I still have some relative confidence that the Gaza ceasefire deal will make its way through the current flare-ups. That’s because the deal itself has very powerful stakeholders behind it, ones who can apply overwhelming pressure to the warring parties if they choose to. But what we’re now seeing all the reasons you’d expect a deal like this with Donald Trump to go south.
First is attention. The best argument against this deal sticking has always been that Trump will get bored and lose interest. It’s pretty clear that’s already happened. We heard his press secretary say only days ago that his main priority is building the new White House ballroom.
The second issue is one closely tied to attention. It’s also a big reason why U.S. administrations haven’t wanted to get involved in anything meaningful tied to Israel-Palestine for a generation. You attach your credibility to it and there’s a good chance you’ll fail. In political terms there’s just no upside. And nothing is more basic to Donald Trump than only attaching his name to things that are going to help him.
The best way to see this is that both groups — the Netanyahu party (I’ll explain that later) and Hamas — have agreed to leave the political stage as part of the deal. (That’s not explicit with Netanyahu. But it’s implicit or follows directly from the logic of the deal.) That’s a pretty tough sell for those two parties. So what you have here are two scorpions which are both in a battle with each other and also with the box they’re caged in, which is the Trump peace deal. You’ve got to keep a very close eye on them to keep them in line.
I still think this has a decent shot of “working” in the short- and medium-term (deeper cessation of hostilities, Arab state constabulary, some reconstruction) because the stakeholders are so deeply invested. The Gulf princes deeply, deeply wanted security and economic normalization and integration with Israel. That simply doesn’t work as long as you’ve got mass death happening on the Israel-Palestine front. Ideally, you have a settlement. But you absolutely can’t have the last two years. Major forces in Israel also want that integration and the Trump family really, really wants to keep that golden shower of … well, gold pouring down on them courtesy of the Gulf princes. My assumption here has been that the desire and need for those things among the stakeholders are so strong that there’s a decent shot this thing works — again, by the limited standard I noted above. And to me, I hope it works because even that very limited standard of success can at least open the possibility of more positive things.
Final point, explaining my above reference to the “Netanyahu party.” The Likud party still exists in Israel. On paper, it’s the most successful party in Israeli political history and usually still the largest single party. It’s exists in spades. But the current Likud is really the Netanyahu party in the way that the Republican Party is the Trump party, only much more so. Many of the “new” parties that have cropped up in recent years in Israel are more like the historic Likud than the current party. And Netanyahu’s long reign since 2009 has mainly been about curating a list of several parties who will make him Prime Minister, with the Likud only one of those, and not even always the most favored or nicely treated. When you look at the difference between the parties formed by Naftali Bennett or Gideon Sa’ar or, in a more complicated way, Avigdor Lieberman, the difference with Likud isn’t ideology. It’s Netanyahu, his permanent hold on power and everything that permanent hold has required. What makes this distinction more than a fine point of commentary on Israeli politics is that this deal obviously doesn’t require the demise of Likud or the Israeli right. But it does put Netanyahu’s continued hold on power under great threat. You can’t understand the forces at play without understanding that fact.