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 the American president’s whirlwind visit to the region on October 13th was framed. It began with his arrival in the morning in Israel just as the last group of living hostages was being released from their two years of captivity in Gaza and ended with him standing on a stage in Sharm el-Sheikh, a coastal resort in Egypt, flanked by a choir of Arab and Western leaders, with the slogan “Peace in the Middle East” as his backdrop.

World leaders cooled their heels in an anteroom for hours while they waited for Mr Trump to arrive. When he did, the summit felt perfunctory: he took photos, signed the ceasefire agreement and delivered a speech. Then he asked the grandees to stick around for “five minutes” of private conversation before he left for the airport. It hardly seemed like a forum to work out the unresolved details of Mr Trump’s post-war plan. And 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 make it clear to Israelis that the war has indeed ended. He repeatedly told reporters on his way to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, that “the war is over.” He continued to make this point in a long and sometimes rambling speech to the Knesset, telling 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 ending the war along the lines of Mr Trump’s plan. As the president landed in their country, there were scenes of rapturous joy, both from the families of the hostages emerging from captivity, and from thousands of Israelis in the streets. But since Mr Trump’s peace plan was agreed, hard-right members of Israel’s ruling coalition have openly expressed their hope the ceasefire will collapse and that Israel will resume the fighting with the aim of finally destroying Hamas and 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” and that Israel still faced “major security challenges”.

Mr Trump is determined to claim this ceasefire as a personal victory and has no intention of allowing the Netanyahu government to break the ceasefire as it did back in March. In the Knesset the American president lavished praise on Mr Netanyahu, even suggesting that Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, sitting beside him should pardon the prime minister for the corruption charges he is facing in court. But there was no mistaking his intention. On the flight to Israel he faced down sceptical reporters: “The war is over. OK. You understand that?”

And yet even as he was celebrating his victory lap, Hamas was trying to reassert its control over Gaza. The first challenge to the ceasefire came as Hamas handed over to the Red Cross only four out the remaining 28 bodies of deceased hostages. And the Islamist militant group is already busy trying to create a post-war reality in Gaza. It has deployed thousands of men to patrol the streets, carrying rifles but often dressed in civilian clothes. 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: to secure the distribution of aid in Gaza, and to 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 mobbed and looted soon after crossing the border. Palestinians had hoped that the ceasefire might bring a swift end to months of hunger. So far, though, many say it remains a struggle to find food.

As for the latter, it is true in some cases. 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. In a curious exchange with reporters on Air Force One en route to Israel, he suggested that America had given Hamas a green light to deploy its men. “We gave them approval for a period of time,” he said. “We are having them watch that there’s not going to be big crime or some of the problems that you have when you have areas like this, that have been literally demolished.”

Palestinians themselves 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 in a television interview.

All of this points to the urgent need for a post-war security force, as Mr Trump’s plan envisions. Gaza is awash in 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 likely to be more repression and chaos.

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