The Unlikely Future of the Gaza Peace Plan; What U.S.-Iran Talks Require for Success

Paul Pillar discusses the multiple obstacles facing Phase 2 of the Gaza Peace Plan and prospects for the U.S.-Iran talks now underway even as U.S. forces are poised to attack Iran. A 28-year veteran of the CIA, Pillar is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy institute for Responsible Statecraft and at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies. He’s the author of several books on foreign policy.  His most recent book, published in 2023, is “Beyond the Water’s Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy.”

Transcript

MP: This is Understanding Israel Palestine. I’m Margot Patterson, the producer of this week’s episode. We’ll be talking about prospects for Phase 2 of the Gaza Peace Plan and the U.S.-Iran talks now underway. But first news: 

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, has come under new attack, with the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic calling for her removal after a pro-Israel watchdog group called UN Watch circulated an edited video which purported to show that she called Israel “the common enemy of humanity.” A six-member UN committee that oversees the work of UN special rapporteurs, who are outside experts and not UN personnel, accused the European ministers of relying on fabricated information and a doctored video. The secretary-general of Amnesty International has called for the foreign ministers to issue a public apology and retract their demand for Albanese’s removal. “If only these ministers had been as loud and forceful in confronting a state committing genocide, unlawful occupation, and apartheid as they have in attacking a UN expert,” Agnes Callamard added. Albanese has been repeatedly attacked by pro Israel groups. After she released a report in July naming corporations she said were complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Trump administration placed sanctions on her usually reserved for those accused of money laundering or terrorism.

A controversial U.S. firm that provided security to aid sites in the Gaza Strip is in talks with the Trump administration’s Board of Peace about its next role in the enclave. In 2025 UG Solutions came under heavy criticism when it guarded aid sites for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, created by the United States and Israel to distribute food aid in place of the United Nations. Almost a thousand Palestinians were killed at the aid sites run by the GHF from May 27, 2025 to August 15th.

More than 80 prominent past and present participants of the Berlin film festival issued an open letter Feb. 17 criticizing the Berlin International Film Festival for its silence on Gaza. It follows an announcement by Indian novelist Arundhati Roy that she would no longer attend the Berlinale after the president of the festival’s film jury, Wim Wenders, said art should be apolitical. The renowned German film director was responding to a question by a journalist at the opening press conference who noted that the festival showed solidarity with people in Ukraine and Iran but not with Palestinians. A staunch supporter of Israel and a major supplier of arms to it, Germany is the main backer of the Berlinale and Wenders was asked whether the film jury supported a selective treatment of human rights. In their letter the 81 actors and film-makers said art and politics cannot be separated and raised concerns about draconian laws passed in Germany to restrict advocacy for Palestinian rights and stifle free speech about Israel-Palestine.

MP: My guest today is Paul Pillar, a non-resident fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible State Craft, an associate fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy and a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University. He retired in 2005 from a 28 year career in the US intelligence community, during which he served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, deputy chief of the DCI Counter-Terrorist Center and executive assistant to the director of Central Intelligence. A Vietnam War veteran and a retired officer in the US Army Reserve, he e holds degrees from Dartmouth College, Oxford University, and Princeton University. He's the author of several books, including “Terrorism and US Foreign Policy,” “Intelligence in US Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform,” and “Why America Misunderstands the World: National Experience and the Roots of Misperception.” Paul Pillar, thank you for joining us today. 

Pillar: Good to be with you. 

Q. Paul, you published an article in January shortly after the Trump administration announced January 14th it was launching Phase 2 of the Gaza Peace Plan. In that article cross-published on the Quincy Institute website and “Brave New Europe,” you were highly skeptical about the prospects for Phase 2 and pointed out that the ceasefire in Phase 1 of the Gaza Peace Plan was never fully implemented. Israel has not permitted the full amount of humanitarian aid to Gaza it pledged to and continues to limit delivery of food, medicine and other necessities. It's continued to bomb Gaza almost daily, killing at least 550 Palestinians and wounding 1300 to 1500. And since the ceasefire, Israel has been systematically demolishing buildings in Gaza in the part of the enclave it controls.

Before we get to the problems with Phase 2 that you write of, did the Trump administration make any serious effort to get Israel to comply with the ceasefire terms it had agreed to? 

