Can Trump reshape the situation in Gaza?

A few days after Donald Trump expressed his satisfaction with the recent agreement on Gaza, Israel made it clear that the deal fell short of its ambitions. The agreement had become possible after Hamas announced, for the first time, its willingness to hand over its weapons to the Palestinian committee established under the Board of Peace created by Trump. Rather than responding to the optimism expressed by all parties, Israel reacted with further military escalation, destruction, and the killing of civilians. This is not the first time Israel has placed Washington in an awkward position. This article raises a central question: can Washington compel Israel to implement the current agreement on Gaza? The agreement is significant because it moves the implementation of Trump’s twenty-point peace plan into its second phase. By analysing the conditions that Israel considers insufficient to meet its objectives, the article examines both the extent to which Israel may be able to obstruct the implementation of the agreement and the limits of its ability to do so. It also compares Trump’s ability to secure Israel’s compliance with the terms of the agreements concerning Lebanon and Iran in order to assess whether he can likewise ensure Israel’s implementation of the current agreement on Gaza.

The lack of consensus between the United States and Israel over the details and arrangements of the Gaza agreement has made its implementation fragile. The divergence is evident in the details of these arrangements: Washington’s initial statements were consistent with what Hamas had announced, but were at odds with Israel’s position. This may explain why both Washington and the Board of Peace later retreated on certain aspects of those arrangements in order to bring them more closely into line with the Israeli position. In the aftermath of the announcement of the latest agreement, US statements emphasised that Hamas and the other Palestinian factions would hand over their heavy and medium weapons to the Palestinian committee, while tunnels and military infrastructure would be destroyed simultaneously with the beginning of Israel’s withdrawal towards the Yellow Line. Israel had advanced well beyond that line after the ceasefire entered into force, even though it was intended to mark the point at which the war had ended and the limit beyond which Israeli forces were not expected to proceed during the implementation of the first phase of the agreement. By contrast, official Israeli statements indicated that Israel had no intention of withdrawing until the Gaza Strip had been completely disarmed, including of light weapons, with all weapons either destroyed or removed from the Strip.

Israel has also objected to the participation of Qatar and Turkey in the independent committee established by Trump to verify the parties’ implementation of the agreement. These differences appear to be fundamental and go to the heart of the agreement’s implementation. Statements by the Board of Peace and the US administration have since begun to move towards satisfying Israel, an approach rejected by the independent verification committee, of which Egypt is also a member.

As the current agreement is not the first to be brokered by Washington in the region, the Lebanese experience provides an important indicator for understanding the future of the Gaza agreement and the limits of the American role as its guarantor vis-a-vis Israel’s implementation. An examination of Washington’s conduct in Lebanon, and the extent of the pressure it exerted on Israel to implement the ceasefire agreement and withdraw from Lebanon under the US-mediated deal, offers little encouragement for Gaza. At the end of 2024, Lebanon and Israel reached an agreement on a ceasefire, an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied southern Lebanese territories, and the deployment of the Lebanese Army in place of Hezbollah’s forces south of the Litani River. The United States continued to exert pressure on both the Lebanese government and Hezbollah to implement the agreement. Hezbollah accepted the ceasefire arrangements, significantly reduced its presence in the south following the agreement, and sharply curtailed its cross-border attacks. The United Nations described Hezbollah’s violations of the ceasefire as very limited, while recording thousands of Israeli air and ground violations during the same post-agreement period. The Lebanese government likewise fulfilled its obligations under the agreement. The Lebanese Army deployed across wide areas of the south and dismantled hundreds of positions that Hezbollah had vacated. The government subsequently introduced a plan to place all weapons under the authority of the Lebanese state, following Washington’s demand for a timetable for the collection of weapons held by armed groups. Washington linked this process to Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory, a position that generated widespread criticism. The United States described the Lebanese government’s timetable for disarmament as unprecedented and urged Israel to reduce its air strikes in order to give the Lebanese government the opportunity to implement the plan.

At the same time, however, Washington did not press Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon. Israel continues to maintain control over five new strategic positions established after the war. Nor did Washington pressure Israel to halt its continuing attacks on Lebanon throughout the two years following the signing of the agreement. It is noteworthy, however, that Washington did intervene to prevent an anticipated Israeli attack on Beirut in June of this year, while it was engaged in negotiations and reaching understandings with Iran, as such an attack could have jeopardised those developments. This suggests that the United States intervenes decisively to restrain Israeli actions whenever they threaten its own regional objectives and interests. An examination of the American role in guaranteeing the implementation of the agreement between Lebanon and Israel makes it clear that the United States seeks to preserve the agreement, sustain an ongoing negotiating process, and maintain an end to the war in the broad sense, without deterring Israel from continuing its attacks. This has been the pattern in both Lebanon and Gaza since their respective agreements with Israel. Washington has also tended to direct its pressure towards the other party rather than Israel itself, as demonstrated by its pressure on the Lebanese government and Hezbollah. In both cases, it is evident that advancing Israeli objectives remains Washington’s foremost priority, regardless of the aspirations and interests of the other parties. The other parties therefore need to recognise the nature of this American role, so that they can continue to balance their own national interests and objectives with the necessity of maintaining American engagement in order to limit, as far as possible, the catastrophic consequences of Israeli actions for the region and its states.

