Has Trump brought peace to Gaza? Ended the war and cycle of killing that has now been going on for two years? I’ve had a number of TPM Readers ask me different versions of this. And in those questions is a lurking undercurrent, sometimes more or less explicit, of “does this malevolent clown actually get credit for this?” I wanted to address this question. And my answer is that this is perhaps the first time when Trump’s frequent and degenerate boast — I alone can do it — has a very real element of truth.
I don’t think Trump expended any great amount of energy over this and I don’t think he really cares greatly about any of the people on either side of the conflict. Let’s remember that a few months ago he backed a plan to “voluntarily” depopulate Gaza and remake it as a series of mediterranean resorts, sort of Monaco only 150 times the size.
The key here is Trump’s extremely close relationships with the Gulf princes and his relationship with Israel and the Israeli right, especially Benjamin Netanyahu. The first (the relationship with the princes) is based on a mutual love of authoritarianism and corruption. More generously we might say it’s a shared vision of the future of the global economy and billionairedom — stated succinctly, the billionaires run the world. But for Trump, specifically, it’s about corruption. He and his family have now become genuine high rollers because of those relationships, which are all based on his political power in the United States. He monetized MAGA and made himself the billionaire he always dreamed of being.
That’s all very dark. But for the moment let’s set that aside. Because for present purposes the origins and bases of the relationship matter much less than the reality of it. Trump cares very, very much about what the princes want and what they think. They are also very dependent on the international system and the kind of U.S. government Trump is trying to create. He wants what they want. And they need to want what he wants. Not only was Joe Biden never in anything remotely like this position with the Gulf princes. No previous US president was either. The bond of authoritarianism and corruption was not there. The kind of U.S. government where this could be possible did not exist.
Now to Israel.
Donald Trump is very popular in Israel, has been really from the start. It’s not just the Israeli far right. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are also deeply bound together by bonds of authoritarianism and other more personal binding relationships. Corruption and business play a role but nowhere near to the degree as with the Gulf princes. The real key, however, is that Netanyahu has made the whole U.S.-Israel alliance about the relationship with Trump. During the first Trump administration, that may still have been Trump and the GOP. But now Trump is the GOP. In the early 90s when George H.W. Bush held up loan guarantees for Israel, Israel had at least as many friends among Democrats. That is, obviously, no longer the case. The popularity of Israel is at best mixed among Democrats. And Netanyahu is kryptonite.
What all of the above amounts to is that Netanyahu cannot say no to anything Trump demands. Full stop. That sounds like a big statement. But it is 100% true. Add to this that the Israeli public has wanted this to be over for a long time. There’s simply no force for Netanyahu to fall back on. He can’t say no to Trump when Trump says he has to have something.
Why does Trump want to do it? Probably a mix of his Gulf prince buddies want it bad and he thinks he’ll get a Nobel Prize. In other words, reasons that are stupid and slimy.
“Credit” is a funny word. Do I give Trump credit for this? I’d say this. Because of those relationships, Trump is in a unique position to do this. Only he can force the hands of both groups, to the extent they need to be forced. He can do it. He is doing it. And I’m glad he’s doing it.
Needless to say, this is a “first stage” of this process. It could all fall apart. This is a region in which these things routinely fall apart. But I suspect that at least in terms of freeing the hostages, ending Israel’s military activity within Gaza and opening up the gates of humanitarian and reconstruction aid, it will succeed. The final or implemented version of the agreement isn’t great but we could do so much worse. And indeed we have done worse. But even with what amounts to putting Gaza not under a League of Nations or UN mandate but rather a kind of Trump mandate there are reasons for some hope.
As I understand it, the plan is essentially this. A Gaza police force is created with troops/police from Arab countries. Gaza is governed by a board of apolitical Palestinian technocrats. There may be some kind of Viceroy type figure along the lines of a Tony Blair kind of statesman-retiree and all will report to a “board” of which Donald Trump is the chairman. (As I said, not great.) Then you have rebuilding. Hamas has to completely decommission all its arms and its members are given subsidized pathways to reenter civil society.
Here’s the part of this that holds out some possibility of hope. If Gaza is run by a police force of Egyptian and Saudi (et al.) nationals, Israel is not going to be able to conduct military operations inside Gaza. If the interim authority can disarm Hamas and other groups and prevent terror operations from being run from Gaza, Israel also won’t need to, or won’t be justified in doing so. An end to the naval blockade has to go along with this, though I haven’t seen that explicitly discussed.
To be clear, this creates only the very, very barest necessary conditions for a better future. Nothing in any of this plan provides any kind of self-government, let alone self-determination. But as long as Hamas fires rockets and conducts other operations inside Israel and Israel conducts periodic military campaigns within Gaza (let alone what’s happened for the last 24 months) and enforces its blockade, there is no possibility of any better future. The cycle of violence is self-reinforcing and keeps extremist politicians in power on both sides of the Green Line. On its own, this does no more than hopefully dramatically reduce or eliminate military and terrorist violence. But without those there is at least the possibility of a positive cycle of relative prosperity and relative freedom, if not self-determination, from which more positive things could follow. To my surprise, the Trump plan does appear to explicitly call for self-determination and statehood as the ultimate goal of all this. As I said, not great but we could do and have done so much worse since 2006 and especially since 2023.
I will restate my endlessly stated view that the only possible path to peace, self-determination and justice for both peoples is a partition which creates two states. People now often call this aspirational or unrealistic. In fact, it’s the only realistic way forward. All the other ideas are so absurd that in any other part of the world but this one they would be instantly recognized as such. This plan doesn’t do anything like that. Indeed, in numerous ways it’s a bad plan. But I think it probably will release the hostages, stop Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and has a decent chance of making ordinary life in Gaza much better.
As I said above, Trump was and is uniquely positioned to do this. The reasons he’s so well-positioned are themselves very bad. But only he is really in a position to do this. And he is doing it. I think that speaks for itself.