While President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan for the Middle East is off to a powerful start, what happens next is still a mystery. Yes, at this point it looks like there will be the trade of hostages, 48 total, including about 20 supposedly still alive, in exchange for 250 life prisoners plus 1,700 Hamas terrorists who have been captured and held in Gaza since the war began two years ago this week.
Once that occurs, the dynamics of the situation change. It has been accurately characterized as Hamas not being willing to give them up because it would leave them with no leverage to avoid their complete destruction.
While Israel has already withdrawn to lines outside the immediate war zone in Gaza, if the next stages of the peace plan fail to materialize, what will be the next moves by Israel and the U.S.?
The agreement calls for all living hostages held by Hamas to be released within 72 hours of Israel’s redeployment, which has already occurred. The bodies of the deceased hostages won’t be released that soon. Hamas has indicated it will take at least 10 days to locate the bodies, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The list of prisoners to be returned is still being finalized. The map of Israel’s withdrawal lines lacks exact locations, which are still being negotiated, but they will be withdrawing from 70% of the enclave, according to the outlet. The Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza will open after the ceasefire goes into effect to facilitate entry and exit of Palestinians and deliveries of aid.
Then come the more difficult aspects of the agreement. What happens if Hamas refuses to disarm and give up control of Gaza? What happens when Hamas gives way to its next iteration, perhaps Islamic Jihad of Gaza. Same ideology, same covenant to kill Jews and eliminate Israel, as Hamas was founded upon. Will Israel resume the war if that happens? Will the U.S. support Israel if that happens?
What is not known at this point are the side deals and guarantees that have been made to both Israel and Hamas. What is being reported Saturday by the BBC is that Hamas has brought back 7,000 of its “members” to “to reassert control over areas of Gaza recently vacated by Israeli troops.” Not an encouraging start.
Trump’s plan for a Board of Peace sounds promising. In some ways this is building upon the Abraham Accords of the first Trump term. But do we really expect Qatar, which has the distinction of being the home base of Hamas, and one of its chief funders along with Iran, to be a force for peace and stability in the region? It is also the home of Al Jazeera, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the U.S.’s largest military base in the Mideast. It’s complicated.
If the 20-point plan falters after this initial stage, meaning a ceasefire that holds and the complete exchange of prisoners for hostages, is this still a success? That remains to be seen, but again, I’m betting on Trump to pull it off, at least for the period he remains president.
What will follow is accountability in Israel. There will likely be a 9/11 type commission to understand how October 7, 2023, happened, and who was responsible. There will also likely be early elections to see if the country wants Benjamin Netanyahu to continue as its leader, a position he has held for 17 out of the last 29 years, since 1996.
Caroline Glick makes a strong case for Benjamin Netanyahu, who since the monstrous attack two years ago by the Iran-backed Hamas, has, along with his close ally, Donald Trump, transformed the region already. Hezbollah is largely destroyed in Lebanon. Syria is no longer the reliable ally to Iran following the end of the Assad regime. Iran has been significantly set back in its nuclear weapons program, and once again largely cut off from the world by Trump, after prospering greatly under the Biden administration.
I issued a detailed report on the first anniversary of the October 7 attack, which is mostly still relevant as we move past the second anniversary.
And to those Trump supporters who have come to see Israel as dragging the U.S. into its wars and conflicts, and as a protectorate rather than its vital ally in the region, and as the possible assassin of Charlie Kirk, I recommend two articles from this week. One is an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh titled “America’s Debt to Israel.” The other is by Lee Smith in Tablet, titled “Israelis Are Running Through the Halls of the Pentagon!: Decoding the right’s latest lunacy” analyzing the Tucker Carlson / Candace Owens view of Israel today, where it comes from and where it’s heading.
The other standoff Trump faces may prove more intractable: the shutdown of the federal government and making the most of it while it lasts.
The Democrats have painted themselves into a corner, with no good answers. They want to permanently extend Obamacare subsidies, even though they were meant as a COVID pandemic fix, and when the Democrats were in control of Congress and the White House, they only extended them through the end of this year. Now they insist on making them permanent.
On the issue of paying for the healthcare of illegal migrants, the Democrats and their media allies want to hide behind the law that says we don’t fund it through programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare, but we do by making emergency rooms (ERs) a default destination for everyone, legally in this country or not, covered by taxpayers. Also, people in the country as asylum seekers, people here on Temporary Protected Status, or who overstayed visas or were let in without vetting, all can access it.
But if the Democrats in the Senate cave, and it will only take five more of them beyond the three who keep voting for the continuing resolution (CR) — Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, Maine’s independent Senator Angus King and Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman — along with Republican Rand Paul voting against the CR that would keep the government open until November 21 at current spending levels. The New York Times names some of the others who might be considering voting for the CR.
But the longer it goes on, as Trump teased in a tweet about Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought and Project 2025, Trump can use this to effectuate DOGE, cutting programs he wants to as the law allows.
In fact, the layoffs have already begun.
While the overwhelming majority of Democrats, the late-night jillionaire “comedians,” and our leftist mainstream media see Trump as an authoritarian, dictator, fascist or Nazi, much of the rest of world is seeing him as a peacemaker who is also promoting prosperity and freedom across the world.
