On Thursday, Israel and Hamas announced that they had agreed to a ceasefire—the first phase of a twenty-point peace plan that includes the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
On this week’s episode of Carnegie Connects, Aaron David Miller spoke with Natan Sachs, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, and Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, about the stakes of the peace deal and obstacles to implementation . Excerpts from their conversation, which have been edited for clarity, are below. Watch the full discussion here.
Aaron David Miller: To what degree has Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal travails and obsession with remaining in power shaped his decisionmaking in Gaza?
Natan Sachs: That’s a great question, and it’s difficult to answer for two reasons.
One, it very much depends on your worldview. So if you’re not a fan of Netanyahu—and I plead guilty to that—then you tend to see him more as motivated by bad reasons. If you are a fan of him, you dismiss it offhand. Two, we’re trying to go into the head of one person, and it’s harder than many of us—myself included—sometimes pretend.
I do have a slightly contrarian view here. I think that Netanyahu suffers from a very severe malady that has warped his decisionmaking—the malady of someone who’s been in power for a very, very long time and is genuinely sure that he has no replacement. Netanyahu truly believes he has no suitable replacement. And as we know, the graveyard is full of people who have no suitable replacements. This has led to the political crisis that we’ve seen for years on end. In the context of this war, I think even more so.
After the trauma of October 7, he was in very low standing—he was seen as responsible. He saw his life, his legacy—the legacy of the Abraham Accords and standing up to the world and preventing a Palestinian state and all that—suddenly crumbling in the face of this disaster. And in his view and those of quite a few Israelis, if you look at the past two years, he has redeemed himself to a large degree because of the dramatic degradation of Hezbollah, the strikes against Iran, and the semi-destruction of Hamas.
Aaron David Miller: Who is making decisions for Hamas?
Khalil Shikaki: Hamas is a very well-organized group with tremendous discipline, and decisionmaking is extremely complicated. A lot of people are involved in their decisions, given the geographic separation of where leaders live and that the negotiators are not on the ground.
There are leaders that we know. Some of them have been killed. Nonetheless, Khalil al-Hayya remains the most involved since the start, because he was the leader of Hamas in Gaza, and he has been the principal negotiator since October 7. So by far he is the top decisionmaker in this process.
However, he has essentially two groups of colleagues he needs to coordinate with. One is the Shura Council for Hamas, because Hamas decided after [former leader] Yahya Sinwar [was assassinated] that there will be no one single leader to make decisions. Instead, the council itself will select a group that will make decisions. Some of them are in Lebanon, Türkiye, Qatar, and perhaps elsewhere. The second is the people on the ground. As far as we know, the leader of the Gaza forces, Azad al-Haddad, is still alive and the person in charge. Haddad would have to get the approval from the other commanders in Gaza, and given conditions in Gaza, obviously this makes it extremely difficult for them to make decisions and ultimately make recommendations to the body that the Shura Council have selected and Khalil al-Hayya.
I’m just going to add another complication: The military wing of Hamas has always been much closer to external actors such as Iran than Qatar or Egypt. But the political side has deferred to Arab actors, including Egypt and Qatar. So this means contradictory regional impulses that also complicate the picture for Hamas.
Aaron David Miller: The Qataris and the Turks have been telling Hamas that the hostages only allow Netanyahu to continue the war and if [Hamas] gives them up, [its] chances of surviving politically are better. Is [Hamas] willing to trust that Netanyahu will not continue the war?
Khalil Shikaki: I think Hamas’ calculations remain essentially the same. The major change might be in the assurances of the Arab and Muslim countries that this would be the end of the war, and that [U.S. President Donald] Trump will ensure that this is the case.
When Sinwar launched the attack on October 7, his calculations regarding taking hostages were very, very different than the calculations today. In 2023, what Hamas wanted was [a ministate] in Gaza and a legitimacy for it to be able to [govern], which a release of Palestinian prisoners at that time would have given Hamas.
Today, Hamas is worried about its mere existence. It is not about a project of having a ministate. And its mere existence means that these hostages remain an asset for them, and therefore the negotiations will be tough. Not as tough as the case was in the previous negotiations—we clearly see the willingness to release the hostages as part of the Trump plan, even though there is no agreement yet on most other issues in this plan. I think the main reason right now is the involvement of the region.
Aaron David Miller: What the two of you are laying out is not terribly encouraging, frankly, with respect to implementation of this plan. It may well be that the mutual objectives of Netanyahu and the remaining Hamas leaders are simply mutually irreconcilable when it comes to the full implementation of the president’s twenty-point plan. What do each of you think about partial implementation, without moving toward the truly difficult issues?
Natan Sachs: Well, Aaron, you have a little more experience in Middle East diplomacy than anyone around.
One of the arts of diplomacy, since even before your time, was constructive ambiguity. [UN Security Council Resolution] 242, the famous land for peace formula, was written to be understood differently by different parties: Israel has to withdraw “from the territories” in French or “from territories” in English. Everyone can go home and say that international law is on their side.
