• United States

October 3, 2025, 6:40 AM View Comments ()

Even in a region as angry, dysfunctional, and conflict-ridden as the Middle East, it’s hard to believe we’re entering the third year of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza—a conflict that has now surpassed in duration, horror, fury, and blood all previous Israeli-Palestinian confrontations. There is now a recently minted U.S. peace plan on the table, but its salience and relevance are yet to be tested.

Maybe we are hostage to pessimistic realism born of experience, having been around so many well-intentioned but failed peace plans and negotiations. But we’re wary of events and initiatives that are marketed as game-changers, inflection points, sea changes, and transformations designed to bring about peace forever—especially those that are not connected to a process for reaching agreement or implementing them.

Much about the post-Oct. 7, 2023, Middle East, two years on, thus remains depressingly, even horrifyingly, familiar. Nonetheless, there some takeaways that are new and potentially significant—ones that not just reflect current headlines but also may well shape future trend lines to come. These will constitute the choices and policies for U.S. policymakers.

Trump’s 20-point plan

After eight months of on again/off again Israel-Palestine diplomacy, the plan that U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled on Sept. 29 is a presidential plan, with Trump himself taking on the role of chairman of the “peace board” that is to oversee the process. Unlike previous efforts, from which Trump backed away when either Israel or Hamas balked at the proposal on the table, it will be near impossible for Trump to walk away this time.

The president’s challenge will be to stop viewing the conflict as a real estate deal with economic incentives, and to understand and address the parties’ existential narratives. All Palestinians want an end of the occupation. Hamas wants to destroy Israel. All Israelis want peace and security. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to destroy Hamas and Palestinian national aspirations. The Trump plan is valuable, therefore, but it is only the beginning.

Most immediately, Trump will need to accommodate the insistence by the parties to negotiate the details. These issues will not be resolved by posts and threats on Truth Social. Agreement will be hard to attain, given the total absence of trust between two parties. Thus, each side will be unlikely to take any step called for in the plan until it is assured that the other side is doing what it is supposed to do.

The plan is far-reaching in that it contains clauses that define how the war should end as well as how the hostages return, Israel withdraws, humanitarian assistance grows, and Gaza is governed after the war. It includes a commitment to pursue Palestinian independence, dependent on serious Palestinian reform. Palestinian statehood is hard for Netanyahu and his allies to swallow, but he seems to be thrilled that the plan validates the principles decided by the Israeli security cabinet. There is nothing for Hamas in the plan other than the need to swallow the bitter pill of defeat, disarmament, and removal from power.

Despite this, Hamas is likely to be clever enough to respond with a “yes, but,” listing reservations that need to be discussed and agreed. Yes, but responses have been commonplace in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks—for example, the Clinton parameters in 2000 and the Bush administration’s road map in 2003. If the parties want an agreement, the reservations can be surmounted. But when neither party really wants an agreement, reservations are a surefire strategy for never reaching agreement.

This is not only a negotiation challenge. The plan calls for certain actions within 72 hours—the release of hostages, the end of combat, the beginning of Israeli withdrawal. Can these take place simply on the basis of Trump’s fiat? Would Israel begin withdrawing before Hamas starts disarming?

Trump loves the announcement. It is likely that neither he nor his negotiators understand that the “agreement” he announced is subject to wildly different interpretations, wildly different views of the details, and yes-buts that sound positive but mask irreconcilable differences. The sad reality is that Hamas and the current Israeli government have an interest in avoiding Trump’s wrath but not in ending the war.

hrthin]

Escalation dominance

It is ironic, if nothing else, that Israel’s strike on the Hamas senior leadership in Doha, Qatar, on Sept. 9 helped set the stage for this peace plan as well a new security accord between the Trump administration and Qatar.

Indeed, that Israeli strike reflects perhaps the most enduring and significant development since Oct. 7. For the first time in its 77-year history, Israel possesses escalation dominance, a fancy way of describing its ability to control the pace, focus, and intensity of its military activities with all of its adversaries; escalate at will; and prevent its enemies from doing so.

Israel is not invulnerable, nor is it a regional hegemon able to control the decision-making of its partners or adversaries. At the same time, however, with U.S. support, Israel has crippled its adversaries and acted with freedom of maneuver, operational success, and unprecedented and extraordinary impunity. Preemption and prevention define Israel’s strategy, with its actions embedded in striking its adversaries’ territory in an attempt to influence their national security decision-making.

One look around the region tells all. Israel has destroyed Hamas as an organized military threat and now occupies three-quarters of Gaza. Hezbollah’s military capacity, its precision-guided missile capacity, and its senior leadership have been decimated. Israel’s military sits on five strategic points in south Lebanon and continues to strike Hezbollah despite a cease-fire accord. In the West Bank, Israeli forces have deployed in numbers not seen since the Second Intifada. In Syria, Israel has designated large areas southwest of Damascus as no-go zone, occupied part of the former U.N. disengagement zone, and intervened in defense of the Syrian Druze. And Israel has also repeatedly struck Iran’s nuclear and conventional sites and attacked Houthi targets in Yemen.

This exercise of power also has serious downsides and consequences. Israeli military successes have depended on U.S. military supply and active assistance. Some of these actions have challenged and undermined U.S. interests and values. It is not clear that Israel’s forward strategy has taken this reality into account.

Great powers, small tribes

The Middle East remains littered with the remains of great powers that sought to impose their wills on smaller ones. It’s quite extraordinary that outside powers—the United States, key Arab states, and the Europeans—have failed to fundamentally alter the strategies and actions of the two major combatants, Hamas and Israel

It is striking that no one has been able to influence the course of the war in Gaza—not the United States, nor Israel’s Abraham Accord partners, nor Europeans. As the key actor, the United States has resembled something of a modern-day Gulliver: burdened by its own illusions and tied up by smaller powers whose interests aren’t always aligned with Washington’s.

Many of those limitations turn on the unique nature of the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the reluctance of successive presidents to pressure Israel. Thus, Israel and other regional actors, however weakened, survive and find the ability to reconstitute themselves. Consider the staying power of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthis—beaten down but able to keep going and even increase their stature.

The way forward?

Despite the traumas of Israelis and Palestinians, the horrors of Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza have opened up opportunities elsewhere. Lebanon has been partially freed from Hezbollah’s viselike grip; the government of Ahmed al-Sharaa in Syria is demonstrating an unprecedented degree of pragmatism and negotiating directly with Israel on a security accord.

And there are opportunities in the Persian Gulf for serious regional peacemaking under the right circumstances. Still, problems abound. An agreement to constrain Iran’s nuclear program now seems out of reach, and more Israeli-Iranian conflict is likely. Managing—let alone resolving—the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains more elusive than ever.

Whether Trump has the will and skill to navigate the post Oct. 7 Middle East is highly improbable but remains to be seen. Trump is now more engaged and more exposed on Gaza than he has been on any other conflict that he has sought to resolve. He doesn’t seem to have the patience to negotiate in the Middle East souk. He has little leverage over Hamas. And he may not have the political will to come down hard on Netanyahu if the Israelis balk in carrying out their part of the plan.

Even if Trump magically morphed into a Henry Kissinger or a James Baker, he would need willing and able regional partners. In Israel and among Palestinians, they are now nowhere to be found. The shadow of Oct. 7 looms large and deadly. Trump as peacemaker? Hard to imagine, but perhaps the only pathway to a region where hope and promise can replace a dark future for Israelis and Palestinians.