Donald Trump scrambles to seal the deal in Gaza

After engineering what will hopefully turn out to be the end of the two-year war in Gaza, Donald Trump is about to fly from America to Israel and then Egypt in order to stamp his brand on the ceasefire. He is expected to speak at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, on October 13th and then travel to Cairo for a signing ceremony that will be attended by other world leaders.

The president’s visit may come amid scenes of euphoria in Israel and in Gaza. Yet it will also take place amid huge unease about the role of Hamas in Gaza. On October 11th Hamas gunmen sought to reassert control of parts of the strip. The central question for Mr Trump’s visit is whether a way to disarm Hamas can be found, and the nature of the governing authority and international security force that are due to take over from them.

For most Israelis the president’s flying visit will not be the main event. Under the terms of the agreement struck on October 8th in Sharm el-Sheikh, Hamas, the Islamist militant group which started the war with its atrocities, will release the remaining live hostages, of whom there are believed to be about 20. Their faces have become engraved in the Israeli psyche and seeing them come home will be a cathartic moment. Once the hostages are out of Gaza, Israel is set to release 1,950 Palestinian prisoners.

Gaza has already had a moment of joy and grief when on October 10th, shortly after midday, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) announced it had withdrawn from the populated areas in the strip. It now controls around half of the territory, in areas close to the borders. Within hours hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans streamed back to their homes from the desperate evacuation areas on the coast. Many will find rubble where their homes once stood and all face the daunting prospect of rebuilding after a war that has killed over 67,000 people and damaged approximately 80% of buildings.

Almost immediately, the ceasefire has brought the first alarming sign of how the broader peace deal might implode. Hamas fighters have emerged, armed and in uniform, to reassert themselves on the streets of Gaza city and Khan Younis. The benign explanation is that, in order to implement the first stage of the ceasefire, Hamas must be in control of parts of the cities so it can carry out the hostage release. But far from signalling magnanimous goodwill, Hamas has started settling scores, with killings and kidnappings of members of local clans which have tried to carve out their own fiefs.

Mr Trump’s plan envisages Hamas decommissioning its weapons and handing over control to a technocratic government which will manage civilian affairs, with an international peacekeeping force ensuring order. This is a pre-condition for Israel withdrawing its troops any further. Israel may also insist on dismantling Hamas’s infrastructure. On October 12th Israel Katz, the defence minister, said that demilitarisation would require destroying Hamas’s tunnels, with either the IDF or the international force doing the job. In over two years of warfare Israel has succeeded in tackling only about a third of the hundreds of kilometres of underground passages. It is hard to see how this can take place if Hamas fighters are active. Dismantling the tunnels will have to be co-ordinated with the reconstruction effort in order not to disrupt it.

So far no countries have announced they will deploy peacekeepers in Gaza. Yet there are hints of new types of co-operation. A joint American, Egyptian, Israeli and Qatari group has been tasked with identifying hostages. On October 11th, Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of America’s Central Command (CENTCOM) visited Israeli positions in Gaza, along with the IDF’s chief of staff and Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, both confidants of Mr Trump. CENTCOM manages America’s armed forces in the Middle East and has overseen co-operation between America’s allies on training, maritime enforcement against the Houthis in Yemen and shielding Israel from Iranian missiles and drones. Its forward headquarters is in Qatar, which is both an American ally and a patron of Hamas, and it has officers permanently stationed in Israel and Egypt, near Gaza’s borders. It has already set up an observers’ unit to monitor the ceasefire.

Can America galvanise an international force quickly enough, before Hamas fully re-asserts power? It is unlikely that Mr Trump will put American boots on the ground inside Gaza. And his visit to Egypt is likely to be fleeting, with the president committed to be back in America by October 14th to posthumously award Charlie Kirk, an assassinated conservative activist, the presidential medal of freedom. That is a reminder of the range of issues Mr Trump is engaged with. Getting a ceasefire in Gaza was a breathtaking display of the president’s unorthodox way of conducting diplomacy. Yet in the coming days his approach faces an even bigger test. ■