President Donald Trump's Board of Peace laid out its comprehensive 15-point plan for the Gaza Strip on Friday, following Trump's announcement Thursday that Hamas has agreed to disarm.
The Board includes representatives from 28 founding nations, including a few questionable picks like Belarus (effectively Russia), Qatar, and Turkey.
When I read that Hamas has agreed to lay down arms, I automatically presumed it was only because they'd found better places to stash them. Still, let's look at the deal and see if there's anything in there that might work.
The first point lays out that plan's ambitious goals aimed at "ending the cycle of destruction, securing the complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza Strip, restoring normal life, enabling Palestinian governance, reconstruction, security, recovery and economic development, rehabilitating damaged sectors and facilitate launching a credible political path that achieves self-determination and Statehood."
The devil, as always, is in the details.
Point 2 calls for "the cessation of military operations" by both sides, so that the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) "shall enter the Strip and start to assume its responsibilities" for governing the territory. Then there's point 3, which says that the International Verification Committee (IVC) must verify each step before both sides move on to the next.
Points 4 and 5 call on Hamas to turn over governing authority to NCAG, and for NCAG to "maintain the continuity of civilian institutions and public services" and basically to act as a decent government. There's also the matter of $400 million in international funds it's supposed to spend wisely.
Points 6 through 11 all deal with security in the Strip, and that's where the details get particularly devilish.
The quick and dirty version is that NCAG will run civilian affairs according to Palestinian law and "good governance standards," and if you have doubts about compatibility, so do I. New police will "undergo a comprehensive vetting," and "all police weapons shall be transferred to the responsibility and authority of NCAG upon its entry into Gaza and the assumption of its missions." Heavy weapons, military production sites, depots of weapons, and tunnels will all be decommissioned. The process of transferring authority to NCAG (and security to the International Stabilization Force [ISF]) will be done in stages and linked to a phased Israeli withdrawal.
There's also a "Social Peace Agreement" that seems to involve deradicalizing Hamas terrorists that the peace plan insists on referring to as "militias." In fact, neither "terror" nor "terrorist" appear in any of the 15 points. There's also the little matter of the value of any "social peace" that's "signed in accordance with Palestinian norms and laws."
But I digress.
Points 12-14 involve the ISF and withdrawal of Israeli forces. ISF "shall monitor compliance by all parties with the ceasefire, train the Palestinian police, secure the protection and delivery of humanitarian assistance and essential supplies into Gaza Strip, and support the NCAG, at its request, in any other non-policing mission," but NCAG handles all internal policing.
The last point is reconstruction, supervised by the Board of Peace and NCAG, assuming things ever get that far.
Short-term, you have to doubt whether Hamas will actually disarm or just put on a pretense by giving up some weapons while stashing the rest even deeper underground. Looking further out, you have to wonder whether NCAG or even ISF will become wholly-owned subsidiaries of Hamas, just like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) did.
And I'm having an impossible time getting past the absurdity of the Social Peace Agreement.
Probably better just to let Israel do now what they'll probably have to do later anyway and fully root out Hamas themselves.
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Keep your intellectual powder dry.
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