The United States and the Board of Peace face a fundamental question in Gaza: Will they implement President Donald Trump’s plan, or continue allowing Israel to prevent it from changing reality on the ground?
Right now, the answer is deeply troubling.
The war officially ended months ago, but for the more than two million Gazans, the reality of war has not truly ended. Israeli military occupation continues over more than 60% of the territory. Palestinians continue to be killed. Recovery is painfully slow, reconstruction has barely begun, and the new governing and security arrangements meant to replace both Hamas rule and Israeli military control have not been allowed to take hold.
This threatens the strategy behind Trump’s plan, and Hamas benefits from the paralysis.
It is right to continue to demand the full disarmament of Hamas. There cannot be two armed authorities in Gaza. No sustainable Palestinian political system can exist while Hamas or another faction maintains an independent military force outside a legitimate Palestinian government. But disarming Hamas and diminishing Hamas are not the same thing.
Hamas will not lose political relevance simply because it surrenders its weapons. Hamas will be marginalized when Gazans see a credible alternative capable of delivering what Hamas has catastrophically failed to deliver: security, freedom, effective government, reconstruction, and a political future. That alternative was supposed to be at the heart of the Gaza strategy.
The plan envisioned Hamas relinquishing its weapons and governing authority; the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) assuming responsibility for civilian life; a new Palestinian police force providing internal security; an International Stabilization Force (ISF) guaranteeing the transition; Israeli forces withdrawing in stages; humanitarian assistance flowing at scale; and reconstruction beginning.
That architecture cannot work if Israel blocks the very changes intended to replace Hamas. Israel should be required to withdraw from designated areas adjacent to the current separation lines. As Israeli forces withdraw, the NCAG should assume civilian responsibility, accompanied by the new Palestinian police.
Recovery and reconstruction should begin there immediately. The ISF should deploy along the line separating the remaining Israeli forces from Hamas-controlled territory. Its mission should be to secure the transition, prevent armed infiltration, and enable the gradual expansion of territory under legitimate Palestinian administration.
The transferred areas must not become another vacuum for Hamas. They should demonstrate what a post-Hamas Gaza can look like. Homes should be rebuilt. Schools and clinics should reopen. Water, electricity, and sanitation should be restored. Businesses should reopen and jobs should be created.
As security arrangements take hold and Hamas’s weapons are removed, this zone of Palestinian governance should progressively expand. This is how the map of Gaza should change: not through permanent Israeli occupation or the return of Hamas but through the steady expansion of territory governed by Palestinians who are neither Hamas nor the Israeli military.
If Gazans see that areas from which Israel withdraws become safer, begin rebuilding, and are governed by Palestinians rather than Hamas, the political consequences could be profound. That is how Hamas is diminished.
If, however, Gazans continue to see Israeli soldiers controlling their territory, Palestinians being killed by Israeli forces, destroyed neighborhoods, and no meaningful reconstruction, Hamas will have an easy argument: Nothing changed. Israel still controls Gaza. Diplomacy achieved nothing. The Americans made promises they did not enforce. Armed resistance therefore remains necessary.
That is precisely the argument we should be trying to destroy.
The two objectives for peace in Gaza that Trump must pursue
The United States and the Board of Peace must therefore pursue two objectives simultaneously: Hamas must disarm, and the reality that gives Hamas political strength must be dismantled. A credible political horizon showing Palestinians that freedom, dignity, and self-government can be achieved through politics rather than armed struggle weakens Hamas. Continued Israeli military control does the opposite.
Trump understood this when he pushed for an architecture that went beyond another temporary ceasefire. Gaza did not need another pause between wars. It needed a fundamentally different political and security reality.
But that vision cannot survive if Israel decides which parts of the plan will be implemented.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political interests increasingly diverge from this strategy. His coalition includes powerful forces opposing Palestinian sovereignty and meaningful Israeli withdrawal.
A renewed war in Gaza, or a major escalation in the West Bank, could allow Netanyahu to once again campaign primarily as Israel’s wartime leader. That may serve his electoral interests. It does not serve Israel’s national-security interests.
Israel cannot achieve sustainable security by permanently controlling millions of Palestinians. It cannot defeat Hamas politically while maintaining the conditions that allow Hamas to justify its existence. Nor can it expect Arab and Muslim countries to contribute troops, political capital, and billions of dollars to rebuilding Gaza if Israel can prevent the new Palestinian order from functioning.
These policies also work against American interests. The US invested enormous presidential authority in Trump’s Gaza initiative and assembled Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and others around the possibility of moving beyond the war toward a new regional architecture.
If Israel can prevent implementation of an American-led plan while continuing to enjoy American political and military support, every American partner in the region will draw an obvious conclusion: Washington may be powerful enough to negotiate agreements but is unwilling to enforce them when Israel objects.
That would damage American credibility far beyond Gaza and undermine the larger opportunity for regional transformation, including a future Israeli-Saudi agreement and broader Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab peace.
The Board of Peace cannot become a waiting room in which everyone discusses implementation while Israel decides what happens on the ground. It must become an implementation mechanism with clear obligations, benchmarks, and timelines.
Disarmament cannot be demanded in an environment where nothing else changes. Israeli withdrawal cannot create a vacuum for Hamas. Withdrawal, disarmament, Palestinian governance, international stabilization, and reconstruction must become mutually reinforcing parts of one process. The key principle is reciprocity: Movement on one side must produce movement on the other.
There cannot be an Israeli veto over an American plan. Trump has extraordinary leverage over Netanyahu. He should use it. Israel should receive strong American support for its legitimate security requirements. Gaza must never again become a launching pad for attacks against Israel.
But American support for Israel’s security cannot mean support for permanent Israeli military control of Gaza, endless war, or obstruction of the political and security arrangements Trump himself created.
If Palestinians can compare two realities with their own eyes – one of Hamas, weapons, destruction, and endless war, and another of Palestinian governance, security, reconstruction, and hope – that comparison may ultimately do more to defeat Hamas than another Israeli military campaign ever could.
Trump’s Gaza plan can still succeed. But the US and the Board of Peace cannot continue allowing Israel to veto the very plan they committed themselves to implementing.
The writer is the Middle East director of the International Communities Organization and the co-head of the Alliance for Two States.
