US President Donald Trump has undeniably scored a diplomatic victory by helping to mediate a ceasefire for Gaza, but the road to the lasting peace he says he wants to the Middle East is full of obstacles.
And it is back to see if the 79-year-old Trump is not exactly known for his attention to the fine writing-will use the same energy level for the long-term conflict when his victory meat in the region is over next week.
“Any agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, but especially an indirect broker between Israel and Hamas is an extraordinary performance,” said Aaron David Miller, who worked for several US administrations by both parties, told AFP.
“Trump decided to do something that no US president … of any of the parties has ever done, which is to press and press an Israeli prime minister on a question that this prime minister considered crucial to his policy,” said Miller, a senior buddy at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
But Miller, who has participated in peace talks in the Middle East over the years, warned of “the universe of complexity and details”, which still has to be hooked out with regard to the implementation of phase two of the agreement.
The Israeli army said its troops had ceased fire at. 0900 GMT Friday in the Gaza Strip in the Payment of the release of all Israeli hostages, dead and alive, in the following 72 hours, in accordance with the agreement it reached with Palestinian armed group Hamas.
Trump has said he expects to go against the Middle East on Sunday with a stop in Egypt where the negotiations took place and Israel.
Art of the deal?
Given that every US president of the last 20 years has been successful in resolving crises between Israel and the Palestinians, Trump’s performance is already remarkable.
But the Republican billionaire president has wider hopes – to revive Abraham agreements reached during his first period in the White House, where the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, offered Israeli diplomatic recognition.
Trump has brought back his son-in-law Jared Kushner, one of the architects of these agreements, back to the administration to work with special envoy Steve Witkoff about the Gaza negotiations.
Officials and foreign policy observers agree that Trump deeply used a mixture of carrot and stick – publicly and private and especially with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – to get the deal done.
He also took advantage of his strong ties with Arab and Muslim leaders, including Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
For Miller, Trump clearly played a “decisive” role.
But even though the first phase of the agreement seems to be on the field remains very undefined, including how – and if – Hamas will agree to disarm after two years of devastating conflict on the Palestinian territory after October 7, 2023 -attack on Israel.
“A ceasefire is not yet a lasting peace,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Thursday after meeting European and Arab ministers on how to help the Palestinians in the period after conflict.
Steven Cook, a senior scholarship at the Council for Foreign Relations, wrote, “Whether this leads to a cessation of the war remains an open question.”
Huge challenges
Cook says the challenge now is to implement Trump’s 20-point plan, calling for Hamas to surrender its weapons, the creation of an international stabilization force and new governing structures for Gaza, which will not include the Palestinian resistance group.
Trump insisted Thursday that “there will be disarmament” of Hamas and “withdrawals” of Israeli forces.
Then on Friday he added, “I think there is agreement on most of it, and some of the details, like everything else, will be prepared.”
But his administration will have to work hard to end the agreement and ensure that Arab countries are invested in the region to help rebuild a broken Gaza.
A team of 200 US military personnel will “oversee the” Gaza weapon whoever, senior US officials said on Thursday.
Miller said there are “operational” holes in the plan as it stands, including “no detailed planning for neither how to put down and/or demilitarize Gaza, even if you had Hamas’s consent that you do not.”
The plan also calls for the establishment of a so-called “peace board”, a transitional organ to be prescribed by Trump self-proposal, Hamas rejected on Thursday.
“Despite coming to the office eagerly to throw America’s Middle East, Trump just assumed a huge: Responsibility for a peace plan that will bear his name forever,” wrote Robert Satloff, CEO of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
