The Gaza Peace Plan's Uncertain Terms and Prospects

The project director on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group, an independent non-profit focused on preventing and resolving deadly conflict,  Max Rodenbeck discusses the Crisis Group's recent report on the Gaza Peace Plan advanced by President Trump. He describes how Trump's 20-point plan developed, its unavoidable ambiguity, the many questions about  the ceasefire's terms and prospects. He notes sustained engagement by other countries, and above all by the United States, is a must if  the plan is to advance beyond Phase I. If it doesn't, Palestinians in Gaza will be left in an indefinite humanitarian nightmare, unable to reconstruct their homes and their lives.

Transcript

Margot Patterson: My guest today is Max Rodenbeck, project director on Israel Palestine for the International Crisis Group, an independent organization founded in 1995 to prevent wars and shape policies that will build a more peaceful world. Its staff monitor some 70 conflicts in the world today. Before joining the Crisis Group in February, Max RodinBeck worked for 25 years as a foreign correspondent for The Economist Magazine, serving 15 years of that time as its Middle East Bureau chief. Our interview took place Oct. 23. 

MP: Max Rodenbeck, welcome to Understanding Israel Palestine

Rodenbeck: Thanks, Margot. Great to be here.

MP: The International Crisis Group has issued two reports this October, one on the West Bank, and then another a few days ago on October 21st on Gaza titled Gaza Ceasefire is vital but only a start. I hope to ask you about both reports, but let's start with the latter. It mentions multiple concerns about the long-term viability of this ceasefire, which even in the short term looks exceedingly fragile. While the Israeli hostages still alive have been returned to Israel, and almost 2000 Palestinian detainees released, close to 100 Palestinians have been killed, 230 wounded since the truth went into effect October 10th. Could you clarify the situation on the ground? While both parties say they are committed to the truth, casualties almost all in the Palestinian side continue to occur, why are we still seeing so many casualties? Is Israel allowing the full amount of humanitarian aid into Gaza, stipulated in the agreement, about 600 trucks a day. 

Rodenbeck: Well, I would say that the adherence to the terms of the ceasefire didn't start off great. I mean, the, the first week of the ceasefire we're now into week twoand going actually beyond week two. But the first week was rough. Aid was increasing, but did not get up to the level required by the ceasefire terms, which is 600 trucks a day, as you've mentioned. At the same time, the Israelis withdrew their troops from almost half of Gaza, but to a line which was undefined. There were markers only on the map, but not on the ground to show where the Israelis had withdrawn to and Palestinians were trying to return to their houses and were getting shot dead by the Israelis as they crossed this invisible line.

So that's what was happening in the first week. As we get into the second week, things have improved. It's been become more clear where this line is. The Israelis even started to mark that line so Palestinians can no longer be unaware that it's there and then get killed.

And it seems the Israelis are also allowing in more aid. It is still not up to optimal levels, but it is improving. So with time, things have improved with the ceasefire. There is more food avail available. There is more medicine available. The actual famine conditions that existed before are slowly easing. So there's definitely an improvement. And there was a spike on one day with quite a lot of people killed. Of those more than 80 people that you mentioned killed, a lot of them were killed on one particular day when Israel accused Hamas of breaking the ceasefire. There's a lot of controversy about what exactly happened that day. That was the 19th of October. And it seems that it's quite possible that two Israeli soldiers who were killed that morning were actually killed by the explosion of an Israeli bomb that had been left there and had not exploded yet. Unexploded ordinance.. The Israelis retaliated massively, killed almost 45 people on the Palestinian side. But then it turns out that it may have all been a mistake. So things seem to be improving. And they're also improving, Margot, because there's pressure being kept up by the Trump administration with more and more visits from US officials to make sure that the terms of the ceasefire are being observed.

MP: The Crisis Group report discusses the many daunting challenges getting beyond the first phase of the truth. Before we talk about some of those challenges, could you briefly take us through some of the key points in the 20 point plan President Trump laid out? 

Rodenbeck: It starts off with two phases. The first phase was very simple and we've already passed through that. So it specified the return of the Israeli hostages, the return of Palestinian captives held by Israel, withdrawal of the Israeli army to a certain point, and that has proceeded okay, but that's the easy part,

The trouble begins with all the next parts, which is 18 more of the 20 points. There's supposed to be the creation of an international stabilization force, which is supposed to provide security for parts of Gaza that the Israeli army has moved out of. It's not clear what the composition of that force is. It's not clear which countries are going to send people to participate. It's not clear what the mandate of that force is going to be. So that's one thing. Then there's a whole set of things to do with the future governance of Gaza. There's supposed to be the creation of a kind of Palestinian technocratic committee that's supposed to run Gaza. Those are supposed to be people that are vetted and have nothing to do with Hamas. There's been some progress on that, but it's still under negotiation. 

