Author: Dan Smith

The Gaza peace plan after 7 weeks: 3rd assessment

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IT IS TWO MONTHS since the Gaza peace plan was announced (29 September). A few days later, Hamas gave its conditional acceptance of the deal (3 October). On 8 October, the negotiators agreed a ceasefire, which was formally approved by the Israeli cabinet the next day. Implementation started on Friday 10 October.

This post is my third on the peace plan. As in the first and second, my aim is to assess it as a plan. I am not asking whether it was right or wrong, fair or unfair, but would it work? So, seven weeks in and one month after my last assessment, how is it doing?

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The Gaza peace plan, 2 weeks in: continuing assessment

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On 8 October, two years and one day after Hamas’s savage incursion into Israel that triggered Israel’s hyper-destructive onslaught on Gaza, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio passed a note to President Trump in the middle of a press conference, then whispered to him to say he could announce that a ceasefire had been agreed.

So began the implementation of the 20-point Gaza peace plan that Trump had announced at the White House on 29 September. Discussion followed between Israel, Hamas and other interested parties – the USA, Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and doubtless many others via standard diplomatic channels. On 3 October, after Trump set a 5 October deadline for Hamas to accept the plan or suffer “all hell”, Hamas agreed to release the remaining hostages it had held for two years, including the bodies of the dead, and repeated what it had said before, that Gaza could be run by a technocratic administration as Trump’s peace plan envisaged. As multiple news outlets reported, this was a partial acceptance – a “yes but” rather than full-blown consent. While Trump threatened Hamas with “complete obliteration” if it refused to fit in with his plan, the Israeli bombardment of Gaza continued, and negotiators met in Sharm el-Shaikh, Egypt, to get the peace plan on the road.

Two weeks after Rubio whispered in his President’s ear, how is the plan doing? I gave my view of it before there was any action, aiming to assess it as a plan, in its own terms, asking not whether it was right or wrong, fair or unfair, but would it work? It is what you could call a negotiations perspective, a technical assessment. In the same vein, two weeks in, how does it look now?

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Armed conflict and human health

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When you consider the psychological and sociological impacts, people live with the imprint of violent conflict for decades after the fighting has stopped. That can be because you saw something horrible or experienced something utterly terrifying or perhaps because your chances of having a normal childhood have all been blown apart by the war.

More people are injured in armed conflict than are killed, and some injuries are life changing, involving amputations or severe damage to organs including the brain.

Beyond that, hospitals, food systems, and sanitation and sewage systems are destroyed. The general health of people suffers, so other infections take a toll, during the war and in its immediate aftermath. Indirect deaths after armed conflicts match or exceed the number of people who die directly.

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Evaluating President Trump’s Gaza peace plan

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The fate of the peace plan for Gaza announced at the White House on Monday 29 September is not yet decided. Because Hamas accepted the hostage return part of the proposed deal, while seeking negotiation of other parts, US President Trump ordered Israel to stop bombing. It did not immediately do that though the Prime Minister’s office said it was preparing for “immediate implementation” of the first stage of the plan.

There has, of course, been considerable coverage of the plan in the news media. Some focusses on its prospects, including the impact of divisions within Hamas about it, along with the matter of whether Trump will impose a deadline for Hamas’ acceptance and how long it might be. There has been some coverage of gaps and uncertainties in the plan and plenty of advocates have been out there to disparage or support the plan. And there’s been quite some discussion about whether President Trump prevailed over Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in crafting the plan, or the other way round.

But, so far as I have seen, there has been little dispassionate coverage of whether it is actually a good plan, whether it will work. So this post is my clause-by-clause assessment of the Gaza peace plan.

Peace is a tricky business. An 1100 word document containing 20 points is not a treaty, is not legally binding, and is bound to contain a number of generalities and broad statements of intent. That leaves plenty of room for uncertainty to creep in. Nonetheless, it is a serious document and not the first one to address how to end the war in Gaza. It builds on the never-implemented January 2025 agreement, which itself built on the never-implemented May 2024 agreement. With those foundations, there ought to be some key issues on which there is clarity but there should also be some latitude for uncertainty, interpretation and further discussion.

In sum, not surprisingly, what comes out is mixed – some strengths, some weakness, some areas of clarity and some confusion.

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Five global hinge points

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Among those sayings that encapsulate political wisdom but are either inaccurate or apocryphal (such as the ancient Chinese curse, ‘May you live in interesting times’ that is neither Chinese nor ancient, or the misinterpretation of the Chinese character for crisis as fusion of danger and opportunity), I have a soft spot for the one by Harold Macmillan. When asked either what he most feared or what was most troubling when he was UK Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, he may have replied, ‘Events, my dear boy, events.’

If he didn’t say it, he should have. The press of events is the bane of those trying to steer a strategic path in government. Today, it is particularly difficult because there are so many events consuming so much government oxygen while we face five major hinge points in global affairs that complicate everything.

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 80 years on

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The first ten days of August each year are a time to remind ourselves about the effects of nuclear weapons.

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The nuclear challenge today and tomorrow

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On 6 and 9 August this year, we will mark the 80th anniversaries of the two occasions on which nuclear weapons have ever been used in war – the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.* Humanity has perpetrated and experienced a great deal of harm in the past eight decades but nuclear weapons have not been used again. Despite today’s widespread and intensifying perception of nuclear risk, the nuclear taboo survives.

That does not mean the nuclear problem has been solved, of course. It is “an encouraging fact”, as the Nobel Peace Prize Committee put it when giving the 2024 award to the movement of Japanese nuclear survivors (the hibakusha), Nihon Hidankyo. But not more than that. And honouring the hibakusha in this way was also intended as a wake-up call to those many people who until recently regarded nucleapons as yesterday’s problem.

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Trump and the challenge of the non-singular systemic

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Amid the cacophony of overblown claims both for and against, what is so bad about Trump? Or, put the other way round, what is so good about him? Or, to ask my question properly, why is he such a polarizing figure, so it seems that one group supports him and what he stands for in their eyes just exactly as much as another group loathes him? 

I think part of the answer, at least, may be what I am choosing to call the non-singular systemic.

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World order §8: A multiplex alternative: international cooperation in bite-sized pieces

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It is all very well to argue, as I did in my two most recent posts, that far-reaching international cooperation is essential to solve critical world issues and, furthermore, that there are issues on which it is evidently possible. But that does not solve the problem – the world order is in shaky condition and there is no consensus on how to fix it. Now’s the time to have a stab at what to do when consensus is lacking.

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