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The agreement between Tehran and Washington likewise provides an important indicator of prospective American behaviour regarding the implementation of the current agreement in Gaza. In June of last year, when the ceasefire between Iran and Israel entered into force, Israel accused Iran of violating it and prepared for a large-scale response. At the time, however, Trump’s pressure on Netanyahu contained the escalation. The ceasefire remained in effect for several months, during which Washington and Tehran engaged in negotiations. Yet, in February of this year, while those negotiations were still under way, Washington surprised Tehran by joining Israel in its attack against Iran. After more than two months of war, Tehran and Washington reached another ceasefire in April of this year through Pakistani mediation. The arrangement provided for the suspension of American attacks on Iran in exchange for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and also extended to Lebanon. Although all parties violated the ceasefire during that period, Trump renewed it while successive rounds of negotiations continued. On June 8, a new exchange of escalation between Israel and Tehran came close to drawing Washington back into the war, but Trump again contained the situation by exerting pressure on Netanyahu. In the middle of that month, an agreement reached between Washington and Tehran collapsed as a result of violations by both Israel and the United States, as I demonstrated in a previous article.

An analysis of American conduct towards Iran during Trump’s current presidency suggests that Washington’s pursuit of negotiations, ceasefires, or even the confinement of the conflict to the Strait of Hormuz has not been intended to bring the war to a definitive end or to halt the fighting altogether. Rather, it has served either to prepare for the next military strike or to exert pressure on Iran through a strategy of gradual attrition over time in order to secure the concessions sought by Washington. This may offer an important indication for both Lebanon and Gaza. Reaching a fragile agreement with Israel, while Israeli violations continue under conditions falling short of full-scale war while the United States remains silent in the face of those violations, bears a striking resemblance to Washington’s approach towards Iran. Washington has, on more than one occasion, entered into negotiations with Iran. Yet during the course of those negotiations it took the decision to attack Iran, reflecting a preference for a strategy of pressure to impose outcomes over genuinely peaceful approaches. The Trump presidency may therefore not represent the most favourable period for achieving comprehensive agreements through peaceful means with the countries of the region, particularly while it coincides with the tenure of Netanyahu’s right-wing government. Nevertheless, the ability of the region’s states to manage their crises with both Israel and the United States during the current period remains essential to avoiding a slide into a broader confrontation.

The differences between Trump and Netanyahu over Gaza have so far appeared to be tactical. They become strategic, however, when they touch the stability that Washington seeks to preserve in the region in order to safeguard its interests, and the risk that Israel’s unrestricted use of force could undermine that stability.

Under such circumstances, Washington may be compelled to rein in Israel, particularly as it still possesses the same instruments it has used in the past, enabling it to force Israel to withdraw from the Sinai in the 1970s, to participate in the Madrid peace negotiations at the beginning of the following decade, and in other comparable instances. Stability in the Gulf region remains a strategic objective for Washington, one that is directly linked to its economic interests and its relations with its Gulf allies. By contrast, Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, or southern Lebanon does not in itself appear to pose a significant dilemma for Trump. Rather, Washington’s overriding objective is to safeguard Israel’s security, which Israel itself directly associates with eliminating any military force operating in the region, thereby enabling it to impose its control and its will over Palestine and Lebanon. Consequently, these objectives in Gaza and Lebanon remain tactical from the American perspective, although they may become strategic if they become linked to the broader regional issues that are of greater importance and interest to Washington.

At present, the mediators should avoid allowing the Gazen negotiating process to collapse because of Israel’s objections to implementing the terms of the agreement, and should not be swayed by statements issued by the Board of Peace or the US administration that appear sympathetic to Israel’s position.

They should also continue to uphold the substance and detailed provisions of the agreement in a manner that minimizes prejudice to Palestinian rights. This is, in fact, the course currently being pursued by Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, as reflected in their latest joint statement responding to Israel’s position on the agreement. It may also be necessary for the mediators to coordinate a phased, simultaneous implementation protocol that clearly sets out the respective obligations of Hamas and Israel in order to avoid the problem of mutual mistrust between the parties. It is equally important that the areas from which Israel withdraws be transferred to the international force provided for in Trump’s plan until the end of the transitional period, since parallel coordination between the mediators, the Palestinian committee, the international force and Washington constitutes an important means of ensuring the agreement’s success. At this stage, Washington’s role assumes particular importance through its responsibility to ensure that Israel implements the agreement’s terms and conditions. It is here that the real test for Washington emerges, as does the real test for the Palestinians and the Lebanese: not to confine the conflict with Israel to an isolated bilateral framework detached from its wider Palestinian and regional environment.

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