Fighting flares in Gaza as Donald Trump says “The war is over”

IT TOOK donald Trump less than 12 hours on the ground to bring peace to the Middle East. At least this is how his whirlwind visit to the region on October 13th was framed. It began with his arrival in Israel as the last living hostages were being released from Gaza and ended with him on a stage in Sharm el-Sheikh, in Egypt, flanked by a choir of Arab and Western leaders, with the slogan “Peace in the Middle East” as his backdrop.

But during his short time in Israel and Egypt, the president and his counterparts failed to provide any new details on how the next stages of his 20-point plan, which are meant to guarantee the stability, security and reconstruction of the devastated strip, are to be achieved.

Perhaps the most important thing Mr Trump did during his visit was to make clear to Israelis that the war has ended. In a long and at times rambling speech to the Knesset, he told Israeli parliamentarians that it was “not only the end of a war, this is the end of the age of terror and death”.

The Israeli public hardly needed to hear that. In surveys, over 70% of Israelis support Mr Trump’s plan. But since it was agreed, hard-right members of Israel’s ruling coalition have openly expressed their hope that the ceasefire will collapse and that Israel will resume fighting with the aim of establishing a permanent Israeli presence in Gaza. Even Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, despite fully endorsing Mr Trump’s plan, has been reluctant to spell it out to his partners, repeatedly telling Israelis that “the battle isn’t over”. But Mr Trump is determined to claim this ceasefire as a personal victory and has no intention of allowing Israel to break the truce, as it did in March.

And yet even as he was celebrating his victory lap, Hamas was trying to reassert its control over Gaza. The first challenge to the truce came as Hamas handed over only nine of the 28 bodies of deceased hostages. There are fears that Israel could use this as a pretext to resume fighting. Israel Katz, the defence minister, accused Hamas of “a clear infringement” of the deal and warned it would be “answered in kind”. Mr Netanyahu is unlikely to cross the president by going back to war, but Israel could again limit the flow of aid to Gaza.

The Islamist militants are already busy trying to create a post-war reality in Gaza. Hamas has deployed thousands of armed men to patrol the streets. Details are patchy, but over the past few days they have been involved in fierce clashes with other Palestinians.

Hamas claims it wants to do two things: secure the distribution of aid in Gaza, and crack down on Israeli-backed militias, to which it has issued an ultimatum to surrender their arms. It is struggling with the former. Hundreds of lorries have entered Gaza since the ceasefire began on October 10th but are sometimes then mobbed and looted. Palestinians had hoped that the ceasefire might bring a swift end to months of hunger. But so far, many say it remains a struggle to find food.

As for the latter, Hamas has detained several people linked to the so-called Popular Forces, a militia run by a gangster named Yasser Abu Shabab. The Popular Forces have received weapons from Israel, which allowed them to operate unmolested in parts of Gaza during the war.

Yet the existence of some bona fide collaborators has given Hamas an excuse to target anyone who might oppose its rule. The Sahm (“Arrow”) unit, an internal-security force, has murdered and tortured Hamas’s critics throughout the war. It has redoubled its efforts since the ceasefire took effect. The group has circulated videos of masked gunmen shooting bound captives.

The heaviest fighting in Gaza city in recent days has been between Hamas and the Doghmush clan, an influential family that has long resented Hamas’s control of Gaza—but refused recent Israeli offers of support. Sources in Gaza say dozens of members of the clan have been killed or detained; their homes were set ablaze. Naim Bassem Naim, the son of a prominent Hamas leader, was reportedly killed in those clashes. So was Saleh al-Jafarawi, a well-known propagandist for Hamas.

Mr Trump seems unbothered. At an event at the White House on October 14th he suggested that Hamas could not yet disarm because it needs to “take out a couple of gangs that were very bad”. He did, however, go on to insist that “if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them. And it’ll happen quickly and perhaps violently.”

Palestinians are less sanguine. Anwar Rajab, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority’s security forces, said Hamas was trying to show that there could be no stability in Gaza unless it was in charge. “It is laying the foundation for civil war in the Gaza Strip,” he said on television.

All this points to the urgent need for a post-war security force, as Mr Trump’s plan envisions. Gaza is awash with guns and desperate people, and Hamas has no interest in relinquishing its own weapons. Unless the world comes up with an alternative, what lies ahead is probably more repression and chaos. ■