Donald Trump says he has a deal to disarm Hamas.
As I wrote about this week for The Dispatch, Hamas—an Islamist terror group that has ruled Gaza for the last 19 years—has agreed to the Board of Peace’s 15-point roadmap under which it would give up its weapons and its remaining control over Gaza.
An international verification mechanism is supposed to oversee this process. An international stabilisation force comprising troops from multiple America-aligned countries is slated to move in. A Palestinian technocratic government is supposed to take over.
And as these steps were implemented and verified, Israeli forces would progressively withdraw from Gaza.
Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected this.
Israel, he says, will not withdraw at all from Gaza until Hamas has been completely disarmed. Heavy weapons, light weapons, everything.
Only after disarmament has been completed is he saying that he is willing to allow Israel to begin pulling back.
In other words his demand is: you go first. He is also very explicit in saying that he will never permit a 2-state solution.
Now, I admit: I don’t trust Hamas to disarm. They are a jihadist group who no doubt have many tricks up their sleeve. But at the same time it seems like a missed opportunity to not at least try.
Netanyahu is not choosing between Trump’s deal and a hypothetical world in which Hamas immediately decommissions every single last rifle and rocket launcher.
He is choosing between the deal and continued Israeli control of Gaza with no obvious endpoint.
I feel like Hamas has outplayed Netanyahu here. And it is in the exact same way that Israeli leaders repeatedly outplayed Yasser Arafat in the 1990s and 2000s.
From every point henceforth, Hamas can say “we agreed to the disarmament deal, but Netanyahu rejected it, so why should we disarm?”
This is precisely why Israelis are able to repeatedly tell Palestinians “we offered you peace, we offered you 2-states at Camp David, and you rejected it! Why should we offer you peace again?”
As a Palestinian who wants peace, I have heard this argument a thousandfold!
In the modern world, you don’t ever want to make yourself look like the rejectionist or the obstacle to progress. That is a misplay. It will inevitably be used against you.
If Hamas refuses to hand over every weapon before Israel withdraws, Israel stays in Gaza. Until when? Until Hamas is fully disarmed.
But the tricky part is that full disarmament is almost impossible to prove.
You can count the guns Hamas hands over. But you can’t prove there isn’t another cache buried under a house somewhere, or off somewhere in the sophisticated and large tunnel network that Hamas built during its decades in control of Gaza. You can’t prove a negative.
So Netanyahu has set an exit condition with no obvious point at which he has to say: okay, we’re done, we’re leaving.
And that suits some of the people in his coalition perfectly.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir openly want Israeli settlements in Gaza again. Netanyahu says he doesn’t, of course.
But do any of Israel’s opponents believe Netanyhau? Of course not. They all believe he is fully aligned with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, and is using disarmament as an excuse to stay in Gaza and establish settlements, if not in Gaza as a whole then at least in the parts of Gaza where the IDF has control.
Even many of Israel’s friends believe that Netanyahu is aligned with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. They are ministers in his government, after all!
Hamas loves this.
Their entire argument against pro-peace Palestinians is that Israel is taking us for fools, and has no intention of making peace, or ever accepting a 2-state solution.
So: what does Netanayhu have up his sleeve? Is there any prospect of a better deal that would still see Hamas get disarmed?
I don’t think so. If there is a better deal, then prove me wrong. I will be the first to celebrate if there can be a better deal that both sides can agree to that will lead to peace in Gaza, the end of Hamas rule, and the reconstruction of Gaza.
Is there any deal on the table at all now? Does the Board of Peace try and cook up something else? Perhaps something with stricter verification mechanisms?
And what are Palestinians supposed to support if we cannot support the 2-state solution? What is the hope for Palestinians as a nation?
Does Netanyahu think that Palestinians are going to become citizens of Israel? No, I doubt that. Integrating Palestinians into Israel would be seen by Netanyahu and many Israelis—probably a majority—as a “demographic threat” to Israel’s Jewish character. I don’t think Netanyahu has a plan for that.
And to be clear I am willing to accept that after October 7, it’s unrealistic for Palestinians and Israelis to merge together into one state.
Very well. But if a 2-state solution is impossible, and a 1-state solution is impossible then what happens to Palestinians? No solution? A future of statelessness? How does having millions of angry and stateless people on their border help with Israel’s security?
The reality is that international support right now is firmly behind Palestinians and against Israel. Via Pew:
To be clear—I do think that at least some of this negativity is motivated by racist anti-Jewish propaganda.
But even in the United States of America, public support is behind Palestinians for the first time ever:
I never expected to see that happen in my lifetime. I would not have ruled such a move out, but until the last 3 years, I would have assumed such an event to be extremely unlikely.
So what is Netanyahu doing if he cannot get a better deal? Is he blindly following Smotrich and Ben-Gvir because he doesn’t want to lose votes to them in Israel’s upcoming election on October 27?
Is he hoping that Palestinians will overplay their hand now?
Maybe they will.
No doubt, Palestinians have overplayed their hands before. If the 2-state solution or a similar solution based on coexistence is impossible and Palestinians have widespread support then what is stopping Palestinians from rallying behind “from the river to the sea”?
In my eyes, that is a mistake for Palestinians to rally behind, because it simply leads back to more confrontation. I cannot support “from the river to the sea”, and I never will.
I will always support solutions based on coexistence and mutual legitimacy for both Palestinians and Israelis.
Both Palestinians and Israelis have a right to exist.
But right now, there doesn’t seem to be anything for me to get excited about.
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