Pillar: The short answer is no. I don't think they have. And with the current administration, on this issue as well as on other issues, it's always a matter of attention span and what other issues may be grabbing the attention of the White House at the moment. I think, there simply has not been the occasion for Mr. Trump to put new forms of pressure on the Netanyahu government to change the situation with regard to phase one.

Q.: Phase 2 is supposed to begin both the demilitarization of Gaza and its reconstruction. There are several parts to Phase 2. It establishes a transitional technocratic Palestinian administration headed by a civil engineer and former deputy minister in the Palestinian Authority named Ali Shaath. There's the Board of Peace headed by Donald Trump with an executive board composed among others of his Mideast envoy, Steve Whitcoff, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, other world leaders. There's an international stabilization force that is supposed to come in and maintain the piece. Could you talk about the challenges various aspects of the plan present? 

Pillar: What you've just described is a whole infrastructure, most of which just simply does not exist. We might call it vaporware if we’re talking about software. One of the most potentially encouraging things was the formation of this committee of Palestinian technocrats, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, because this, at least ostensibly, is a step in favor of Palestinians having a role in administering the Palestinian territory. It's a committee in Cairo right now. It hasn't even set foot in the Gaza Strip. It is bereft of any civil service or staff to enable them to do their jobs now, however well intentioned they may be. The Israeli government certainly has not been cooperative in this respect because they have denied access to the kinds of Palestinian civil servants who have served either with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, or with Hamas in Gaza, who could help this committee do their job.

The other thing that really is vaporware right now is the International Security Force, which was going to be an international body with different countries contributing troops that would have the main security task of maintaining security in Gaza Strip. And that does not exist at all. And we should not hold our breath in waiting for it to come into existence because there have been various governments that the US administration has approached, especially Arab governments, about participation in this force who have understandably said, “No.” They don't want to get involved in some situation where there is still active combat going on. Recall what you mentioned in the introduction about what Israel continues to do with regard to almost daily attacks and they would certainly not want to get involved in any task of trying to disarm Hamas, which was a task that Israel, with more than two years of very brutal war, was unable to do.

Without the International Security Force and the security it would provide, then there are all kinds of other things that sort of fall by the wayside, especially the Israeli agreement to move on to some of what are supposed to be Israel's obligations because what Israel is going to continue to say and what Netanyahu’s government has said all along is, as long as Hamas is not disarmed, and we don't have the kind of security that an ISF or International Security Force could provide, then we're not going anywhere, at least not away from the half of the Gaza Strip that the Israeli Defense Forces still occupy. Yes, a a grand-sounding infrastructure; most of it so far just simply does not exist. 

Q: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed his displeasure with certain parts of the plan, and other Israeli politicians have done so as well, not only Netanyahu's. coalition partners but members of the Israeli opposition. What are Israelis unhappy about? And given the close alliance between United States and Israel and the unstinting support Israel has received over the last 28 months, do you think it's a foregone conclusion Netanyahu will be able to ignore or alter the Trump plan as he sees fit?

Pillar: The fundamental consideration with regard to Israeli conduct and policy is the Israeli government adamantly opposes anything that begins to look like Palestinian self-government or self-determination. This Israeli government, not just the right wing extremists in it but the rest, are adamantly opposed to the very idea of a Palestinian state, and so they, by implication, will oppose anything that looks like the beginnings of a Palestinian state. Hence the lack of cooperation with even the committee of technocrats in Cairo that I mentioned earlier. One of the very last sentences Mr. Trump's 20-point plan was some vague language, but it did refer to the possibility of Palestinian self-determination in the future. That's something that is totally anathema to the people who are governing Israel right now. And that being the case, I would not be very optimistic about a true coming to terms here between the United States and the Netanyahu government, even with a Trump administration that overall, of course, has been extremely friendly to the Netanyahu government.

The argument that Netanyahu will be making or has already made to the White House is that look, as long as Hamas is still not disarmed, as long as we still do not have the security that an international force could provide, then we simply, for our own security reasons, cannot proceed on this particular path. They're probably already talking about a new offensive that goes beyond the daily incursions that we've talked about over the last four months but will be a an escalation back to the kind of assault that we saw in the previous two years. I'm very pessimistic on that score, 

Q: What is Israel's objections to the inclusion of Turkey’s foreign minister and an official from Qatar being on the Board of Peace executive committee? 

