The Trump administration’s 21-point plan to end the Israel-Hamas war is detailed and reasonable, apart from proposing that Tony Blair become the emir of Gaza. It lays out clear steps from deconfliction — Hamas releasing the remaining Israeli hostages, the Israeli military withdrawing — to the economic, social, and ultimately political reconstruction of Gaza. The plan is accepted by America’s Sunni client states in the region (the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Egyptians, and, at least hypothetically, the Turks and Qataris) and beyond (the British and the European Union).
More importantly, the plan was worked out with the Israelis. The Israeli military now controls almost all of the Gaza Strip and is making fast headway in Hamas’s last redoubt, Gaza City. The deeper Israel gets in Gaza, the greater its need for an exit strategy. The longer the war has gone on, the greater Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s need to claim victory. The Trump plan can be reconciled with Netanyahu’s “Day After” statement of February 2024, which excluded Hamas, the United Nations organizations, and the Palestinian Authority as it currently exists from Gaza’s postwar governance. Should anyone care, the plan can even be reconciled with the meaningless French-Saudi declaration issued at the meaningless United Nations in early September.
Of course it will fail. The two-faced Qataris endorsed the plan and then started playing for time. Two-faced Turkey, Hamas’s other major Sunni patron, volunteered to “mediate” talks in Qatar with Hamas. This time-wasting and talking is intended to secure Hamas’s survival. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey has installed its Islamist protégé, Ahmed al Shara, in Damascus and is now facing off against Israel in southern Syria. Turkey can use Hamas to tie down Israel in Gaza and, coming soon to a phone screen near you, Judea and Samaria — the West Bank. Iran, the Shia godfather that, in the closest the Middle East gets to ecumenism, funded the Sunnis of Hamas, will do its best too.
“You’d have more success training a pack of raccoons to run a Chick-fil-A drive-thru than getting Islamists to leave power on their own or Arab governments to agree on lunch, let alone Palestine policy,” Hussein Aboubakr Mansour commented on X. This is unfair to raccoons. Say what you will about these rabid parasites, but they organize their campaigns of looting and destruction with military discipline. Raccoons are honest, too. They look you in the eye as they defecate on your doorstep. You can’t say that for Blair.
Hamas may yet accept the plan in theory or in part. This will mean nothing, because the plan amounts to Hamas’s surrender and destruction. Imagine yourself as an 80-IQ rapist who launched a war and lost, and you can see why it is in Hamas’s interest to literally blow up the Gaza plan by murdering Israeli civilians in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Imagine yourself as a corrupt billionaire Islamist with an American air base on your territory, and you can see why Turkey and Qatar are playing for time, so they’re not too implicated in their treachery.
Netanyahu expects this. Despite its victories, Israel is still striking its enemies in Lebanon and Syria to prevent their rearmament. It will do the same in Gaza and against the inevitable Islamist insurgency in Judea and Samaria. We have to assume that President Donald Trump expects all this, too. What is really going on here?
The war launched on Oct. 7, 2023, aimed to deal a terminal blow to Israel and to expel American influence from the region. It achieved neither. Netanyahu managed a limited diplomatic hand and a deranged domestic coalition with great skill. The Israeli military developed a new kind of urban warfare in Gaza that integrates all-encompassing tech with old-fashioned targeted power. Beyond its borders, Israel defeated all the enemies of the American-led regional order by devastating Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, decapitating Iran’s nuclear program, disrupting the Houthis, and even hitting Qatar. The Israeli stock exchange rose by 65% despite two years of war.
Israel is confirmed as the regional superpower, a mad dog that answers only to President Donald Trump. The American-led regional order is affirmed. The Palestinians got the war they always wanted, and they lost. The Gaza plan shows how the winners want it to go from here. The Gaza emirate will be an economic satellite of the Gulf monarchies. While the Israelis manage the security envelope, the high-rises will sprout along the shore, and the Saudis and the Egyptians will tussle for political influence. The American-led integration of oligarchy, tech, and energy politics will be furthered by more Abraham Accords. Blair will get even richer.
This will happen despite the failure of the current plan. Trump always gives his enemies the chance to make the right choices. He waited until Iran rebuffed special envoy Steve Witkoff’s olive branch before letting Israel off the leash. He has given Hamas time to think before he lets Israel “go and do what they have to do.” At the U.N. in September, he told eight Arab and Muslim clients that he would stop mad-dog Netanyahu from annexing Judea and Samaria. There too, Trump knows that when the Gaza plan fails, Israel will do what it has to do.
Dominic Green is a Washington Examiner columnist and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Find him on X @drdominicgreen.