After the Deal: Hamas Plans to Beat Back All Contenders
Yossi Alpher — October 20, 2025
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. Why is the Gaza peace deal different from all previous Israel-Arab peace deals?
A. The Gaza deal is not just different. It is existentially and substantially different. And not because it is already being breached violently or because its godfathers, Messrs. Witkoff and Kushner, are coming to babysit it. That is all par for the peacemaking course between Israelis and Palestinians.
Rather, remember when Israel made peace with Egypt, then Jordan, even the PLO, and when it entered into ‘normalization’ agreements with United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco? Both government signatories to these deals, the Israeli and the Arab, were publicly and openly committed. Begin and Sadat, Rabin and King Hussein, embraced the peace. Remarkably, all these agreements are still in effect, having outlasted endless challenges, some very violent. There is logic in their stability.
In the current case, there is no peace treaty. Israel and the Palestinians--any Palestinians, whether Gaza-based Hamas or the West Bank-based PLO/PA--did not sit down face to face on the White House lawn as in 1993, sign and shake hands. The only Hamas leaders involved live far from Gaza. Neither the Netanyahu government nor the Gaza-based Hamas leadership is openly dedicated to or interested in making the Gaza deal work.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s five principles for ending the war--disarming Hamas, returning all hostages alive or dead, demilitarizing the Strip, retaining IDF control, and installing a civil government that is neither Hamas nor the PLO--remain mostly on paper, unfulfilled. Conceivably, in the end this may turn out to be little more than a hostage/prisoner exchange and humanitarian aid deal.
Q. Netanyahu agreed to end the war nevertheless, under pressure from Trump.
A. And therein lies another major difference between this and previous Israel-Arab peace deals. It was largely dictated to Netanyahu by Trump and his small team of real estate wheeler-dealers (Jared Kushner: “make deals, not lecture the world”). They understood that Netanyahu on his own volition would never agree and that the Gaza war had become a liability for both the US and its Arab friends.
Q. So with Gaza not demilitarized and Hamas still running things, who will enforce this agreement?
A. A handful of Americans, Egyptians, Qataris, Turks, conceivably non-Gazan Palestinians, and possibly Tony Blair, who would apparently be the only European. This international force is now ostensibly being recruited and will, it is hoped, be deployed to demilitarize Gaza, disarm Hamas, and instill a new government.
Note that Qatar and Turkiye represent the very same Muslim Brotherhood that backs Hamas. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who were previously mentioned as possible Arab peacemakers but who shun the Brotherhood, are missing.
And note that Hamas does not intend to give up its arms despite the commitment made on its behalf under Trump’s 20 points. As Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk stated last week, that will only happen after “a sovereign Palestinian state is established”--a pretty doubtful near-term outcome under current circumstances.
Last week Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he would allow Hamas to govern in the interim. “They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “And that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you.”
(Typically, a few hours later Trump tried to walk back that boisterous remark, which put him squarely in the Hamas camp.)
Q. Hold on. Didn’t Israel cultivate and arm those anti-Hamas Gazan gangs? Didn’t it introduce its own aid network to replace UNRWA? What happened?
A. The Hamas remnant in Gaza has proven strong enough to dismantle GHF, the so-called humanitarian foundation that Israel and American Evangelicals brought into Gaza at a huge cost in Gazan lives due to amateurish crowd-control. And we’ve already witnessed execution scenes of Israel’s anti-Hamas clan militias. Just as with the West Bank-based ‘Village Leagues’ in the 1980s and ‘90s and with the South Lebanon Army in southern Lebanon during the 1980s and ‘90s, clumsy Israeli efforts to organize ‘grassroots’ opposition to Islamist militias and to replace the United Nations have failed. In Gaza it took less than two weeks.
Yair Golan, former IDF deputy chief of staff and currently leader of the Democrats Party (embodying the former Labor and Meretz parties), summed up the absurdity of the emerging Gaza reality under Trump and Netanyahu: “A responsible country would base its security on a pact with its moderate neighbors, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Jordan--and would not consign its fate to Turkiye and Qatar that are identified with the Muslim Brotherhood and provide money, arms, and oxygen to those who slaughtered and kidnapped Israelis and sowed death.”
Egypt, to its credit, is trying to organize an alternative government to Hamas in Gaza and an alternative military force, as specified in Trump’s Twenty Points. The problem is not only that the Hamas military is not defeated and Hamas rule in Gaza has not been dismantled. The Netanyahu Kahanist-messianist coalition plainly does not wish to see Palestinian rule in Gaza--particularly moderate Palestinians backed by Egypt.
Q. Apropos, where do Israeli politics enter the picture?
A. Knesset elections loom within the year--sooner if Netanyahu cannot now find a way to bring the Haredi factions back into his coalition by passing a law whitewashing their military service obligation. As matters stand, Netanyahu risks one of two negative outcomes in Gaza, both of which threaten his election chances.
First, as currently appears likely, Hamas could hold onto power in Gaza and with regional Islamist support (Turkish and Qatari, backed by a non-discerning Trump) present Israelis with a reality of political and military failure--or at least ‘non-victory’--in Gaza. This would reinforce the current impression that Netanyahu failed there. It would cost Netanyahu votes from among his right-religious supporters but likely strengthen the Kahanist right.
Alternatively the Trump team, aided by Egypt and possibly Saudi Arabia and with Israeli cooperation, could succeed in disarming Hamas, demilitarizing Gaza, and installing a moderate ‘stabilization force’ there while undertaking a massive rebuilding effort. ‘Peacemaker’ Netanyahu would look a little better to all Israeli voters with the exception of his own right-religious followers, who oppose peace and Palestinian rule in Gaza.
The more likely outcome is some mishmash of these two scenarios. Either way Netanyahu, who signed off on Trump’s Twenty Points under duress, will have some explaining to do.
Q. Surely there is a best-case outcome for Netanyahu...
A. Yes. Elections in Israel next summer after registering peace and progress in Gaza with the help of Trump and the moderate Arab world (and Indonesia?!). A breakthrough in political relations with the Arab world spearheaded by Palestinian progress toward independence and diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.
This reflects more or less what Trump, Witkoff, and Kushner intend. The problem is that in backing Bibi to pull this off, they have picked the wrong guy.
Meanwhile, as the analyst Michael Milstein notes, “growing foreign involvement in Gaza should concern Israel as a potential challenge to its freedom of maneuver, alongside concern lest pro-Hamas elements take root there.” In other words, going from exclusive Israeli and Hamas control of Gaza to control by multiple regional and international actors could itself prove very problematic.
Q. Bottom line?
A. Trump’s Twenty Points are the least bad option currently available for Gaza. There is a real danger that Netanyahu will neglect their advantages while ignoring obvious warning signs.
Thus far, the prognosis is bad: Hamas still in Gaza, Netanyahu still running Israel, a host of international actors trying their luck in this hopeless place.
Photo credit: Jaber Jehad Badwan, CC BY-SA 4.0