Pillar: That has to do with the relationships between Turkey and Qatar with Hamas. Turkey has had relatively cordial relations with Hamas and with Palestinian and Arab Islamists in general. And Qatar, was the exile home of many Hamas political leaders. As you recall, Israel went so far as to launch an armed attack in the Qatar capital of Doha, which was ostensibly aimed at at Palestinian officials, though also killed some Qatari nationals.

Q: Do you think this is a serious plan on the part of the U.S. or is it a kind of fantastical performance concocted because the Trump administration felt it had to do something about the bloodletting in Gaza, even if only for show?

Pillar: We can say about this what we would say about many foreign policy issues with regard to Donald Trump and his administration, I think he would like to have a real accomplishment, some real agreement that he could point to that was at least a modest improvement toward peace and security in this part of the world. I think that's genuine. But I don't think he himself knows just what that's going to look like or whether it's going to materialize at all.

With regard to Palestine, with regard to Iran, with regard to a lot of other issues, at the end of the day he would like to be able to point to some kind of accomplishment, if not diplomatic than military, where he can say, this is what we've done to put these bad guys out of commission or to come closer to peace. I think where there's a shortfall here is looking ahead far enough into the future to say if there's a peace agreement that's been claimed. Mr. Trump has, of course, claimed to have made peace agreements in several different conflicts. Has it really resolved the issues in a way that there's going to be any kind of lasting piece or is this just another ceasefire that's going to be violated again in the future? Here I think we get back to that fundamental issue: Will there or will there not be Palestinian self-determination? And as long as the US administration does not push Israel into any different position on that issue, we're not going to have lasting peace, even though Mr. Trump may have, something in mind that reflects his 20-point plan, where he can say, yes, we've made an achievement. He already did that, of course back in October when the supposed ceasefire went into effect. But as we've seen, that certainly has not brought lasting peace. 

MP: If you’re just tuning in, this is Understanding Israel Palestine. I’ve been talking about Phase 2 of President Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan with Paul Pillar, a U.S. intelligence officer for 28 years, now a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies. He’s the author of several books on foreign policy. His most recent is “Beyond the Water’s Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy. ”

Q: The Trump Peace Plan stipulates that Gaza is to be demilitarized and Hamas disarmed. In your article, you point out that Hamas never agreed to that. What it agreed to was a full ceasefire, the return of all Israeli hostages in exchange for the release of a specified number of Palestinian prisoners, the end of the siege of Gaza, and the establishment of a technocratic Palestinian administration to begin reconstruction and to rule Gaza in place of Hamas. You mentioned Hamas has agreed to bury its weapons as part of a long-term truce, but says it will only surrender them to a genuine Palestinian government. Israel is insistent that Hamas be disarmed. How do you see this playing out? 

Pillar: Most recently we've gotten press reports of thinking in the U.S. administration of something that falls short of complete Hamas disarmament. What the White House reportedly is talking about is that Hamas would decommission some of its weapons —  the heavier sort that could be used against Israel — but would allow it to keep some small arms needed for basically policing the territory. I don't think that's going to fly with the Netanyahu government. I think they will continue to insist on complete disarmament of Hamas. As long as that does not take place, and we do not see that as in the offing, then that will be simply one of the main bases for possible Israeli resumption of full-scale assault on the Gaza Strip. 

Q: Israel has amazing powers of surveillance. How could Hamas bury its weapons and have Israel not know where they're buried? 

Pillar: Look, we’ve got the experience of over two years of unrestricted Israeli warfare trying to root out every part of the military infrastructure of Hamas —the weapons, the tunnels, the people. And of course they've done a lot in terms of killing some of the commanders and finding some of the tunnels and putting out of commission some of the weapons, but even after two years of really brutal and difficult fighting, they still haven't managed to completely disarm them. Yes, Israel has wonderful surveillance and intelligence capabilities. They've demonstrated that repeatedly in various places. But even the best intelligence in the world is not necessarily going to find everything that an organization like Hamas, which is highly conscious of its operational security, can do to keep things hidden. As a former intelligence officer, this does not surprise me at all. 

Q: Let me ask you about Iran and the negotiations going on between the Trump administration and Iran. Those negotiations were triggered by President Trump's threat to launch military strikes against Iran. Initially, he said, because of concerns about Iran pursuing a nuclear weapon. Then later out of purported concern over the protestors in Iran. And the Iranian government's treatment of them. The rationale for airstrikes changes, but not the belligerence, which Israel and some of the same neoconservatives who championed the US War on Iraq in 2003 have urged Trump to. Given that the United States has upped its demands, not only with respect to Iran's nuclear program, but also conventional weapons as well, is there much chance that these negotiations with Iran will be fruitful? Is there a coherent US policy when it comes to Iran? 