And then above all that, there's supposed to be what Trump has called the Board of Peace, which is a kind of international monitoring group that's supposed to be chaired by President Trump himself, but it's not clear exactly what their role is or who the other members of it are, aside from Donald Trump. So that's all to be negotiated. 

And there are various other parts to do with reconstruction and importantly to do with the disarming of Hamas. This is obviously a very key point for the Israelis who want to to make sure that there's no future threat to Israel, but how does Hamas lay down its arms? What's the mechanism by which this happens and how is it monitored? That's all kind of still to be decided. 

Those are some of the kind of open questions. And then beyond that, where does this all carry us to? Does it carry us to a wider peace negotiations? Does it carry us to  the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The actual 20 point  peace document is very, very vague about that. So there's a lot of ambivalence in the document, and that's deliberate because you need it to be ambivalent to bring all these different parties together, but that ambivalence has to be worked through  item by item now, and it's gonna take a long time. 

MP: The Crisis Group report describes the truce as a first phase of an ambiguous, ambitious, and controversial longer term plan. One which re risks stalling out before any progress toward the next stage is made unless outside actors place pressure upon both Israel and Hamas. It notes as you have that the ambiguity of the plan is by necessity, that requiring clarity could have collapsed negotiation, and that the deal defers important questions about when Israeli troops will fully withdraw, how and whether Hamas will be disarmed, who will govern and secure Gaza.

Could you talk about how the ambiguity of that plan is both an obstacle to implementation, but also perhaps something of an opportunity? 

Rodenbeck: It is deliberately ambiguous. You have to step back a little bit to where we were in mid-September when Israel was going full ahead with its assault on, on Gaza City, which is the, the biggest city in the Gaza Strip and casualties were rising very quickly.

It looked like the Gaza war might have a really pretty horrendous bloody finale. And that in that bloody finale, Israeli hostages would not be returned. Many of them might have been killed.  So there was this moment of great rising danger that the world sort of recognized. And also at the time the Israeli government made the decision to bomb, Qatari capital of Doha. An attempt to assassinate the very Hamas officials with whom Israel was supposed to be negotiating. So that's where we were a month ago. Moving from that into a kind of peace deal that people could agree to involved lining up all kinds of ducks, all of them pulling in different directions.

So it was by necessity going to have to be fairly ambiguous because otherwise it would've been shot down. And you have on the Israeli side, a coalition government, which pulls in different directions. The same is true in every  different direction You're talking about a deal that involves many, many different parts because it's not just Israelis and Palestinians, but it's the people who might fund the reconstruction of Gaza. This includes Europe, this includes Arabs. There are just many, many, many moving parts to all that.

So the ambiguity was kind of a necessity and also luring everyone into the construction of this.The ceasefire deal, this 20 point plan is kind of a cluj you know, it's, it sort of pulls together different bits and pieces and gives a payoff to all kinds of different participants so each one has a reason to, to sign up to this. And the ambiguity opens room for each side to interpret it as it wantsa and there's a kind of creativity in all of this. Even President Trump, when Hamas responded to his plan positively, but with a kind of half response — yes, we will do a hostage exchange deal, that's fine. Ceasefire is great and fine, but all the other stuff you're talking about, well, we're not really equipped to be the sole person to.negotiate all the other points.There's a reasonable grounds to say to say that for Hamas, because it's just one faction out of many factions. It happens to be the biggest and meanest, but there are other people that have to be brought onto on board and there's a lot of disunity in the Palestinian camp. So who speaks for the Palestinians? And that's what Hamas was saying  — so we agreed to those points, but the other stuff still has to be negotiated.

And Trump decided to respond to this kind of half answer, which is ambiguous, as a yes. He decided to just take that as a yes. Okay. Hama is on board and we'll move forward. And then, you know, Trump brought in all kinds of world leaders and made a big performance, which just by the scale of international media, show and noise and getting leaders to sign up kind of obliged everyone to stick to this, including Netanyahu, whose government in Israel, a lot of parts of it have strong reservations about this deal. So, moving forward,  the ambiguity then has to be sorted through piece by piece. As I mentioned, this is where it gets really difficult, and this is where it's important that, you know, all the outside players have to remain engaged, and have to keep up the pressure.

