Amir Tibon אמיר תיבון@amirtibon
Some thoughts on the Gaza agreement announced overnight, which despite my reservations and concerns, I hope will be implemented.
1. Donald Trump is trying to collect "wins" and "achievements" ahead of the midterm elections. His party is entering that election at a disadvantage, but because Democrats may choose weak and unpopular candidates in specific states, much like Republicans did in 2022, there's a reason for Trump to at least try achieving a surprising result like the one Biden secured four years ago.
2. The will to provide Trump such a "win" was an important motivation for all sides involved in this agreement: Hamas, Netanyahu, Qatar, Egypt, UAE and Turkey. All of them hope, each for their own reasons, that the transactional president will remember their role in the agreement and the positive media coverage it has generated and will continue to generate. You can like it or not, but that's the nature of diplomacy, especially in the Middle East, under Trump.
3. Netanyahu and his band of liars in the Israeli media (and the last few suckers in the American media still buying his spin) are already trying to oversell the agreement and present it in terms that contradict the Board of Peace statements and briefings. Of course, the October 7 Prime Minister can't just say the truth on this one, which goes something like: "I'm trying to stay on good terms with Trump ahead of an election here in Israel that will determine my personal fate and whether or not I go to jail in 2027."
4. For Hamas, the agreement is a way to buy time and survive, which is basically the organization's overarching goal since October 7. They lost most of their leadership and thousands of their fighters; they will also, I believe, give up some of their weapons to the new Gaza-based Palestinian government, which is a good thing. But at the bottom of all their decisions is a simple calculation: being able to say, "we committed the most deadly and humiliating attack against Israel since the start of the conflict, and survived as a movement and an organization to tell about it."
5. Hamas was able to say that yesterday, before the agreement was signed, and it can also say that today, after the conclusion of the negotiations. So in that regard, the agreement is preferable to the murky post-war reality that preceded it, in which Hamas was recruiting again thousands of young fighters, holding on to all its weapons, and controlling 99% of Gaza's population, making money off people buying fuel and cigarettes. Changing even a part of that terrible reality, by collecting some of the weapons and allowing progress on reconstruction under a non-Hamas government, is better. It means coming to terms with the fact that Israel under this government failed to dismantle Hamas and allowed its survival even before this agreement was signed.
6. Do I think the agreement will be fully implemented over the next 300 days, as I understand the timeline? (Correct me if I'm wrong on the time period, @lizarozovsky - BTW, everyone should follow Liza, diplomatic reporter for @haaretzcom who has been covering this story for months while many journalists ditched it once the Iran war started.)
I'm highly skeptical. But I'm also asking: what are the alternatives? Netanyahu, in his quest for political survival at all costs, ignored David Ben-Gurion's national security strategy of seeking short and decisive wars, which was based on Israel's unique internal and external challenges that make it dangerous for this country to have long wars of attrition. The result is an Israel that is hated, isolated and denounced around the world like never before, and is totally reliant on the support of one man (TRUMP) to avoid crushing international sanctions.
Going to war in Gaza once again based on the same promise of "finishing Hamas," which this government failed to achieve after three long years, would have been suicidal unless Trump promised his full backing. And Trump, for good reasons, can't give such a commitment after his bitter experience with Netanyahu in Iran and Lebanon.
7. For me and my family, these are all very personal, not only political, questions. My six-year-old daughter will start school on the Gaza border in exactly one month, as we rebuild our life in the same home where Hamas tried to murder us on October 7. We've learned over the years to be highly skeptical of premature victory announcements and diplomatic celebrations. When these things collapse under the cynical realities of the conflict, most of those announcing them are not around to face the consequences.
Still, I don't see a better alternative to the 20-Point Plan that Trump presented last year, at least not with Israel's current position of isolation and exhaustion under this government.
So I have some hope that the agreement will succeed, even partially, and deliver a period of quiet. For us on the border, that would be significant after three years of war and trauma. And maybe in the long run, with different Israeli and Palestinian leadership, this will become a first step in a broader positive change for the region.
