The Gaza peace plan will work only if major regional players do their part.
Ezzedine Fishere is an Egyptian novelist and journalist and a Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth College.
The Trump plan has brought a ceasefire to Gaza, with a prisoner and hostage swap. That is no small feat. It took an extraordinary American intervention that broke with decades of precedent. It also took an unusual alignment of rivals in the region — Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey among them — acting, under duress, in parallel rather than at cross purposes. And it took the near decimation of Iranian power, including the destruction of Hezbollah.
Yet the ceasefire also came about because of the exhaustion of all those involved: Gazans, Israelis, and neighboring states. Everyone, at this point, wanted the war to end. This is also why its most important segments — cessation of fighting, partial withdrawal, hostages and prisoner swap — were implemented despite the glaring fact that the agreement itself remains little more than a sketch, a framework without flesh, a list of principles without details, even on the most consequential questions. That is also its main weakness.
Three issues will determine whether the Trump Plan succeeds or fails: the disarmament of Hamas; the emergence of a functioning governing authority in Gaza; and the deployment of an effective stabilization force. Peace will advance in direct proportion to progress on these three fronts. The more they move forward, the more life in Gaza improves, enabling more progress toward realization of the plan’s ambitious goals. If movement toward these three goals falls short, the less progress there will be.
There is a widespread assumption that what happens next depends on the Americans. But that view, popular as it may be, is also wrong. The success or failure of this plan does not depend on the United States. And the United States will not, and should not be expected to, lead this process. And that leads to the conclusion my fellow Middle Easterners hate most: that the responsibility for progress lies in the hands of the regional players themselves.
Disarmament and functioning governance cannot be imposed on the Palestinians from without; they can only happen if driven by genuine Palestinian effort, not just aspiration. If enough Palestinians — inside and outside Hamas — cling to “armed resistance,” they will get exactly what they preach: renewed fighting with the occupying power. If Hamas, Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority cannot agree on a governance structure for Gaza — or sabotage the one that emerges from the current agreement — Gaza’s governance will not take hold. The deployment of a stabilization force and the beginning of reconstruction will depend on whether regional players can continue working together and take risks for peace.
In the optimistic scenario, the Palestinians and Arab states would carry out these tasks diligently, treating them as levers to transform Palestinian realities — not as conditions to satisfy Israel or the United States. Hamas would hand over its weapons to Egypt or lock them away under international supervision; a new governing body would emerge through coordination between Palestinian factions and Arab states; and a robust stabilization force — Arab, international, or a hybrid of both — would deploy and take charge. These measures would allow reconstruction efforts to begin, push Israel to complete its withdrawal, change the atmosphere, keep the United States engaged, and pave the way for more ambitious, political steps.
In the other scenario, the Palestinian and regional players will carry out these tasks half-heartedly. Hamas would surrender some of its heavy weapons while concealing others, using them —for now — against their Palestinian rivals. The new governing body would turn out to be a collection of proxies for the warring Palestinian factions and their regional sponsors, while the stabilization force would take time to form and avoid confronting security threats, turning into a communication channel between Hamas and Israel reminiscent of UNIFIL, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon that has a distinctly checkered record. This would signal to Palestinians that nothing has changed, invite Israel’s worst security responses, drive the whole process downward, and allow everyone to conveniently blame the United States for the failure.
Success is possible, albeit less likely. Armed resistance remains an appealing proposition among Palestinians. Divisions over governance run deep. And regional alignments shift quickly. Resentments will resurface; ideologies and ambitions will reassert themselves. Still, the sheer scale of destruction in Gaza, the human toll on Palestinians, and the regional risk of continued instability might — just might — prompt leaders to act differently this time.
The Trump plan has stopped the guns, but what lies ahead in the Middle East will depend on the Middle Eastern players — on whether its leaders can recognize that survival, on all sides, requires responsibility rather than blame-shifting. Progress on the three key issues depends less on Washington than on the region’s capacity to cooperate, compromise, and resist its own worst instincts. If all the Palestinians and the region can muster are half-hearted, make-believe measures, then that will be the future of peace in Gaza.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
Ezzedine Fishere
Ezzedine Fishere is an Egyptian novelist and journalist and a Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth College.
