DC Edit | Gaza War Is Over, But Will Peace Be Durable?
There are intractable problems that remain to be tackled long before the larger question is addressed of whether the Palestinians will accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and if the Israelis will ever countenance the granting of the Palestinians’ right to statehood
As the Palestinians rejoiced over 1,960 prisoners swapped for 20 Israeli hostages who had survived captivity in Gaza tunnels from October 7, 2023, and who were reunited with their families on Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, Donald Trump enjoyed his moment in the sun, grandstanding his way through the Israeli Parliament, Knesset, in Jerusalem and Sharm-El-Sheikh on the Egyptian shore of the Red Sea telling the world that this is not only the end of a war but also the end of the age of terror and death.
Who else but his principal sponsor in the form of the US President could have convinced Benjamin Netanyahu to pause the terrible war that had rained death and destruction in the Gaza Strip where around 67,000 Palestinians were killed and more than 1.9 million of a population of two million displaced, hospitals and homes razed and where hunger was in extreme evidence for over two years.
The ceasefire and exchange of people are only the first steps in the first phase of a 20-point plan that aims to bring peace to a restive region with a troubled history running into hundreds of years. Many questions are still hanging over the immediate future of the Gaza Strip even as tenuous peace returns to Israel and its neighbours.
There are intractable problems that remain to be tackled long before the larger question is addressed of whether the Palestinians will accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and if the Israelis will ever countenance the granting of the Palestinians’ right to statehood. Peace is now only just beginning, and it will endure only if seemingly unsolvable problems are taken head-on and solutions found.
Like the conundrum over which came first between the chicken and the egg, will Israel be the first to withdraw militarily from all of Gaza, of which it currently occupies about 50 per cent, or will Hamas step out of the administration first to make way for the grand peace plan to proceed? Those events must, however, take place if peace is to stand a chance even before the question of Hamas laying down weapons — if willing to do so to whom would they hand them over — is taken up.
Trump’s plan for peace that was unveiled in Egypt, without the presence of the Israelis and Hamas, is ambitious in its all-encompassing features that include a Board of Peace to be headed, of course, by the man who did not get the Nobel Peace Prize, a multi-nations peacekeeping force drawn mostly from Arab states, and a transition government to be headed by an acceptable Palestinian face and advised by seasoned international leaders.
The question of who will pay the estimated $70 billion for reconstruction of Gaza to inhabitable status with amenities, schools and hospitals may be answered somewhat easily given there may be rich Arab nations willing to chip in. Who will run it for the Palestinian people who have an inalienable right to a homeland? Who will guarantee peaceful coexistence with a vision big enough to take the region beyond the horrendous history of tension and conflicts?
Rarely would an American President, who has proved so divisive at home, have commanded so much adulation abroad as Trump has since his unusual negotiating style using non-traditional diplomats as peace envoys yielded fruit to the extent of stopping a horrible war. And yet he must himself follow through enthusiastically if the plan is to kick on and lead towards the greater outcomes envisaged.
