Gaza: Trump’s show, not Israel’s show
Yossi Alpher — January 26, 2026
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. At last week’s Davos conclave, we witnessed a group of billionaires from Trump’s Board of Peace declaring the beginning of phase II of Trump’s Gaza peace plan in grandiose fashion. Realistic?
A. I was reminded of an appearance I made at a ‘Davos in the Middle East’ conference a few years ago at a Dead Sea resort in Jordan. I was on a panel with senior ministers and commentators from the region and beyond, discussing some very problematic aspects of the region’s many conflicts and crises, in Davos-style soundbites.
My turn to talk would come last. As I listened to those speaking before me, I was struck by what seemed to be a bizarre and totally unrealistic note of artificial optimism. I resolved to set things straight with a dose of realism: grim facts, grim assessments. No one reacted; no one commented. My panel’s session ended and the conference room emptied out.
As we walked out, a prominent Israeli industrialist took me aside. “Yossi,” he said. “Don’t spoil the show. The idea at these Davos conferences is to radiate optimism that nourishes an investment climate. It’s all about business. No room for realism.”
Q. Indeed, at Davos Jared Kushner openly exhorted the “doubters” and fault-finders to back off and give the Trump Gaza scheme a chance. Why not?
A. Why not indeed, especially when Messrs. Kushner and Witkoff appear to have made clear that the Netanyahu government no longer has much of a say in the nature and timing of US-orchestrated events unfolding in Gaza.
Thus, the Rafah Crossing between the Strip and Egyptian Sinai will be opened despite Israel’s protests that the remains of Sergeant Ran Gvili have not yet been located and returned by Hamas. After all, there are still Israeli soldiers defined as ‘missing in action’ since 1948, and the US has thousands of MIAs from its wars. That Gvili’s fate is a big issue because of Israel’s preoccupation, since October 7, 2023, with death and its rituals, does not interest the Trump team.
Then too, senior officials from Turkey and Qatar can be involved and integrated into the process despite Netanyahu’s objections that their countries are pro-Hamas. After all, Netanyahu’s much-vaunted boasts of obliterating Hamas entirely have been shown to be empty of content. Hamas is alive and kicking. One way or another, its bureaucratic infrastructure in the Strip will now be integrated into the new administration there, whether Israel likes it or not. Hence, Turkey and Qatar are relevant.
As a senior US official told an Israeli journalist last week, “this is our show, not Israel’s show.” For the first time since 1967, neither Israel nor the Palestinians are calling the shots in Gaza. Washington is.
Q. And will Hamas be disarmed--a basic Israeli and American demand?
A. If that happens within the framework of the Trump peace plan, the task will be carried out by the Gaza Stabilization Force called for in Trump’s original 20-point document. Yet so far, there are no countries known to have volunteered for the force. This is almost certainly the most important test awaiting all of Trump’s ambitious new-formed institutions: Board of Peace, Gaza Executive Board, and National Committee for the Administration of Gaza.
That test has not commenced, nor is there a known timetable for carrying out the disarmament. Meanwhile, there is every indication that Hamas, armed and surviving, will be a major political and probably security force in the Gaza entity that emerges as Trump builds his riviera.
Q. The IDF says two months for Hamas disarmament…
A. Or what? The IDF will again take charge and confront Hamas with a renewed Israeli offensive? That means the end--or at least a temporary pause of unknown duration--of the Gaza peace plan until the IDF does the job of defeating Hamas. The very job that it was unable to complete in the course of two years of brutal combat in the Strip. It also means heavy US-Israel friction.
Q. So will this be yet another of Trump’s imagined peacemaking schemes, like Russia-Ukraine and Thailand-Cambodia?
A. Kushner wants us to give the Trump Plan a chance. We in Israel have little choice in the matter. Besides, Israel under Netanyahu has failed completely to create a framework for peace in Gaza. The Trump team has a lot of experience in development schemes and is currently the only game in town.
So good luck to them.
Q. Shouldn’t Trump’s Gaza scheme be looked at as part and parcel not only of his global peace schemes but as another dimension of his global power play: Venezuela, Greenland, etc.?
A. Imagine Gaza in 2035 with the high-rises and beaches sketched out by Kushner and a population with per capita income of $12,000 as he predicts. Perhaps it is time for cynics like me to step aside. Perhaps sober doubters like France, Sweden, and Norway should reconsider their refusal to serve on the much-ballyhooed Board of Peace.
My greatest concern is that the Netanyahu government, having been maneuvered by Trump into signing on to a peace plan that supersedes and negates Israel’s own ill-conceived peace schemes of recent years, is once again failing to look seriously at strategic consequences. Remember ‘economic peace?’ Palestinian resettlement in Indonesia and Somaliland? Israeli settlements in the Strip? “Total victory?” Government by clans? Fly-by-night Evangelical aid organizations? All that happened, and flopped, within the space of two years.
What if the IDF is now obliged to continue to withdraw but Hamas is not fully disarmed? What if pro-Hamas Turkish troops are introduced into the Strip, where they aid and abet Hamas? But meanwhile, US, Turkish, Egyptian, and even Israeli developers are encouraged to start building a Gazan ‘riviera’ along the Mediterranean, and American and other funds flow freely into Gaza. This sort of mixed picture of Gaza in the years ahead is more than likely. Where, if anywhere, does Israel draw the line regarding its strategic security, and who will listen to it?
Q. Apropos Somaliland, is the Netanyahu government’s bizarre scheme for resettlement of Gazans there the only rationale for Israel being the only country in the world to recognize the breakaway Somali province?
A. Apparently not. Nor is ‘transfer’ of Gazans currently being discussed in any context. Rather, Israel appears to be working with the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia to establish a strategic outpost near Bab al-Mandeb at the southern end of the Red Sea. Houthi missile attacks from northern Yemen are probably the main contributing factor, against a geostrategic backdrop of growing fragmentation in Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
Still, given the shallow nature of the Netanyahu government, it is hard to say how much strategic thinking went into the Somaliland decision, nor to what extent, if at all, antiquated, racist, and bankrupt schemes to transfer Palestinians there played a role.
Q. Bottom line?
A. Israel has never had a viable strategy for the Gaza Strip and its Palestinian inhabitants. Trump claims to, at least at the economic and developmental level. But if and when the Trump scheme goes up in smoke, as do so many schemes for Gaza, it is Palestinians and Israelis who will suffer the consequences.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu appears hard put to cash in on any of the Israeli security community’s strategic achievements of the past year: in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iran, and certainly in Gaza.
Finally, is Trump aware that renewed conflict with Iran could easily again bring in Yemen’s Houthis and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, all attacking Israel and thereby effectively putting America’s Gaza project on ice? Rebuilding Gaza and attacking Iran don’t go together.
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer.
