Will extremists wreck the Gaza deal? Regional consensus remains fragile

The sun sets. Stillness descends on Tel Aviv. Boulevards that just hours before were clogged with traffic have now emptied. It’s the eve of Yom Kippur, Judaism’s most solemn day. A great whisper spreads across the Jewish world, as millions recite the Kol Nidre, the Aramaic declaration that begins the evening’s services. “Kol Nidre” means “all vows” — it is a pledge, at the end of one Jewish year and the beginning of the next, to forgive ourselves all the promises we have made and not kept. Almost two years on from the horrors of October 7, it speaks of what Israelis and Palestinians need most: a fresh start.

On the Day of Atonement, the ghosts of history, never far from the collective Jewish consciousness, loom especially large. 52 years ago, in October 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack as the Jewish state prayed. Two years ago, in October 2023, Hamas butchers stormed out of Gaza, slaughtering, burning and abducting civilians. Repentance, memory, tragedy: all are intertwined now, and the silence over the city feels pregnant with foreboding.

But then, out of nowhere, bicycles appear: children racing fast and free down a city hollowed out, the echo of wheels on asphalt bouncing off tower blocks and Bauhaus apartments. Adolescent squawks of delight peel through the calm. For the young, at least, the streets have become a playground.

On 30 September, deep into the 10 “Days of Awe” between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, tawdry reality intruded on Israeli life yet again, as Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled their 20-point peace plan. Whatever you think of Trump, it must be welcomed. Two years on from October 7, two things are painfully obvious. The first is that Gaza cannot remain an open-air prison or battlefield forever. Something, anything, is needed to sketch out a future beyond reprisal and rubble. The second is that, like him or not, Trump remains the only leader with the power to corral Netanyahu, raise the necessary funds, and, if needed, impose the international consensus to bring peace about.

Here in Israel, meanwhile, government and opposition figures alike are trying to understand what exactly is being proposed and whether or not it can work. What is clear is that the plan is pitched both as an ending and a beginning. It proposes the eradication of Hamas rule, the installation of a new technocratic authority in Gaza, an international stabilisation force to hold the ground, and an influx of foreign reconstruction money. Israel is to gradually withdraw its forces, albeit with security guarantees. Gaza will be demilitarised, its reconstruction contingent on continuing calm.

The promise, then, is stark. No more October 7ths, no more dawn massacres, no more rockets into southern Israel. But what the plan includes is only half the story: what it omits matters too. Nowhere, for instance, does it define Palestinian sovereignty, nor does it explain the future of the West Bank or Jerusalem. It offers no timetable, no firm enforcement, no clarity on who pays for or implements what. And who, exactly, will make up the international force envisaged to keep the peace? Israel’s Arab neighbours will do pretty much anything to avoid sending soldiers into Gaza. Egypt cannot forget its bloody entanglement in Gaza in the Fifties and Sixties; Jordan’s king fears domestic blowback from his mostly Palestinian population.

As for the Europeans, they may provide training or money, but are hardly likely to send young men to police Gaza’s winding alleyways, not to mention its maze of tunnels. And even if a force is cobbled together, can Israel really afford to relinquish meaningful control? Last time it did, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it was rewarded with barrage after barrage of Hamas rockets.

Despite these uncertainties, every Israeli knows Netanyahu had little choice but to stand with Trump, smiling tautly, as the plan was unveiled. After two years of killing, and with his own corruption trial grinding through the courts, he needs America more than ever: to provide him with weapons shipments and financial guarantees, to say nothing of diplomatic protection at the United Nations. Accepting Trump’s plan also offers him a shot at redemption at home, a chance to recast himself not as the politician who let October 7 happen, but as the statesman who delivered Israel from endless war. It is a gamble, but then Netanyahu has always been a gambler.

Netanyahu, of course, is only one player among many. First there are Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, his far-Right coalition partners, who both view the plan as a betrayal. International forces, a reformed Palestinian Authority, the mere suggestion of a Palestinian political entity — all are anathema to their messianic worldview. As one senior opposition source tells me, “they thought this war could lead to annexation, even resettling parts of Gaza. This plan destroys that dream.”

But politics is politics, even for religious fanatics. Both men, once politically ascendant, are now in trouble. Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party is polling beneath the threshold for re-entry to parliament, while Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power has seen its popularity collapse after two years of death. For both men, then, continuing to prop up Netanyahu is the only way they can stay in power. “They will rail against the plan,” my source says, “but they are unlikely to collapse the government of their dreams.”

There’s another political dimension here too. The centrists Netanyahu spent years demonising now offer his best chance of survival. Opposition leader Yair Lapid has already promised a parliamentary safety net, pledging to support the peace plan if Netanyahu’s coalition partners bolt. “We will not let this government be held hostage by extremists,” Lapid has said. It is a rare flash of consensus in a country so divided.

You can spot this consensus elsewhere too. The afternoon before Yom Kippur, in the polished anonymity of a Tel Aviv office block, I met with Yossi Cohen, the former director of Mossad. Famous for his perfect Lebanese Arabic, Cohen is the man who oversaw the theft of Iran’s nuclear archive and the assassination of the chief of its nuclear programme. He also negotiated the Abraham Accords, which saw Israel strike normalisation agreements with four Arab states.

