Gaza deal will only succeed if leaders on all sides sacrifice for peace

As details trickled out Wednesday of a ceasefire for hostages deal between Israel and Hamas, my mind ran through the many previous efforts at Israeli-Palestinian peace I’d covered in the last 25 years. And why they’d failed.

I can sum everything up in one word: leadership. Clear-eyed, realistic, pragmatic, committed leadership has been the key to successful Israeli peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, aided by U.S. mediation in the case of Egypt.

The world cheered at the prospect of 33 Israeli hostages being returned Sunday, in the first of three stages of this deal, along with a ceasefire that permits hundreds of thousands of Gazans to return to their (shattered) homes. But leadership will determine whether the deal ever progresses to its second and third stages — and galvanizes a wider regional peace.

The main players involved are a strange bunch. Hamas leaders are mostly dead, and the deal rules them out as future leaders in Gaza (Egypt and Qatar handled direct negotiations while they stayed in the background).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, has sharply reversed his previous positions on Gaza — after rejecting an almost identical deal proposed in May by President Joe Biden. He does so now to please President-elect Donald Trump but insists the terms of the ceasefire leave open the possibility of returning to war in Gaza after phase one.

Trump himself makes clear he sees this deal as a stepping stone not only to end the Gaza war but to also expand the Abraham Accords that led to peace between two small Gulf states and Israel. His broader goal is to secure normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel — and achieve a Nobel Peace Prize.

» READ MORE: Jimmy Carter’s historic peace deal between Israel and Egypt deserves more attention | Trudy Rubin

But such a miracle won’t be achieved by schmoozing with sheikhs and Bibi. To realize that dream, the new president will have to reverse many of his previously held positions on the Mideast — and compel Netanyahu to do likewise — while bolstering new Palestinian leadership that replaces Hamas. It would definitively mean confronting the dilemma of how to resolve Palestinian aspirations.

Trump would have to be steady on, not expecting victory overnight or without lengthy involvement. This Gaza ceasefire, and a future Nobel Peace Prize, depend on whether Trump can rise to that height.

Even though the president-elect famously dislikes reading or detailed briefings, he would be wise to bone up on the history of past Israel-Arab deals. A determined Jimmy Carter was able to force Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat to overcome their dislike for each other and to make serious concessions because both leaders devoutly wanted peace. Ditto for Jordan’s King Hussein and Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin, who needed no intermediary and admired each other.

As for the Abraham Accords, brokered by first son-in-law Jared Kushner in 2020, those were far simpler to achieve. The small Gulf kingdoms of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain had long enjoyed close commercial ties with Israel, and Bahrain also hosted a major U.S. base. So they were willing to elevate those ties, with the UAE demanding in return that Israel not annex the West Bank.

But a deal with Saudi Arabia, home to the most holy Islamic shrines, is of a different magnitude. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS) was very interested, in return for closer defense ties with Washington, but shelved the idea after Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

According to Bob Woodward’s book, War, after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked MBS what he needed from Israel to normalize relations. “I need quiet in Gaza,” replied the crown prince, “and I need a clear political pathway for the Palestinians for a state.”

When Blinken queried whether this was more than lip service, since the Saudi royal family long disdained Palestinian leadership, MBS replied: “Do I want it? It doesn’t matter that much. Do I need it? Absolutely.” Arab and Saudi youth, and Muslims worldwide, he said, were focused on the suffering of civilians in Gaza, and he could not move forward with Israel without responding to their concerns.

Which brings us to the question of Trump, Netanyahu, and Palestinian leadership going forward — and whether this ceasefire will last more than the initial six weeks, and whether the rest of the Israeli hostages will be returned.

Trump never showed much interest in the Palestinian issue. His administration’s 2020 proposal for the Israeli-Palestinian “Deal of the Century” basically echoed Netanyahu’s vision of small patches of disconnected West Bank territory connected by tunnels and bridges under the control of Israeli security (as would be Gaza). This non-state would have virtually no sovereign rights, nor would it have any part of Jerusalem as its capital.

As for Netanyahu, he has stuck to the concept of a non-state Palestinian entity throughout his entire career (he outlined it to me in a 1996 interview in Jerusalem when he was out of power). The Israeli leader played games with Biden’s virtually identical ceasefire/hostage deal, indicating he would accept it before doing a complete U-turn.

» READ MORE: Ethnic cleansing in Gaza won’t bring peace or security to Israel | Trudy Rubin

“Biden was unable to push Bibi who was waiting for Trump,” writes Haaretz’s well-informed diplomatic correspondent Amos Harel. (As many have pointed out, this resembles Carter’s experience after negotiating through 1970 for the release of U.S. diplomats held hostage by Iran. The ayatollahs only released them when Ronald Reagan took office.)

But phase one of the deal is the easy part. The second and third phases will focus, among other things, on the return of all Israeli hostages, a permanent end to the war, reconstruction of the strip, and who will ultimately govern Gaza.

Gulf states, which are expected to foot most of the bill, won’t do so if they expect the war to continue. Nor will any Arab or international force come to police the strip during the rebuilding unless Gaza is stable, and the fighting stopped.

In a speech this week at the Atlantic Council, Blinken contended that Israel will have to accept reuniting Gaza and the West Bank under the leadership of a reformed Palestinian Authority (which currently, weakly, governs the West Bank). If the ceasefire continues, it will inevitably turn to negotiations over a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.

But despite an unusual note of optimism about the future, Blinken harshly criticized both Hamas and Israeli leaders for months of stonewalling.

That’s a reminder that this ceasefire is still fragile and that working toward a Palestinian political solution and a wider Mideast accord — all while ensuring Israel’s security — will require intense work by the Trump administration. It will require commitment and attention from the president at a level he has never shown before.

The question of the hour is whether Trump is truly interested in that Nobel Prize and capable of investing the energy of a Jimmy Carter — or whether he only pressed for this ceasefire in order to proclaim a short-term triumph on Inauguration Day.