And this is also where things become a little bit dangerous because there's a possibility in all this that because of the difficulty of stacking up all these different parts and getting everyone to agree at each different stage, that this kind of interim stage of no war, no peace, not a hot war, but not resolved, could just end up being a kind of semi-permanent situation, which would leave 2 million people in Gaza suspended  in limbo, without being able to really reconstruct their lives and leave Israel with only sort of partial security. There's a possibility, and this is what we really warn about in this report, that this kind of interim phase could just linger and become not temporary, but permanent.

Q: Yes, the report warns of an indefinite humanitarian disaster in Gaza if the plan doesn't advance beyond phase one, and it says to avoid that sustained outside pressure on Israel and Hamas by Arab and European countries and above all by the United States is necessary. We have not seen any sustained pressure on Israel by the United States or Europe  or really many countries at all, have we? If we look at the past and the absence of any serious international pressure on Israel is to stop building Jewish settlements in the West Bank or to lift its 17 year blockade of the Gaza Strip, there’s been very little. How hopeful are you that sustained pressure will be applied? Is there anything about this time period or the situation that leads you to be more optimistic that the future will be different from the past or, or really even during the past two years when European countries in the United States have basically stuck with Israel?

Margot, I would completely agree with your characterization of what's gone on so far. Actually there are a lot of countries that have a lot of leverage. We've seen what can be done with just a little bit of leverage. President Trump, love or hate him, on this particular issue actually decided to use a little leverage, and the result was he stopped the war in its tracks. It will require a similar level of engagement to keep things moving. The historical precedents are not good, as you say. The willingness of outside countries to sustain pressure over time is pretty disappointing. There’s  no reason to believe that it's going to be very different. However, it is interesting to see with that the Trump administration at least in the first couple of weeks, they have  dispatched  official after official. The vice-president was in Israel and now the secretary of state is in Israel. There's even a name for this. They're calling it “BB-sitting,” — BB is Benjamin Netanyahu's nickname — just to keep Israel on board with this because there are so many pressures in Israel to relaunch the war and, and as they would say, say quote unquote, “finish the job.”

So it will require a lot of pressure. The precedents are not very good on this issue. However, I mean, two years of war in Gaza did concentrate minds. For example, if you take Europeans, just in the last few months leading up to the ceasefire, Europe was beginning to move to sanction Israel pretty heavily. This is over the objection of a couple of European countries, primarily Germany, which has its own particular sort of guilt-ridden history with Israel and sees things in it in a slightly different way than other countries. But Europe was beginning to move on this. This is one of the reasons why it was opportune for Israel to accept this ceasefire because they could feel the world tilting against Israel’s interest. The same is true of other Arab countries in the region, which have been very disunited. They do have leverage against Israel. They don't just have the leverage of saying we will  reward Israel with normalization. They all do have the capacity to punish Israel if they want. I don't mean militarily, but they can close their airspace to Israeli aircraft. They can make life more difficult for the Israelis, and the Arabs really have not done very much to assert their power with Israel. it's only in the last couple of months that you've seen the will to actually do something. Part of that was instigated by Israel itself when Israel foolishly bombed Qatar, a very wealthy Gulf state, and all the other wealthy Gulf states thought, 'oh my God, we could be next.' They kind of got together to put pressure on Israel. So there are ways to pressure Israel moving forward that may be sustained. I think the hope of the Netanyahu government is that they can in future, sort of deal with all these different countries one at a time,and find ways to coax and, you know, reduce the pressure.

MP: Could you talk about the reluctance of European countries to apply sanctions to Israel? We've seen them subject Russia to one round of sanctions after another. Why are European countries, even those that have recently recognize Palestine as a state, why are most of them continuing to trade with Israel and not applying some form of sanctions to Israel for its violations of international law during the last two years. 

Rodenbeck: There are many layers to this. One layer of it is that a lot of European countries just want to not cause problems with the United States. The United States has made it very clear that it looks askance at anyone who puts pressure on Israel.So that's one thing. Also European countries have very, very, very different attitudes towards Israel. here's hardly any unanimity at all. There are countries like Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, Norway, which have taken a very critical attitude to Israel from the very beginning of this crisis back in October, 2023.

Then there are other European countries such as Hungary, Germany. Austria that have been extremely supportive of the Netanyahu government through thick and thin,The tide in Europe has moved slowly over time. Tpublic opinion tide again, up until up to the last few months.

