Amr Hamzawy
As Western and international leaders take stock of the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas that was signed in Egypt on October 9, many have raised doubts about the deal’s phased structure. According to the 20-point plan announced by U.S. President Donald Trump, the initial stage that is now unfolding calls only for a partial or limited Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas. The deeper issues, including questions over the postwar governance of Gaza and the stabilization force that will provide security in the territory, have been relegated to subsequent phases. To critics, the fact that these crucial issues have not been fully addressed at the outset suggests that the plan is bound to fail.
But the Trump plan’s gradualism is hardly novel in the context of crisis diplomacy in the Middle East. On the contrary, a phased approach, addressing the challenges of both immediate de-escalation and long-term transitional management, has for decades been the most viable strategy to ending conflicts in the region. Indeed, for more than 75 years, many of the most crucial peace agreements, including the armistice that ended the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979, have depended on such a structure. In both of these cases, preliminary agreements were followed by implementation phases, which required international or regional sponsorship to mobilize the political and technical tools needed to ensure compliance.
A close study of these historical examples shows that under the right conditions, phased agreements can not only withstand difficult challenges but also provide the incremental trust building and opportunities for negotiation that are necessary for more durable arrangements to take hold. The real challenge for the Trump plan, then, is not its phased structure. Rather, the overriding question is whether Washington and its international and regional partners can ensure that the necessary mechanisms, incentives, and penalties are in place to allow the subsequent steps the plan calls for to succeed.
LIMITED AIMS, GREATER DURABILITY
No comments:
Post a Comment