“Trump, Netanyahu, Jared Kushner and his team, Middle Eastern leaders like Sheikh Zayed and states like Egypt are all in support of the plan,” Cohen explains. “I think this is the right thing to do. The war should only end once all the hostages are home, and what we’ll then see is not the end of conflict, but the end of this war. But I’m very much in favour of the plan.”

Beyond security elites and the rough and tumble of the Knesset, what of regular Israelis? There is clearly huge appetite for a resolution to the Gaza horrorshow, both for the sake of the hostages, and, in some quarters anyway, for that of the Palestinians. But though polls show a majority of people here support a peace plan in principle, few believe it can be carried out. For years, after all, the two-state solution had majority support in Israel. But when people were asked if they thought it was not only desirable, but actually possible, that majority vanished.

For Trump himself, the calculation is less complicated. He wants to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and believes that he alone can bring seemingly unsolvable wars to an end. It’s central to his self-image as the dealmaker who can tame chaos and conjure peace where others only managed stalemate.

In the end, though, the Israelis and their American friends are only one side of this. And if the plan is awkward for Netanyahu’s coalition, it threatens to be suicidal for Hamas. It strips away their power, negates their ideology, and installs rival Arab actors in their place. How can its leadership possibly accept it?

When I met Cohen I asked him why Hamas would voluntarily agree to extinguish itself as the power in Gaza. Few, if any, in modern times have more experience of battling Israel’s enemies than him; and no one has greater experience of negotiating with those who once implacably, ideologically, opposed the Jewish state. “Pressure,” he replied. “When international bodies come in and Hamas realises it cannot survive, and when its citizens in the streets turn against them, saying, ‘We can’t live properly under Hamas control,’ they may have no choice.”

Hamas isn’t the only Arab entity to have problems with the plan. For if Egypt and Jordan are reluctant to get embroiled in ruling the ruins of Gaza, other Middle Eastern governments will also hesitate to bankroll the Strip’s reconstruction without progress toward Palestinian sovereignty: which the plan deftly avoids. In this political climate, Saudi Arabia, courted by Washington for a grand normalisation deal with Israel, will be unwilling to attach its prestige to a scheme that sidesteps Palestinian political rights. The Emirates and Qatar might contribute, but on their own terms.

Meanwhile Israel’s Doha strike earlier in the year – an operation that Cohen defended as a necessary signal – alarmed the Gulf. “We struck Doha not to interfere with Qatar’s role in the hostage deal,” Cohen tells me, “but to send a clear message: there is nowhere in the world terrorists can be immune.” The Prime Minister later apologised to Qatar’s emir for the civilian victims of the strike, but the episode underscored just how fragile regional consensus remains.

All the same, Cohen remains bullish on expanding the Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia. “Peace is always more important than war,” he says. “As a veteran of wars, I know this. I fought all my life — as a teenager in Lebanon, later against our enemies across the world. But it is worthwhile to build peace treaties. The Saudi track should continue.” His words echo Trump’s ambition to frame the Gaza plan as part of something larger, a step toward tying Israel and Sunni Arab powers into a common bloc.

Inevitably, Iran looms in the background. Cohen describes the recent conflict with Tehran as “one very important chapter in a long saga.” He recalls Israel’s strikes on enrichment facilities and air defence systems, delivered over the course of just a few hours: “We disrupted, destroyed, dismantled,” he says. Whether that deters Tehran permanently is another matter, but his point is clear: Israel sees Gaza not in isolation but as part of a continuum of threats, and any peace plan is measured against that strategic horizon.

Amid all this geopolitics and the realpolitik and the violence, the yearning for peace endures. In the Tel Aviv neighbourhood of Jaffa, I see Arab men sitting on plastic chairs by the road, smoking and laughing. I see Israeli couples along the beach front doing the same. A political solution, however faint, must exist to bring these two sides together.

On Friday evening, Hamas’s response to the peace proposal came. The terror group has agreed in principle to release all remaining Israeli hostages — both living and dead — in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. It has also accepted the idea of transferring Gaza’s governance to technocrats. But it has not agreed to disarm; and its statement suggests it still wants a role in Gaza’s future.

While Trump responded positively, Netanyahu has not; he understandably insists he cannot accept any proposal that leaves Hamas armed. Added to which, over the weekend, several senior Hamas leaders stated that the group  would not be pushed out of Gaza and rejected absolutely any idea of an international force in the strip and a transitional administration

For now, then, a deal remains out of reach, and all sides remain stuck. The Israelis want to believe peace is possible but have been let down  too often before. Palestinians, for their part, want liberation, not endless foreign rule. Arab states want stability, but not at the cost of their legitimacy. America wants closure, but cannot guarantee it. For the moment, then, all sides remain stuck. Netanyahu’s promise of “no more October 7ths” is resonant; the reality of Hamas’s endurance, far-Right intransigence, and Arab scepticism all seem inescapable. Netanyahu clings to both power and Trump; Trump clings to his self-image of the peacemaker. Hamas clings to its guns and its desire for power. And ordinary Israelis and Palestinians cling to the hope that this time things might be different.

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