Just, just in the last few months, the tide was really turning even in Germany, which has been the staunchest, uh, uh, country, supporting Israel next to the United States. The latest opinion polls in Germany in August showed that very large percentages of the German population believed that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, and that there should be no support for Israel. The German government doesn't reflect that at all, but it's a matter of time before that catches up to the German government. So there's been both a shift in Europe and a division in Europe. It's been left to individual countries to follow their own rules with Israel. And  virtually every country in Europe has had some form of kind of, official protest against Israel.  here was no question about which way the tide was moving right up to President Trump's intervention. 

MP: Countries are understandably reluctant to put their soldiers in harm's way. Do you see much likelihood that this international stabilization force that the plan calls for will be formed? What parameters would or could be established to induce countries to send their soldiers to Gaza? 

Rodenbeck: Yeah, it's going to be difficult. This is one of the reasons why, we warn about what might happen with this peace plan, that it could all kind of drift into quicksand because, for a lot of countries, you know, obviously the United States is the one behind this treaty.It's Israel's closest ally, but the US has made it very clear it is not going to put boots on the ground in Gaza.  So the US wants to keep a command role and has already sent an advance contingent, but in some ways that's not so reassuring to other countries 'cause it looks like the US is expecting to be the country in command of this. To get other countries to sign onto this — they may not really want to be led by the United States on the ground as a military force and kind of have to do the dirty work while American officers sit in an air conditioned base far away.  So that kind of formula doesn't really work. Which formula does work is not entirely clear. What some countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia. Azerbaijan that might contribute to such a force have said is that they would prefer to do this under a United Nations mandate, to have a clear mandate from the UN Security Council that sets out what are the goals and duties of this force. Countries that might have might contribute have also said that what they absolutely do not want to do, they don't want to be in the position of fighting Hamas or fighting on Israel's behalf. They'd rather be in a position of. serving as a buffer between Israeli forces and perhaps Hamas forces  One role would be to be in a situation where Hamas agrees to disar,  that this international force could be the body to which Hamas would hand over its guns. It could be like a monitoring group. These questions are complicated and all need to be worked out. The ISF in the vision of the Trump administration it's not gonna be like another United Nations kind of peacekeeping team, but maybe it will have to become something more like that in order to get other countries to sign up to it.

MP: And why does the Trump administration not want it to be like a UN peacekeeping force?

Rodenbeck: The animosity between.the Trump camp and the UN is pretty strong. President Trump's not a friend of the United Nations, but also I think this administration wants to keep control. They would like to be able to be in a position where if there's some violation of the ceasefire or, you know, if there's some question about a violation that the United States can just point the finger and say. whoever Washington decides is at fault rather than having to hear from some kind of uncontrolled in international force that might be less willing to blame the same people that the Trump administration wants to blame.

MP: This peace plan has been described as tantamount to a surrender by Hamas. No Palestinians were involved in formulating it. The plan for governance in Gaza involving a Board of Peace headed by Donald Trump is seen as a kind of neocolonialist enterprise, which makes a vague nod to a Palestinian state taking place in some indefinite future.

One, do you think it's is tantamount to a surrender by Hamas? And then second, is there anything in this plan that provides Palestinians with any real hope of gaining a Palestinian state or securing political rights? 

Rodenbeck: In some senses, yes, it is tantamount to surrender by, by Hamas. Bu  this is a surrender that Hamas was willing to do you know. Months ago, Hamas was was willing to give up hostages and move on to another phase and has sworn that it doesn't want  be involved in government. It's been saying this for months, actually.

It should be pointed out that the, the last ceasefire, which was back in January, February, earlier this year took many, many months to negotiate and provided a path towards where we are now basically. And, Hamas had signed up to it all those months ago and was ready to keep going with that.

So, you know, there's, there's nothing new about this kind of. quote unquote surrender by Hamas. Unfortunately back in March of this year, the Israeli government and  Benjamin Netanyahu decided to just blow that all up and just restart the war. And the result was six months more war and 20,000 more people killed and no hostage is released, by the way. It's important to point out what a disaster that was. If we talk about a surrender by Hamas, yes, it's, it is to some, in some ways a surrender by Hamas. But Hamas has been willing to surrender for some time. In  terms of this being a kind of ne neocolonialist construct of imposing a board of governors on top of Gaza. This is a perfectly valid criticismThat's quite true. It's just there was nothing else on the table. There was no other outcome that seemed to lead to stoppage of the war.

