In mid-October 2025, President Trump announced that the “war is over” in the Middle East, having successfully brokered a ceasefire in Gaza after two years. This was no small achievement and one welcomed with relief by both Israelis and Palestinians. Whether it proves the “dawn of a new Middle East” as predicted by Trump, however, depends on what the United States and its regional partners do next.
As is so often the case with diplomatic breakthroughs, the reason a ceasefire took hold in Gaza in October 2025 and not beforehand had mostly to do with how the parties to the conflict assessed their interests in relation to circumstances prevailing at the time. For each party, the benefit of continuing to fight increasingly seemed outweighed by the value of stopping. Israel had already achieved much of what was possible militarily and was facing both discontent at home and increasing isolation abroad. Hamas had been decimated by Israel and faced the prospect of even fiercer attacks and dwindling stockpiles. And Gulf Arab states, which had escaped significant consequences of the previous two years of war raging around them, finally had the war come home when Iran—and then Israel—attacked Qatar attacked Qatar in quick succession.
This is not to say that President Trump’s personal intervention was unimportant; indeed, he deserves significant credit for transforming an opportunity into an achievement. He sweetened the ceasefire deal for both parties, at least cosmetically—Hamas’ desire that the ceasefire be indefinite rather than temporary was addressed, as was Israel’s hope to avoid any concrete commitment to Palestinian statehood. At the tactical level, President Trump’s decision to announce the ceasefire before the parties had actually agreed to it put further pressure on them to acquiesce—refusing to do so would have meant publicly rebutting Trump.
The same balance of interests that ended the war, however, may upset the peace. International treaties are bound together not by law, honor, or personal relations first and foremost, but by whether each party at any given moment sees it as beneficial to comply. Israel and Hamas both had an interest in ending their fighting, and the Trump plan provided both the opportunity to do so while portraying themselves as the victor. This does not mean, however, that either party—much less regional states, who have done their best to remain aloof of the conflict for two years—will find it in their interest to implement the plan’s remaining points.
To be clear, those points are extensive, including the disarmament and demobilization of Hamas, the raising of an “International Stabilization Force” and Palestinian police force, the creation of a “technocratic” committee of Palestinians to govern Gaza and the reform of the Palestinian Authority itself, and the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, among other aspirations. The Trump administration has taken to calling the plan “historic and comprehensive”; it is certainly the latter, and would be the former if it were actually implemented successfully.
The plan’s fatal flaw, however, is that it elides the problem of Hamas. Since the outbreak of the conflict in 2023, a chorus of regional and international observers have insisted that the key to resolving Israeli-Palestinian tensions once and for all is to implement—or even impose—a two-state solution. But this gets things backwards. It is not the absence of such a solution that empowers Hamas, but Hamas and its patrons which have prevented such an outcome and fatally undermined both sides’ belief in it. Hamas has two chief foes, the foremost of which is Israel; it has no interest even in the type of cold peace that has characterized Israel’s relations with Egypt, Jordan, and other neighbors. To this end, Hamas’ other foe is Palestinians themselves, or at least those that might dare to choose peace and normalcy over extremism and violence. Hamas’ strength preoccupies both Israel and reasonable Palestinians, raising the specter that any Palestinian state, even if proclaimed by international fiat, would be immediately be turned into a platform for attacks on Israel and perhaps others.
Hamas has shown no inclination to disarm or dissolve itself. Indeed, Hamas likely views the past two years of war as a success despite the awful price paid by Palestinians. The group exposed Israeli vulnerabilities, derailed Israeli-Saudi normalization, and perhaps most significantly elevated its own international political profile—it has earned multiple meetings with U.S. officials since its heinous terrorist attack—while marginalizing the Palestinian Authority and other more moderate Palestinians, which have been largely ignored by Washington and others even as they have energetically engaged Hamas. There is no reason Hamas would want to cede what it undoubtedly perceives as gains, nor any mechanism forcing it to do so.
To address this problem, the U.S., Israel, and their partners must contend with two stark realities. First, Hamas enjoys significant support from Palestinians, especially in the West Bank, many of whom see the terrorist group as preferable to the corruption and venality of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Second, there is no party—neither the Arab states nor Western militaries—prepared to take on the group and disarm or defeat it by force other than Israelis and Palestinians themselves. And the past two years have demonstrated that while Israel can cripple the group, it cannot eradicate it completely without a Palestinian force able and willing to finish the job, likely due both to Hamas’ residual strength as well as the fear of being perceived as Israel’s helper.
For now, the U.S. and Israel have responded to this problem by partitioning Gaza into “green” and “red” zones, hoping that focusing reconstruction,