Will (20:57)
All right, that is it for the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take. I honestly don't know what to think. A few Weeks ago, when writing about the things we got right and wrong in 2025, we revisited this peace plan. I was pretty despondent. From my vantage point, this ceasefire has been in name only from October through December. Israel reportedly violated the ceasefire hundreds of times, including a single day when it killed over 100 civilians and militants. Four Israeli soldiers and some 480 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire went into effect. According to Reuters. Extremist Israeli settlers continue to escalate land grabs in the west bank, often beating or killing Palestinians before forcing them from land they've owned for generations. Meanwhile, several high profile terrorist attacks have been perpetrated against Israelis inside Israel, and the government has justified every strike in Gaza since October by claiming provocation, including vague assertions of suspicious activity. In essence, it was more of the same conflict, with a major power imbalance and continued suffering in Gaza. Perhaps worse yet, the public and global focus on the issue has faded. International stories about Australia, Iran, Venezuela, Greenland and Ukraine have supplanted a focus on Gaza, and this is the first issue we've dedicated to the conflict since October. The only encouraging note I had during that gap in coverage is what I said in our 2025 review that Hamas had returned all but one hostage, while Israel had turned over thousands of Palestinian prisoners and reduced its control of Gaza to 53%, all conditions of the first phase of the peace deal. But I did not expect this to last, given that the ceasefire looked less like a break in the cycle of violence and more like a continuation of what I called an ethnic cleansing last May. This war has challenged my Zionism and many of my previously held views about Israel. And yet it holds. Somehow. Israel and Hamas appear to be headed for phase two inside the Strip. The United nations reports that some 100% of Gaza's basic food needs are now being met for the first time since 2023. Israel is preparing to reopen Gaza's border with Egypt, allowing Gazans who fled during the war to return home and those in need of urgent medical care to be evacuated. Just four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since October 10, and all the hostages, dead or alive, are back in Israel. And in Tel Aviv's Hostages Square, the clock that was counting the days since the hostages were taken has finally been turned off, a powerful symbol that the national shift toward healing has begun now. Baruch Hashem it may also be time for Palestinians to heal in the past, I've criticized the Trump administration's unnecessary blow it up attitude toward any kind of reform. My position for a long time has been that many of our foreign policy structures are actually working pretty well, and we shouldn't totally destroy things that require some moderate changes. That was the position from which I criticized Pete Hegseth's nomination. We didn't need someone to reset our unbelievably powerful military after decades of peace on our own shores. We needed someone to reduce, bloat and usher in next generation technologies. Similarly, I've also argued that we don't need to blow up NATO, an alliance that has served our global security well for decades. We just need to ask more of our allies. Yet as I watch the Gaza peace plan unfold, I'm realizing that the Israeli Palestinian conflict could actually be a perfect use case for Trump's blow it up mindset. The Gaza Board of Peace has become an obvious transparent ruse to give Trump more power to shape and profit from the global world order and its participants alone disqualify it as a serious international power broker. At the same time, it's just the kind of wild Trump ploy that could knock down a rotting edifice and unearth some gold. Let me give you an example. When I read pro Israel writers criticizing Arab partners like Turkey getting a seat at the table, or read concerns in the Jerusalem Post about Hamas seeking a role for its police force in the new Palestinian administration of Gaza, my thought is good. The west cannot simply parachute into Gaza and determine who its leaders and what its future will be. The Palestinian people have to drive those decisions, and that means having Palestinian and Arab representation that meets this moment. Trump's fervent pro Israel approach since he entered office gives him a lot of goodwill to spend here. This is best illustrated by writers like Ben Dror Yamini under what Middle east writers are saying who call on Israelis to give Trump's Gaza vision a chance, even though that vision contains what would have been poison pills under any past US Administration. Many Israelis recognize that Trump helped get them to this point, and if he is insisting on Arab inclusion, then that's just a prerequisite they'll have to accept if they genuinely desire a lasting peace. Conversely, Palestinian and Arab writers criticize Trump's approach for giving Israel and the west too much power. Or, as Refaat Ibrahim put it, under what Middle east writers are saying peace boards and technocrats can't stem the Palestinian resistance. But that same Palestinian resistance has kept whittling down their leverage year after year after year. So is this really a bad thing? Again, I read this and I think good both sides being disgruntled about Gaza's Transitional administration is actually not a bad thing. No lasting solution would result in one side being perfectly happy. Consider just to clean up the rubble in Gaza will require an estimated three years, then another decade or more to rebuild it. Temporary governance structures will have to last at least that long, and building them will require difficult compromise from both sides. Of course, the Board of Peace's early days have not been great. For instance, Trump's plan includes openings for him to blanket Gaza with his own hotels and profit from an economic boom there. Furthermore, Jared Kushner is becoming the face of the US plan for Palestinian statehood. Kushner is Trump's son in law, a civilian without a formal role in the administration, and a lifelong friend of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The self dealing and the appointment of Kushner to oversee reconstruction is absurd on its face. And yet, at the same time, at least Kushner has a plan. He has put forward a clear vision for the day after the weapons are laid down, one that Israel and the United States never laid out. And it's not as if the vision is some hellscape of bondage and poverty and oppression. Gaza is one of the most educated places on earth, beautifully situated on the Mediterranean and abundant in natural resources. And before the war, the Palestinian people had already turned parts of the Strip into culturally rich and economically vibrant areas. It's situated in a region known for its incredible ability to build, and Trump's plan appropriately envisions a Palestinian future in that spirit. Is it really so bad to dream that future into existence? Even if you believe that the last two years have constituted a genocide, or that Trump's interest in Gaza is solely for his self dealing, or that neither Hamas nor Netanyahu can be trusted, is this really such an immoral, horrifying path forward? Is this a plan worth dismissing on its face? When this peace plan was first rolled out, I gave Trump his kudos. I argued that it was well thought out, that it had some novel elements, and that it included important carrots and sticks for both sides to get them to agree violence has continued. Yes, but they did agree a few weeks ago. I did not see a path forward despite incremental progress. And yet we're here now with phase one all but completed, however tumultuously. Maybe I'm a desperate optimist, but I can't help but feel the hope creep back in. And the Trump administration deserves credit. All my reservations aside about the violence during the ceasefire, the potential for corruption, the openings for self dealing, the tenuous nature of whatever this new administrative state is the truth is that I'm exhausted. I'm defeated by the last decade of conflict and so many failed attempts at reconciliation and so much hope dashed in moments of unrelenting hatred and killing. So I'm having a hard time mustering up resistance to a novel framework that I've always thought had some promise and that now actually seems to be working. The ball is moving in the right direction, and though it may still be quite far out, a peaceful future may finally be in sight. We'll be right back after this quick break.
