Trump's peace plan for Gaza will fail miserably.
Much of the West still clings to the fantasy that Islamists can be coaxed into moderation. But Islamists only see such gestures as weakness to be exploited.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s new 21-point plan for Gaza is doomed to collapse under its own illusions — and not because of Trump himself, his policies, or even the United States.
The deeper issue lies in much of the West’s continuing failure to understand the ideological nature of its enemy. Islamist movements like Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood — and their patrons in Qatar and the Islamic Republic of Iran — do not see the world through the same lens as the West. They reject every value the West represents: democracy, pluralism, individual rights, compromise.
To negotiate with them is to negotiate with an ideology that does not recognize legitimacy outside of its own absolutist framework.
Much of the West still clings to the fantasy that Islamist factions can be coaxed into moderation with incentives, recognition, or international oversight. But Islamists only see such gestures as weakness to be exploited.
Even if Hamas were to agree to Trump’s plan, it would be nothing more than a tactical pause. History proves this. Longtime Palestinian leader and mega-terrorist Yasser Arafat signed peace agreements with Israel during the 1990s known as “the Oslo Accords.” He smiled for the cameras and shook hands with Israeli leaders. Yet, behind the scenes, he admitted the agreement was merely a step toward ultimate victory, invoking the Islamic principle of hudna — a temporary truce used to regroup, rearm, and prepare for the next round of conflict.
Arafat even went as far as to tell a Palestinian journalist:
“I am entering Palestine through the door of Oslo, despite all my reservations, in order to return the Palestine Liberation Organization and the resistance to it, and I promise you that you will see the Jews fleeing from Palestine like mice fleeing from a sinking ship. This will not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen in your lifetime.”1
Hamas thinks the same way. According to Hamas-economy expert Eyal Ofer, the terror group knows it cannot remain in power in Gaza formally in the short term, so it will tactically agree to expert committees and foreign oversight.
“They will say, ‘We will not act against the Arab forces that will enter,’” Ofer recently explained on Israeli radio, “but Hamas always thinks in the long term. They actually plan to take over within five to ten years.”
Western policymakers who speak of Hamas “disappearing” are utterly disconnected from reality.
This is because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not really about land, borders, or liberation. It is about ideology: Islamism. This is the same ideology that has driven countless Palestinian Christians to flee their ancestral homes in Bethlehem, Gaza, and the West Bank. Islamists do not want coexistence; they want a Middle East and North Africa cleansed of non-Muslims, with Europe next in line, followed by Canada, Australia, and the United States. Their project is global.
And when we look at the role of Qatar and Iran, the picture becomes even clearer. Qatar, which gifted Trump an airplane earlier this year, is not interested in peace or the end of Hamas. Its interest is in securing a place at the post-war negotiating table, ensuring that Hamas — or something very much like it — remains the dominant power in Gaza.
Qatar’s role is even darker than many in the West admit. Its money is not only keeping Hamas alive in Gaza, but also buying silence and sympathy in the very countries that claim to oppose terrorism. Qatari cash flows into think tanks, universities, lobbying firms, and even the pockets of politicians across the West. It funds endowed chairs on “Middle East studies” that miraculously frame Islamists as misunderstood actors and Israel as the root of all problems. It bankrolls lobbyists who whisper in congressional offices about the need for “dialogue” with Hamas or “balance” in dealing with Iran.
Western leaders who should know better find themselves compromised, unwilling to speak too loudly against Doha because Qatari investments prop up their institutions or bankroll their campaigns. This is not diplomacy; it is infiltration disguised as lobbying. Qatar has mastered the art of buying respectability abroad while underwriting extremism at home.
Iran, for its part, continues to funnel resources to Islamist proxies across the region, from Hezbollah to the Houthis. To believe that either regime would act in good faith to dismantle Hamas is a delusion. Some in the West are essentially asking arsonists to run the fire department.
Nor can the Palestinian Authority be trusted to govern Gaza. Its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is 88 years old and presides over a kleptocracy so discredited that many Palestinians favor Hamas, even as the latter habitually kills, tortures, and jails its own people.
If the Palestinian Authority were parachuted into Gaza, Hamas would not vanish. Hamas has a long history of killing rival Palestinian leaders, and those it does not kill, it buys. Bribes, intimidation, and assassinations would ensure that the Palestinian Authority either collaborates with Hamas or collapses under its weight. To imagine the Palestinian Authority as a viable post-Hamas governing authority is to ignore both its weakness and Hamas’ ruthlessness.
And this is the crux of the problem: Whether it is Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, or any other faction dressed up as a governing authority, the ideology driving them remains the same. It is not a question of personalities or party names, but of an Islamist worldview that cannot coexist with the West.
Therefore, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a microcosm of the greater Islamist war against the non-Muslim world. That is why Trump’s call for a new international oversight body — the so-called “Board of Peace” — is doomed from the start. There is no peace to be had with Islamists. There is no shared humanity, no common ground, no possibility of compromise. Their worldview is one of supremacy.