Pillar There is not a coherent policy as indicated by the, shifting rationales which would underlie any new military attack against Iran. The administration is going to have to back off from its public demands if it expects to have any new agreement with Iran at all. There are two main things. One, on the issue of uranium enrichment, it has been proven in history going back to the experiences under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, that as long as you demand zero enrichment, despite their privileges as a party of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they're simply not going to sign any kind of deal like that. And it was backing off from the no-enrichment demand that finally led to an effective agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was concluded in 2015.

The other big issue is this one about ballistic missiles. To demand that Iran unilaterally restrict the number or capability of its missiles — no other country in the region is going to be subject to any kind of restrictions along the same line — is simply a non-starter for the Iranian regime. And it's not just the Islamic Republic. It would be whoever is in control in Tehran would see that missile force as an essential deterrent to try to deter further attacks against Iran by others in the region. And of course, the main other is Israel, but it could be somebody else as well. Countries that have not only missile forces, but manned air forces that could attack Iran. The only way that Iran has really to respond to that is through deterrence and the threat of retaliation. So that's another non-starter.

As to the prospects for the Trump administration backing down from any of those things, I don't know. I think Mr. Trump himself would not be able to predict today whether  there's going to be another round of fighting or not. I think he wants to have some sort of accomplishment, either diplomatic, or if not that, a military attack that he can claim was a success. He claimed the attack back in June was. If there was some flexibility on the U.S. side, there is a real chance for a new agreement focused initially on the nuclear question. Something that would be basically an updating of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 agreement that Trump reneged on in 2018. But from Trump's point of view, it would have to have some attribute where Trump could claim that this went beyond the JCPOA, so he could say he got a better deal than Obama. What that something is, I'm not sure. It could be just about anything. Some added feature with regard to nuclear restrictions or inspections. Something like that. But it is not going to be something like a whole scale trimming down of the ballistic missile force of Iran. That simply would be a non-starter for Tehran. 

Q: In 2016, Donald Trump ran on a platform of no more stupid wars. Do you think a second attack on Iran would be a stupid war for the United States?

Pillar: It would not only be a stupid war, but just like the first attack last June it would be an act of aggression contrary to international law, contrary to the United Nations Charter. It would make the United States along with Israel in this case a rogue state of sorts for conducting a war of aggression. The same kind of wars that somebody like Saddam Hussein conducted more than once. I think that's the essential starting point. But in the narrower sense whether it's stupid in terms of accomplishing other U.S. objectives, I think it would be because you have to ask yourself exactly what would it accomplish? With regard to the nuclear issue there was nothing that would be more designed to strengthen voices inside the regime in Tehran that say Iran needs to develop a nuclear weapon than a foreign attack. The argument would be, this is exactly the sort of thing we need a better deterrent for. And so whatever voices in Tehran are arguing in favor of going nuclear, their voices would be strengthened. With regard to the the internal political situation and the brutal crackdown on the protests that began late last year, you have to ask what would a foreign attack do to help those people, the people of Iran? It's hard to think of any way it would. To the contrary. It would tend to distract attention from the domestic issues toward the nationalist issue of whether Iran is being attacked by a foreign power. Yes it would be stupid, but it would also be immoral and illegal in terms of it it being an unjustified act of aggression.

Q: Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the White House today, February 11th, his sixth visit since President Trump's second term began a little more than a year ago. They're going to be discussing the Trump administration's negotiations with Iran. What do you expect will come out of this?

Pillar: The objectives of the Israeli government under Netanyahu and U.S. interests, even the objectives of the Trump administration, insofar as they may diverge from what I would consider U.S.interest, are simply not the same. For the Israeli government, Iran has been the ultimate bete noir, the evil force on whom all ills in the Middle East can be blamed, and from Israel's point of view are blamed. Every time something comes up by way of criticism of what the Israelis are doing in the Palestinian territories or how destabilizing that might be, the automatic Israeli response is, but Iran is the real problem in the Middle East, and that's what we really ought to talk about.

