The Gaza Peace Plan Has Gone Nowhere
Seven months ago, Israel and Hamas reached an agreement for a ceasefire, largely ending the war in Gaza after two years of Israeli attacks and the deaths of more than seventy thousand Palestinians. The agreement, which was pushed on the Israeli government by the United States, involved a step-by-step process that would eventually lead to the disarmament of Hamas and the reconstruction of Gaza. These are still the things that the Trump Administration claims, via its Board of Peace, to want, but the situation remains unsettled, with Israel still striking the parts of Gaza that it does not control, killing more than seven hundred people since the ceasefire began. (Last weekend, three people were killed during an Israeli drone strike on a food-distribution center in Gaza.) Meanwhile, Hamas shows no signs that it plans to disarm.
I recently spoke by phone with Michael Milshtein, the head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University. Milshtein previously served as adviser to COGAT, which supervises civilian policy in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. He was also the head of the Department for Palestinian Affairs in the I.D.F.’s military-intelligence wing. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the humanitarian situation in Gaza since the ceasefire, what a diminished Hamas is looking to accomplish, and whether the Israeli elections this fall could change the country’s policy in Gaza.
How would you describe the situation on the ground in Gaza now, and what, if anything, has changed since the ceasefire began late last year?
You know, nothing has changed. Since October, when the ceasefire started, we have been able to say one very clear thing, and this is that Hamas is the prominent player in Gaza. On the eve of the ceasefire, people spoke about how maybe there would be a kind of alternative government, or maybe Hamas would consider disarmament, or maybe even the Palestinian public would be more critical toward Hamas, and there would be protests against their rule. But right now Hamas has total control of the Palestinian side of Gaza. They control about forty per cent of the total territory of the Gaza Strip, which is the area that is not under Israeli control.
And now we are stuck. There has been no progress on the second phase of the ceasefire, which was supposed to be about disarmament and governance and the reconstruction process. But there has been nothing.
And what I can say about Israel is that it is standing in front of a T-shaped junction, with two options. And while all options may be bad, we need to choose the least bad one. One of those options is the one that people in the government talk about every day, which is to renew the war, defeat Hamas, and maybe occupy all of Gaza. That’s what people like Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister, want. They want to resettle Gaza, and maybe to push the Palestinians out of Gaza. But this desire depends on Donald Trump, and I don’t see Donald Trump right now permitting such a dramatic move.
And the other option is actually to accept this idea of a more bureaucratic Palestinian government. It may not be ideal, and Hamas would still exist in this scenario, but it is better than the alternative of occupying Gaza.
Right, the second phase of the ceasefire envisioned not just the disarmament of Hamas but also the beginnings of a kind of more bureaucratic government that would empower different Palestinian factions to oversee governance in Gaza. And then, perhaps over time, Israel would allow more autonomy in the territory. Was that the idea?
Yes, the government of Israel even promoted this idea after the ceasefire was pushed on them—that Hamas would give up its weapons, there would be a kind of alternative government, which would not will be affiliated with Hamas, and that we would promote a kind of reconstruction with the support of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and there would be the deradicalization of the Palestinians. It was utopian and, since Day One, a total illusion.
For one, if you asked Hamas about what they wanted, they were very clear that they were against disarmament, even after they said yes to Donald Trump’s plans. They said, O.K., we will accept this idea of the bureaucratic government. But they made clear that they would not abandon their weapons, and that this was important to who they were. So from Day One, it was obvious that there was a huge gap between the expectations of Israel, and maybe even the American Administration, and what Hamas wanted. So, you know, actually nothing is really surprising about the current situation and the fact that we are stuck right now in a very problematic place.
Not to be too cynical here—
That’s O.K.
But do both sides actually want this status quo?
Hamas, yes. But Israel, no. This settlement was forced on Netanyahu by Donald Trump. It’s obvious. If you could ask Netanyahu six months ago, before the ceasefire, if he wanted this, he would say, no, I want to continue the war. For him, it is an endless war. But his whole plan was really damaged by his idiotic attack against the leadership of Hamas in Qatar, because that caused Trump to pressure him to end the war.
What I meant was that, given Netanyahu’s inability to re-start the war without U.S. support, isn’t the status quo, with Israel controlling large swaths of Gaza, what he would prefer?
Yes, but both sides still hope they will get what they want. If you ask Hamas, they will tell you that they really hope that Donald Trump will push Israel to expand their withdrawal from the yellow line, where they are positioned, and to promote reconstruction. But that has not happened. And if you ask Netanyahu, he would say he wants that green light from Trump to renew the war, but so far that has not happened.
In a way, this is all very similar to what’s happening in Lebanon. The Americans are the only ones who can solve this, because if you depend on Israel and Hamas, or, in the Lebanese case, on Israel and Hezbollah, there is no way to bridge the gap. There have been all kinds of negotiations with the Lebanese government and Israel, but the only one who could really get a ceasefire right now is Donald Trump, by saying to Israel that this is what he demands.
More broadly, how do you think Hamas views the current situation in Gaza?
They, in fact, had been planning to use the establishment of a more bureaucratic government to allow themselves to behave similarly to Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the status of being a formal political party works as a kind of cosmetic cover for its paramilitary operations. Hamas, in this scenario, like Hezbollah, would be free to act on both a military and a political level.