Here we have the reverse. Trump has a very clear language and extremely expansive plans. There will be international bodies, and Tony Blair will be the viceroy, and Trump will be chairman of the board. And decommissioning—Hamas will do what the IRA had to do, but has never, ever agreed to, as far as I understand. So Trump has been very clear about what he wants.
And the parties have done what Netanyahu usually does, which is give a very complex “yes, but . . . ” In other words: Yes, we completely accept what you say, absolutely. By the way, here are the ways we completely contradict what you said.
Hamas, for example, accepted the deal and praised Trump himself, importantly, and also then said that it would be a Palestinian body, not an international body. It would demand a Palestinian consensus, which of course gives Hamas a veto, on contradicting item thirteen in the twenty-point plan, et cetera.
Israel says yes, although Netanyahu was extremely reluctant. He was forced to apologize of sorts [to Qatar] while in the White House itself with Trump by him on the phone, a very dramatic move, and to agree in a sense to flip his goal. Instead of destroying Hamas, the goal would be releasing the hostages. In theory, the plan gives him both.
But Netanyahu—and, I would say, 99 percent of Israelis—don’t believe that Hamas will really give up all its weapons. . . . They could give up some. They’ve lost much of them in the war. But to give up their personal arms, that seems unlikely. And, therefore, full Israeli withdrawal is very unlikely, and an international body would only be partial. But if you could have some kind of technocratic government, which the Palestinian factions have already discussed and agreed upon in the past, and which the international bodies and everyone might find is the lesser of all evils for Israel, it might actually allow for quite a bit to happen. And from a human perspective, I think that would be extremely important, because it will allow reconstruction to start. It would allow Israel to start dealing with its own issues and grieving. I wonder if that actually is out of the question. I’m not sure it is.
Aaron David Miller: There is no precedent—none, zero—for an American president lecturing an Israeli prime minister to accept a plan. It has never happened. And it demonstrates a president who I think is untethered from the emotional and political constraints that in the past have prevented American presidents from bringing extraordinary pressure on an Israeli prime minister. Trump seems to be free from that. This is not Joe Biden. It’s not Bill Clinton, who wrote in his memoirs that he loved [Yitzhak] Rabin as he loved no man. It’s an extraordinary thing, but how far he can take it is another matter.
Khalil Shikaki: Before I say negative things about [the Trump plan], let me say that in principle it really looks good on paper, for the most part. But it is not sufficient, and it is almost certainly not a roadmap for a sustainable outcome.
The reason I say it is good is because of the actors. First, because the U.S. president is personally behind it. He himself is the man who delivered it, and most importantly, he says he personally will deliver Netanyahu. You’ve just said he’s not going to be able to do that, Aaron. And on the ground, Gazans are saying, “Didn’t Trump say Israel should stop the bombardment? The bombardment is continuing.” So “stopping the bombardment” was translated by Netanyahu to mean stop the army advance on Gaza but keep the bombardments going.
The second actor is the region. The region is by far the most innovative element in all of this, and the meeting with all of these leaders made a difference. They are basically telling him that they will deliver Hamas: So if you deliver Netanyahu, we are capable of delivering Hamas to you.
On substance, there are a lot of positive elements. It’s not just about a ceasefire. This is about transitional arrangements, and it’s about Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for a two-state solution. This is about Middle East peace.
But there are plenty of problems. There is no Palestinian partner yet on all of this. This plan was submitted to Hamas, not to the Palestinians, but you expect a Palestinian partner at the end of the day that is not a Hamas—but you’re not negotiating with that partner right now. And that partner is not going to be, according to the plan, granted legitimacy of any kind, let alone through negotiations. That makes this a nonstarter from the beginning. There has to be Palestinian consent on who will govern them, even in this technical committee, and that doesn’t seem to be part of this plan.
There are a lot of other problems related to all of this, including the commitment of the Arab countries to be involved in not just in the economic issues of reconstruction, but also on the security matter. The plan allows the simultaneous presence in the same territory of the Gaza Strip of four military forces: Hamas, the Palestinian police, the stabilization force, and the Israeli army. That is certainly not sustainable. I doubt very much that any country would be willing to take that kind of risk of sending its forces.
Then there is the larger question of this so-called Board of Peace. This is not just a board to raise funds for reconstruction. The Palestinian Technocratic Committee reports to this body, as does the stabilization force. All of them ultimately report to Trump [as board chairman]. But in the eyes of the Palestinians, Trump and Netanyahu are one. So how is this going to end the war? It’s a nonstarter.
Even if Hamas says yes and then reneges on the implementation, would these counties still deploy this stabilization force—to do what? To fight Hamas? Who’s going to want to deploy forces to fight Hamas? The only thing that I can think of would be to provide humanitarian support, but anything else would be crazy.
Use the player below to listen to the whole conversation, or watch it on YouTube.