The deeper tragedy is that much of the West is not only naïve in its foreign policy, it is incompetent in recognizing how Islamists are already subverting its own societies from within. The same absolutist ideology that fuels Hamas has found ways to exploit Western freedoms — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, academic freedom — turning those ideals against the very civilizations that enshrined them.
On college campuses, Islamist narratives dominate under the banner of “social justice,” silencing dissent and intimidating Jewish and pro-Israel students. In legislatures, Islamist-linked organizations lobby to whitewash extremism and insert their worldview into the policymaking process. The language of rights and inclusion is co-opted to erode the very freedoms it claims to defend.
The West congratulates itself on tolerance even as that tolerance is weaponized against it. This blindness, this inability to see that Islamism is not simply another opinion in the marketplace of ideas but an ideology that seeks to destroy the marketplace altogether, is why Western “peace plans” implode before they begin.
The only way to deal with such ideologies is to defeat them — just as the world defeated Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, and eventually the Soviet Union. Anything less is appeasement, and appeasement always ends in bloodshed.
Even the much-celebrated Abraham Accords reveal the transactional nature of Arab-Israeli relations. Arab states want Israeli technology, intelligence, and investment opportunities, but they do not embrace Israel as a neighbor in the ideological sense. If they did, they would open their societies to democracy, pluralism, and multiculturalism. They have not. The accords are business deals, not bridges between civilizations. Western diplomats may cheer them as breakthroughs, but the regimes behind them remain Islamic monarchies and autocracies.
Why, then, did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agree to Trump’s 21-point plan? The answer is pragmatic politics. Netanyahu must show the Israeli public that he is doing everything possible to pursue peace and diplomacy, the hallmarks of the Western world to which Israel belongs.
He must also outmaneuver Hamas diplomatically. By agreeing to the plan, Netanyahu can demonstrate that it is not Israel standing in the way of peace, but Hamas itself. Indeed, Hamas official Muhammad Mardawi admitted on Al Jazeera that the plan “leans toward the Israeli perspective,” making it all the less likely Hamas will formally accept it.
Netanyahu knows this, and hopefully Trump does as well. In fact, Netanyahu is likely playing a longer game: By embracing the plan publicly, he buys Israel strategic cover for the day it may need to take unilateral action. He will be able to point to the world and say: “We tried your peace plan. Hamas refused. Now we will act.”
In the end, Trump’s plan will fail for the same reason every Western-brokered plan has failed — because much of the West keeps pretending that Islamism is just another political ideology, something rational and negotiable.
It is not.
Islamism is a supremacist creed bent on domination.
Hence, this 21-point plan for Gaza is not a bold blueprint for peace; it is another “peace in our time” moment, echoing Neville Chamberlain’s infamous delusion that Hitler could be appeased. Just as Chamberlain mistook a sworn ideologue for a reasonable statesman, much of the West today mistakes Hamas and its Islamist patrons for political actors who can be bought off or moderated. Trump’s plan is not a pathway to peace, but a house of cards waiting for the first gust of reality.
The West should have learned this lesson already from the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2015, Tehran signed the much-heralded Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the so-called “Iran nuclear deal,” while secretly advancing the very program it had promised to halt. Inspectors were stonewalled, military sites remained off-limits, and intelligence later revealed that Iran never abandoned its nuclear ambitions; it merely slowed them down, lied about compliance, and pocketed billions in sanctions relief. Less than a decade later, Iran got within arm’s reach of nuclear weapons, hence the attacks a few months ago by Israel and the U.S. on Iranian nuclear infrastructure.
Until much of the West wakes up to this reality, every peace plan — whether it has two points or 21 — will be a diplomatic fantasy masquerading as policy. Just as fascism, Nazism, and communism had to be defeated rather than appeased, Islamism too must be met with clarity and resolve.
Anything else is self-deception, and self-deception in the face of such an enemy is a luxury that neither Israel nor the West can afford.
“The Oslo deception: New evidence.” JNS.
“The only way to deal with such ideologies is to defeat them — just as the world defeated Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, and eventually the Soviet Union. Anything less is appeasement, and appeasement always ends in bloodshed.” Bravo!! Thank you for speaking the truth! This “21 point plan” is what they call in law school “an agreement to agree”, which is not a binding contract. And that’s an understatement. Why is the US once again pushing Israel to compromise with homicidal maniacs? And treating Qatar as if it’s an honest broker? They are Hamas supporters. This is all beyond shameful. My heart is broken.
I agree! I believe that Netanyahu has agreed to this because he knows it will fail. We all know that these people are indoctrinated to their core. The only way to convince the weak leaders of the West is to prove that a two state solution cannot work. As for Qatar, I will never understand why Trump agreed a deal with them. I don’t think it will be long before Hamas fights back, wherever they are!