Palestine

The Gaza peace plan after 7 weeks: 3rd assessment

/ Dan Smith / 2 Comments

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

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

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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Evaluating President Trump’s Gaza peace plan

/ Dan Smith / 6 Comments

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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World order §5a: Laws and norms – and the ICJ speaks on Israel

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The International Court of Justice – the highest legal body in the UN system – has issued an advisory opinion (i.e., a legal ruling) about Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

The 80-page judgement refers seven times to “Israel’s unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, explains why and how it is unlawful. Israel’s presence, the court makes clear, violates “the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people” (paragraph 267). Since the presence is against international law, “Israel has an obligation to put an end to those unlawful acts” (paragraph 268). Further, “Israel is also under an obligation to provide full reparation for the damage caused by its internationally wrongful acts to all natural or legal persons concerned” (paragraph 269).

This is not the first time the ICJ has declared against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank; it did so 20 years ago. What I found striking, since I am thinking a lot and writing about the shaky condition of world order today, is that the ICJ is also clear about other states’ obligations:

“In view of the character and importance of the rights and obligations involved, all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” (paragraph 279)

It feels like another acid test for much of the West about right and wrong, law and norms. Is is too much to hope for consistency?

World order §4: Conflict management in a disordered world: the Security Council and Gaza

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

During the 2020s, on current trends, four times as many people (or more) will die in war as in the first decade of this century. Since 2010, the number of armed conflicts each year has almost doubled. The number of refugees has more than doubled in the same period. Meanwhile the world spends vastly more on the military than ever before, 2.443 trillion US dollars in 2023, compared to about 1.1 trillion at the start of the century.

What is going on? What has happened – is happening – to the world and to conflict? How come conflict management doesn’t seem to be working any more?

This post is number 4 in a series, based on the introductory chapter to the recently released SIPRI Yearbook 2024, asking, What world are we shaping for ourselves in the coming decades if these trends continue unchanged? 

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The Trump administration on Israel and Palestine: is it a new peace plan?

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We live in troubled and troubling times. Though we can, if we look, find reasons for optimism, many indicators are pointing in the wrong direction – more armed conflicts, more military spending, more arms trading. Worse, this unfolds against a seriously concerning background of long-term trends: increasingly toxic geopolitics, the crumbling of arms control and the climate crisis. The doomsday clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved 20 seconds closer to midnight; it has never been closer.

Amid the gloom, would it not be a welcome relief for a new peace vision for the Middle East to be launched, to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, and open the door to a new possibility of political and social progress in the region?

Yes it would. But…

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EU leaders: where’s the headline energy?

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EU government leaders have put no headline energy into trying to end the warfare torturing eastern Congo for the past month. And you can’t blame that on being distracted by Israel retaliating against random rocket attacks from Gaza with an 8-day bombardment until Egypt brokered the ceasefire on 21 November. Heads of EU governments weren’t headline visible on Gaza either. They’re distracted by other things. Continue reading →

What’s conflict?

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Students in the Master of Fine Arts course at Slade, University College London, have put together a collection of their work. They chose the theme of conflict and all the pieces reflect on it in one way or another. The collection ranges from internal conflict to open war, from the personal to the political and back again. They asked me to write a foreword and as a result I had (the opportunity) to think about some things from the bottom up. Here is what I wrote: Continue reading →

The EAS: what it takes to succeed

/ Dan Smith / 3 Comments

Just before the summer shutdown, the last key decisions were taken to establish the EU’s new External Action Service – the European Parliament on 8 July and the Council of the EU on the 20th. As the EAS starts to become real, what can and should we expect from it? Continue reading →

Obama, 1 year in: flaws aren’t failure – but there are new risks in policy towards Iran

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President Barack Obama has handed himself his sharpest challenge yet: a year of showing his unclenched fist to Iran has produced nothing and now he is toughening up his stance with a missile shield for the US naval forces in the Gulf. What will this do to his presidency? There was so much hope and much of that energy remains, even if it is not being so effectively tapped, but in confronting Iran, might Obama seriously lose his way?

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