One thing I think is important for people to understand is that Hamas will not give up on the principle of refusing to disarm. The principle of armed resistance is a deep part of their identity. It is my impression that Nickolay Mladenov, who is serving as the High Representative for Gaza at Trump’s Board of Peace, is very frustrated because he thought that they would be more flexible on this.
But he is also frustrated with Israel, because they have also been inflexible on the political process to begin reconstruction, as well as on allowing humanitarian support into Gaza. So Israel is in the same place.
How do the two sides feel about the Board of Peace?
Last week, I spoke with some Palestinians from Gaza about this issue. And they said, listen, we understand that Mladenov has had a lot of negotiations in Cairo about Phase Two, and about creating a more bureaucratic governing structure, but we don’t really feel the impact here. Nothing is concrete. But they also thought that he is a positive person who understands Palestinian concerns.
On the Israeli side, no one will attack the Board of Peace, but my impression is that, within the government, there is no one who is really trying to support or encourage its efforts. Everyone is waiting to see what Donald Trump will do.
It seems unlikely that Trump is going to want Israel to re-start the war, but it also seems unlikely that Trump is going to invest a huge amount of capital in trying to push this forward to the next phase, which would be similarly difficult.
Yeah, and we are also in a situation where I am not sure if Donald Trump is paying any attention to what is happening in Gaza. He is focussed on Iran and China and even Cuba. I’m not sure if he is aware of anything that is happening in Gaza, or, really, if he is aware that nothing is happening in Gaza.
Immediately after the ceasefire, Israel controlled fifty-three per cent of the territory in Gaza. What is that number now?
There is a narrative here in Israel that the way to punish the Palestinians, or to pressure Hamas, is by taking more and more territory. So we started the ceasefire in a place where Israel controlled something between fifty-two and fifty-three per cent of the territory, and now it’s around sixty per cent.
But this brings up another question that is being asked by many Israelis, and not only regarding Gaza, but also regarding Lebanon. And that is, What is the purpose of staying on the yellow line? What are you going to do? Are you going to occupy and annex the territory to create new settlements over there? Or are you just going to stay over there, as Israel did in Lebanon between 1982 and 2000? And my impression is that there is no strategy. Or that the only strategy is attacking and force.
Aren’t security concerns the stated reason that they’ve established the yellow line in Gaza?
Yes, and it’s the same stated reason as in Lebanon. But Israel’s over-all strategy should not just be military strategy. And that’s why we are stuck. And of course, we are also stuck in Lebanon.
So right now, no one is speaking about a political solution in Gaza. You have taken around sixty per cent of the territory. You can attack whenever you want. We even saw this last week when Israel struck and killed the leader of Hamas’s military wing. So yes, one very important achievement is that Hamas cannot really strengthen itself militarily, because Israel controls the Philadelphi Corridor, which prevents Hamas from smuggling weapons into Gaza. But that’s not enough. What is the long-term plan? Do you want to occupy Gaza? Do you refuse to bring the Palestinian Authority into Gaza? For a while, it seemed like they wanted to set up a local regime based on clans. This was nonsense, but it was a very popular illusion a year or two ago. But now we are stuck in these wars with no clear purpose.
What is your sense of the humanitarian situation in Gaza since the ceasefire? How much has changed, and how much has not?
The sense that I got from speaking to people in Gaza last week was that people are not hungry in the same way. But regarding the basic existential conditions in Gaza, things are very bad. I am speaking of housing, health, education. The education system was basically ruined during the war. So we are speaking about a place with no civil space, with no civil society. Many people are hoping there would have been reconstruction by now. But there is nothing. Nothing is being implemented.
Israel is going to have elections later this year. Is there any possible configuration of the next Israeli government that would allow things to change in Gaza?
I hope that any assessment I make is not influenced by wishful thinking. Currently, Netanyahu cannot do anything differently because of the far-right partners in his coalition, who have threatened to collapse the government. But a new, more centrist government might be ready to discuss this idea of establishing a more bureaucratic government in Gaza, which could have some involvement of the Palestinian Authority.
However, I think there will be things that even a different government will not be able to accept, like Hamas being allowed to reconstruct its military capacities and becoming again as powerful as they were on the eve of October 7th. For example, they would not allow Hamas to have control over the Philadelphi Corridor. So, if Israeli forces pull back, there would have to be another solution to preventing Hamas from retaking it. Maybe American forces could be deployed over there.
But all of that assumes that there will not be internal political chaos during the election as a result of the decisions that this government has made over the past few years. We have not spoken about what has been happening in the West Bank, where the current government has been allowing settlers to become even more aggressive. And if we have a new government that tries to restrict the settlers, it will be like a volcano erupting in Israeli politics.
You are painting a picture that makes it seem like the status quo may extend for a long time.
Any change will be very difficult. But it would have to start from a situation where we do not speak any more about the reëstablishment of the settlements in Gaza, which far-right ministers in the Netanyahu government do all the time. And it would have to start with a situation where the Israeli government does not boycott the Palestinian Authority’s presence in Gaza, as Netanyahu has been doing. Netanyahu is not able to even discuss new changes. Maybe a new government could. ♦