I think it would be just fine from the Netanyahu government's point of view to have chaos and weakness in Iran. It would weaken a potential rival to Israel for regional influence. It would strengthen the Israeli argument that this really is the main source of instability in the Middle East. Some kind of attack that, say, precipitated collapse of the current Iranian regime with nothing stable replacing it would be just fine with Israel. It's certainly not fine for the United States, I don't think it's fine for the Trump administration.

Mr. Trump and his administration would want to see a more positive accomplishment than that. It would be a huge feather in Mr. Trump's cap if you did have regime change in Iran that led to something that looked like a more liberal democratic regime. The emergence of a stable, liberal democratic regime in Iran is one of the last things that Netanyahu's government would want to see. I think you'll hear the usual Israeli, arguments against any kind of diplomacy with Iran, any kind of weakening of the isolation of Iran. But the Trump administration is not going to just fold to that. They will continue to explore an agreement, even though they have not yet made the sorts of changes in their position that they would need to make in order to make an agreement possible.

Q: Since the first ceasefire in Gaza in January of 2025, Israel has been busy taking over greater parts of the West Bank, displacing Palestinians and dismantling roadblocks to annexation. On February 8th, the security cabinet lifted restrictions on land purchases in the West Bank by Jewish settlers and put areas of the West Bank administered by the Palestinian authority under Israeli agencies, flouting the Oslo Accords and international law. This is another step towards eroding the distinction between Israel and the West Bank. Another step towards annexation. Trump has said no to Israeli annexation of the West Bank, but do you expect there'll be any real pushback from the Trump administration?And isn't annexation just a formality at this point anyway? 

Pillar: Your last point is the most relevant one. I don't expect the Israeli government to take the formal declared step of annexation because we've had de facto annexation taking place already with the kind of moves that you just mentioned with regard to property purchases and so on. If they made the formal declaration, this would simply make it harder for Israeli defenders and spokesmen to ward off international criticism about how this would solidify an apartheid state. As long as they haven't annexed it in terms of formal declarations, then all the the fictions that have existed now for several decades — that this is land in dispute, Israel has not defined its formal borders, so on and so forth. That would simply continue. And as far as the Trump administration's posture, they seem to be relatively comfortable with that. I don't think the Trump administration has to worry too much about a formal declaration by Israel of annexation because I don't think the Israeli government sees that in their interest. They'll just continue with the de facto version of annexation. 

Q: Looking at what Israel is doing both in the West Bank and Gaza, what is its end game and what are the long-term consequences of that for Israelis and Palestinians?

Pillar: It's the vision of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir of a Greater Israel that includes all the West Bank. Judah and Samaria, as they call it. It means entrenching the apartheid system with regard to the Palestinians that remain, although ways will be found, as we've seen with Gaza, to expel or deport as many of those Palestinians as the Israelis can manage to deport or expel. The issue will continue to fester and Israel will continue to live by the sword indefinitely. And the Palestinian nation will continue to suffer in the way that they have, especially, ever since the 1967 war. It I wish I could find a more optimistic basis for some other future, but that seems to be where we're going. 

Q. Last question: About the Epstein Files: Drop Site News has examined his ties to Israel and its reporter, Murtaza Hussain, notes that Epstein didn't seem to be someone who served any particular institution, but really was above that. Insofar as he had ties to Mossad, he wasn't taking orders from Mossad but seemed to be telling Mossad what to do. When you hear about how he operated as a kind of networker and fixer, a man who knew everyone and had a finger in a dizzying number of pies, was that something that surprised you or were you already aware of a transnational elite making decisions seemingly independent of any formal ties to government?

Pillar: Someone doing that kind of high level networking and having cultured entrees into the world of people who sometimes occupy powerful positions would be a very high interest to any foreign intelligence service which is the reasons why some of the reports about Epstein's relations with the Mossad, I think are entirely credible. Now this doesn't mean he was a paid, formally enrolled agent of Mossad, but I would be very surprised if Mossad did not consider him a very important person of interest that they were able to exploit in ways to get information and possibly be an agent of influence with powerful people in the United States.

MP: Paul Pillar, thank you so much for talking to us today. 

Pillar: It’s been a pleasure, Margot. 

MP: That was Paul Pillar, a 28 -year veteran of the CIA and a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His most recent book is “Beyond the Water’s Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy. ”

You’ve been listening to Understanding Israel Palestine. If you missed a portion of the conversation, you can check out our podcast or go to our program page on the KKFI website at www.kkfi.org. There you’ll find a six-year archive of past programs.