In  a hard world that we live in, the outcome of this war was always going to reflect the power imbalance on the ground. You have an is Israel that's able to field an army of 600,000 people and has every single type of, of advanced weaponry fighting against a group that has maybe at maximum, absolute maximum, 30,000 guys with flip flops and Kalashnikovs, and a few little rockets.The outcome of this was always gonna be lopsided. As, for the the kind of the neocolonialist part, it's true, i involved no Palestinian contribution. Part of that, to be fair,  reflects the fact that the Palestinians are divided. They do not speak with one voice and do not have a political organization that represents  broadly all the Palestinians. That is a problem. And because of weakness, you get things imposed on you. that's what happens when you're weak. You get kicked around. it is sad but true that that's what's happening in this case. What we point out in our  briefing is that the upside to this construction of a Board of Peace chaired by Donald Trump,that rules over Gaza is that it does keep Donald Trump involved in this. He's not gonna forget about it tomorrow and let it all sink back into the mire where it was before. It may mean that Trump and the Trump administration actually continues to be involved and to make sure that Israel, over which only the US has, has real leverage, abides by  the rules and sticks to the ceasefire and keeps going down the path towards a better resolution rather than just let things fester,

MP: People are turning to Arab countries or thinking that Arab countries, particularly the Gulf countries, will finance the reconstruction of Gaza. Given all the wars that have taken place in Gaza during the last15 years, and then the most recent war, which has  basically  rendered  Gaza unlivable, do you think countries are gonna step up and reconstruct Gaza? 

Rodenbeck: If anyone's been following this war or followed previous wars in Gaza, will have noted that we talk about the Indonesian Hospital, bombed by Israel and destroyed. We talk about a sewage plant built by, Germany and bombed and destroyed. We talk about the European Hospital in Gaza, bombed and destroyed. All these were built by previous aid projects. There used to be an international airport. I've actually been there in Gaza, and that was bombed and destroyed many years ago.

All these things were built with international aid and all of them have been destroyed. And it is kind of one of the ironies that Germany did not protest the fact that it had paid about $25 million to build a large sewage plant, which Israel destroyed on the very, very last day of the war. The last few hours before the ceasefire came into place, Israeli troops torched the place. You’d think Germany would complain. No, not a word. 

So will countries again cough up the money to again rebuild all this stuff? It is a very good question. There seem to be conflicting agendas here because one of the things that we've heard very lately from Jared Kushner, for example, the president's son-in-law, who is kind of leading part of the US negotiating team, he said that there would be no reconstruction.in parts of Gaza that are controlled by Hamas. And that's a very difficult thing to say. Hamas actually is the only government left, in virtually all the populated parts of Gaza. Most of Gaza is now refugees. They all live in tent camps. Who rules over the tent camps? Hamas does.

So how do you  extract Hamas from that equation and say there will be no reconstruction for anyone living in any of these tents. While Hamas is around, the idea seems to be that only in the 53% of Gaza is still controlled by Israel will there be reconstruction.  Well, those 53% parts of Gaza are absolutely razed to the ground.There's nothing standing there. So you rebuild an entirely new city, then who's gonna fund that? That's not clear at all. Would other countries fund an Israeli-planned and overseen new Gaza controlled by the Israeli army. It’s doubtful, so something has to be worked out there. It is complicated. There are, there are plenty of countries, plenty of private individuals, uwho would be very much willing to contribute to reconstructing Gaza, but no one's gonna sink, you know, really serious money, billions and billions, until it's clear what is being reconstructed, what is being built and under what terms.

MP: My final question: What are your thoughts today on how the Middle East has evolved over the years you've been living there and following it?

Rodenbeck: It's all so much worse. That’s unfair. I mean some things are better. I actually grew up the Middle East. I grew up in Egypt largely. One thing that people often don't credit  is the extraordinary population explosion.T the population of this region has tripled in the last four, four decades, everywhere, including Israel Palestine, by the way. It’s just grown so enormously and a lot of the region is now really overcrowded. Of course there are huge areas of desert and so on, but I mean, cities have exploded in size. It's a much more urbanized kind of place and there's a kind of a connection with the land and with the past that is being lost in a lot of the Middle East. it's, it's turning into a very different region. Also the fact is that many of the underlying problems remain, they have not been resolved.

It has been an unfortunate ast few decades in many ways. It's kind of distressing in some ways to go from one, one city to the next and see one has been ruined by civil war. Another been raised to the ground, ie. Gaza, which was actually kind of a nice place. Oddly enough, people don't credit Gaza with being nice. It had great restaurants. It had rather charming people. It was a bit shambolic, but it was actually kind of a nice place. Beautiful beaches. Iit's now absolutely destroyed and a lot of stuff in, in the Middle East has been wrecked in the last few years so it's been not a great spectacle. I now live in London, away from the Middle East, partly 'cause it's been too heartbreaking.

MP: Max Rodenbeck, thank you so much for joining us today.