The Danger to the Gaza Cease-Fire Isn’t Where You Think

… and neither is the solution.

The thing that has stuck with me the most about being in Benghazi in the aftermath of the 9/11 US mission attacks was watching the euphoria of society after ousting that ball of bad hair Muammar Gaddafi atomize into a civil war as the factions all hustled to get a piece of the action. Power vacuums are like that.

That feeling returned last week and I wasn’t able to quite shake in the long 72 hours after the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced the cease-fire in effect and withdrew to the agreed lines. Hamas released the surviving Israeli hostages just ahead of the deadline and thousands of Palestinian prisoners were set free in the other direction. President Trump arrived in Tel Aviv for a standing ovation before heading to Egypt for Gaza peace talks where he was styled chairman of the Board of Peace.

Admittedly, I’m not an unqualified fan of Trump, but I’ve got to give the man credit here. Trump has managed, through a mix of self-importance, narrow-context vision and sheer force of will, to reframe a religious, nationalistic and violently tribal issue into one of a P. T. Barnum-like real estate developer trying to get to get buy-in from two suspicious landowners who can’t agree on their property lines. If nothing else he recast a fatalistic grievance frame as a merely greedy one. Believe it or not, that’s progress.

Whether Team Trump realized it or not, there is a precedent for this. When Jewish immigrants first started arriving en masse in the 1880s, the ruling Ottomans treated it like a real estate development. Jews fleeing the pogroms of central and eastern Europe buying up unprofitable land and using European money to develop it. Having access to foreign capital and being under European jurisdiction (long story, google “capitulations”) the local Palestinians resented the hell out of the migrants, but they’d been pretty poor and dispossessed under the Ottomans as well.

So Why Now?

For one thing, the timing: Never underestimate the pacifying effect of exhaustion. Europe’s Wars of Religion didn’t end with any real decisive victory, but by all spent parties agreeing that they’d rather not do that again. Now Hamas has been defanged, its Iranian and Arab backers are, for the moment at least, gun-shy. It may have lost its leverage by handing over the hostages, but it gained sympathy from foreign Arab powers likely to bankroll the redevelopment. And unlike Ivy League Liberal Arts majors, the Gazans themselves – with their homes in rubble and fed-up with being used as human sheilds – are turning on Hamas.

In the other side of the fence, the IDF is also exhausted. Its reservists have been away from their day jobs for hundreds of days at a stretch and its starting to show in the economy. So is the diplomatic isolation. The country has burned through its World War II European good-will - and that swing the IDF took on Doha, Qatar pissed off its number one benefactor, President trump.

What’s Next?

In Egypt, at a quaint little resort town of Sham el-Sheikh, the US, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey all signed the modestly named Trump Declaration of Enduring Peace and Prosperity while 30 or so notables looked on. One devilish detail being overlooked is that none of the actual combatants signed it.Israel had planned to, but Turkey’s President Erdogen quietly objected, so Israel quietly withdrew. The reasoning is pretty straightforward: As a non-Arab Muslim state, security will likely fall heavily on Turkey, and for domestic reasons it doesn’t want to be seen actively working with Israel. Which is fine with Israel, as it knows that its part in Gaza may be coming to an end so long as the Turks can contain the next wave of violence. More tellingly, neither Hamas nor Iran signed the declaration either, although invited.

Hamas is facing a different peace altogether. It has erased Gaza’s present and is facing a battle for its future. It’s hard to imaging a criminal organization giving up its weapons right as the locals start fighting over who gets a piece of the post-war real estate action. Nor is it likely to disband when rebranding to join to fight under a different banner is an easy option.

That’s where the nasty lessons that have nagged me since Benghazi come in. The euphoria that fills the silence when the guns stop and bellies fill up can – and will – trigger a society to do wonderful things. Eventually, though, a society has to come back down to Earth and create a workable and sustainable system, and that requires more pedestrian considerations. If the vacuum created by withdrawing fighters atomizes, it will be nearly impossible for the center to hold again. Still, it’s a promising start. A log shot maybe, but a shot nonetheless. Security is crucial, and so is aid, and investment. Sadly, where the Gaza peace will go sideways is harder to hammer out – the violence hasn’t stopped since the cease-fire, it’s just shifted. The Palestinian factions are moving in on Hamas, which has started to execute alleged collaborators.

Trump was feeling justifiably expansive in Egypt when he told the assembled “It took 3,000 years to get to this point, can you believe it? And it’s going to hold.” Well maybe. The danger isn’t coming from where the foreign policy wonks think it will. To check this, the Arab backers of a new, redeveloped and rebranded Gaza must create a clear investment and “peace dividend.” One where the Gazans are the beneficiaries of an influx of foreign capital this time. Together with a Muslim-backed security structure, perhaps the locals will have enough earthly opportunity to ignore the jihadists.

Holy wars come and go, you see, but being human is pretty eternal.