some of the remaining Israeli hostages will be coming home and that some Gazans will be able to begin rebuilding their lives. But I can’t muster any optimism. The fundamental reality on the ground hasn’t changed, and the only ones with some reason—not certainty, for sure, but some reason—to feel optimistic are those with far-right views on the conflict, because they may yet get the chance to put their ideas into practice more fully than ever before.

I hope I’m wrong, of course. I would like nothing more than for President Trump to achieve what seems impossible, and shepherd Israel and the Palestinians to some kind of stable and secure peace, and will happily eat crow to give him credit if it happens. But I don’t think it’s the way to bet.