“Who knows what’s going to happen,” pondered President Trump as he addressed the gaggle of reporters flying with him on board Air Force One, Sunday evening.
They were en route to Israel to embrace the liberated hostages, receive thunderous appreciation from the Knesset, and then on to Egypt to sign formally the historic Gaza peace accords. At this epic moment, President Trump is triumphant, the most beloved and influential person on the planet.
He has declared the war between Israel and Hamas over, and so it is, for now. If things go as planned, agreements have been signed, ending this brutal chapter in the centuries-long Unholy War. Denied his Nobel Peace Prize due to a filing deadline, President Trump will nevertheless be embraced as no one else has been by allies, royalty, presidents, generals, and prime ministers throughout Europe and the Muslim world.
Refusing even to acknowledge Trump’s achievement in Gaza, many anti-Trumpers believe he only got involved in the peace process because he wants to build condos on the Gaza seafront.
He has been grossly underestimated. Parlaying America’s economic and military might with his own force of personality, Trump has humbled Prime Minister Netanyahu, shaken awake the slumbering Arab world, and harnessed the power of the American presidency to make peace happen.
He has made clear to the Sunni-led Arabs, Gulf States, Turkey and Pakistan that he is a trustworthy partner who can temper Israel’s assertiveness. Trump has scolded the Israeli leader for going too far in waging pre-emptive war and proven himself one of his history’s great peacemakers. Trump reads the room like no world leader since Roosevelt.
Having survived the massacre, rape and kidnappings of Oct. 7, 2023, Israel is celebrating the expected release of the last 48 hostages, living and dead. The Palestinians in Gaza are celebrating the expected release of hundreds of their own prisoners held in Israeli jails. They have survived months of intense bombardment that rendered Gaza an apocalyptic wasteland.
Underlying the Hamas attack on Israel was a profound miscalculation; the mistaken belief that Israel could not long sustain a retaliatory war, sure to result in severe civilian casualties.
With Hamas vanquished, Israel’s refusal to compromise and insistence on pursuing the war in Gaza was arguably the best of Israel’s bad choices.
It will not soon be forgotten or forgiven. Hamas has been reduced to shards, diminished if not defeated. It is likely that most of what is left of its surviving leadership will opt to leave Gaza to pursue from a distance their impossible ambition of Israel’s destruction. Israeli will pursue them, just as it hunted down the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre.
For now, the Netanyahu government has survived. Tens of thousands of Palestinians did not. Whatever the final number of dead and injured, the civilian suffering has been profound, incalculable. With so many dead and injured, how is Gaza to rebuild?
The damage to Israel’s national reputation will also take years to heal. Antisemitism has crawled out from under the rock it’s been hiding under. Synagogues have been attacked. Jews have been murdered for their religion; one even set ablaze.
Hamas invaded Israel to destroy it and create a Palestinian State from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
In part thanks to the United States, Hamas failed. There has been suffering enough for all sides. Trump gets that. Israel is not going anywhere. Neither are the Palestinians. His 20-point Peace Plan may be an impossible dream, but that’s what they said in 1948.
