Whether or not they’re prepared to admit it, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump will be forced to conclude that the current and future prospects for Gaza are bleak when they meet at the White House this week. While the horrors of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the ferocious war that Israel waged in response are probably over, the sheer recalcitrance of both Hamas and Israel ensure that demilitarization and successful governance are unlikely to be realized. Focused U.S. leadership might improve matters. But as we look ahead into 2026, chances are Gaza will remain divided, dysfunctional, and sporadically violent.
The good news is that the large-scale war we have watched for two years has ended and is unlikely to resume. Pressure from the Trump administration, Israel’s failure to accomplish its military goals, election year politics, and the exhaustion and dislocation caused by the extended deployment of reservists has diminished that possibility. Still, there are credible reports that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has plans for a major operation to destroy Hamas in the roughly half of Gaza under its control. And we cannot rule it out.
Whether or not they’re prepared to admit it, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump will be forced to conclude that the current and future prospects for Gaza are bleak when they meet at the White House this week. While the horrors of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the ferocious war that Israel waged in response are probably over, the sheer recalcitrance of both Hamas and Israel ensure that demilitarization and successful governance are unlikely to be realized. Focused U.S. leadership might improve matters. But as we look ahead into 2026, chances are Gaza will remain divided, dysfunctional, and sporadically violent.
The good news is that the large-scale war we have watched for two years has ended and is unlikely to resume. Pressure from the Trump administration, Israel’s failure to accomplish its military goals, election year politics, and the exhaustion and dislocation caused by the extended deployment of reservists has diminished that possibility. Still, there are credible reports that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has plans for a major operation to destroy Hamas in the roughly half of Gaza under its control. And we cannot rule it out.
With major fighting subsiding, the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip has improved. But improvement is relative, and too many Palestinians continue to be deprived of essential aid, particularly proper shelter and adequate access to medical care. The cease-fire has brought changes: According to the World Food Program, Gazan households averaged two meals per day in January compared to just one last July. Commercial goods, including vegetables, chicken, and eggs, have reappeared in Gaza’s markets. Humanitarian agencies have repaired roads, rehabilitated hospitals, cleared rubble, and reopened aid distribution points.
But there is still significant work to be done: Most Gazans are living in tents and makeshift homes as 92 percent of all residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, resulting in nearly 50 million metric tons of rubble that will take decades and billions to clear. Health care and basic public services are in shambles, causing outbreaks of disease fueled by the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure. Limited access to humanitarian aid, including medicine, makes this a difficult situation to remedy, particularly as Israel continues to ban aid organizations from operating in Gaza.
Slowly, progress has been made to complete the first phase of Trump’s 20-point peace plan. Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt recently reopened after being closed for 20 months, though traffic both in and out of the enclave is highly restricted and, at least for now, confined to pedestrian traffic. Only a few Palestinians have received clearance to pass through the crossing, but the reopening could allow thousands of sick and wounded Gazans to access treatment abroad.
Against this backdrop, several factors stand out that diminish the odds of straight-line progress to better governance, security, and prosperity.
Most significantly, the remit of the technical committee created to run Gaza will be until Hamas agrees to demilitarization. There are reports that Egypt has begun to fashion the concepts of such a process; but a recent statement by a Hamas official that the group never agreed to such a process should remind us of how heavy the lift will be. As far as we can tell, the idea of an international stabilization force (ISF) remains a thought experiment without contributors, a mandate, funding, or a timetable. And the likelihood that such a force would deploy without Hamas’s acquiescence in a situation where Israel was actively striking Hamas targets is fantastical. Nor is there any indication that Israel would withdraw to a security perimeter—a likely demand from Hamas. If anything, Israel has increased its tempo of strikes against Hamas commanders, and more than than 500 Palestinians, both fighters and civilians, have been killed since October.
Moreover, the Palestinians appear to be something of an appendage in the Trump administration’s Gaza planning. Part of that flows from the reality that the two available poles of Palestinian representation—Hamas and the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas—are rejected by either the United States or Israel, and by both in the case of Hamas. And since Palestinian elections can’t be held any time soon, the fallback appears to be a committee of respected and qualified Gazans who are somehow to organize the administration of Gazans. Their authority is subordinated to an executive board of powerful Arabs, Americans, and international figures but lacking Palestinian representation, which is, in turn, subordinated to the Board of Peace chaired by Trump, who has veto power over all proposals. Even if Hamas is willing to acquiesce and work with the technocrats, it will remain the most influential Palestinian actor on the scene.
The White House is reportedly planning a Board of Peace meeting on Feb. 19. As a tin-cup fundraiser, the meeting might raise money from Trump’s friends, but it is unlikely to solve Gaza’s troubles. While Netanyahu was originally scheduled to be in town for the meeting, he moved his visit to Washington up a week, maybe for crunch-time negotiations on Iran or to avoid the political disaster that he would face at home for sitting down and planning Gaza’s future alongside Arab leaders.
It may be politically inconvenient to admit but the main reason the best of intentioned plans—and the three cease-fires since Oct. 7—have cratered is because of the mutually irreconcilable visions that the current Israeli government and the Hamas leadership hold for Gaza and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Pressure could be brought to bear to successfully implement phase one. But the challenges of phase two—demilitarization, governance, and reconstruction—cut to the core of their respective futures and are physically existential for Hamas and politically existential for Netanyahu. Hamas wants to survive the war as an organization, continue to remain the preeminent political and security actor in Gaza, continue its efforts to expand its influence on the West Bank, and assume the dominant position within the Palestinian national movement.
Netanyahu has his own survival agenda to win reelection in 2026, which means keeping his right-wing coalition together, avoiding concessions on Gaza that bring in the Palestinian Authority, not conceding anything on Hamas demilitarization, and avoiding any path to a Palestinian state, all while trying to keep Trump in his corner. No mediator has been able to bridge that gap, and under current circumstances, none will. Hollowed out as a military organization, Hamas has survived Oct. 7 and, according to the IDF, is already resurging politically. Indeed, two years after Oct. 7, the Israel-Hamas fight continues to pose serious challenges to Israelis and Palestinians alike.
The focus on Gaza has also distracted from another inconvenient reality: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has more than one part. The Arab mediators are well aware of this fact, and it may well come to influence more of what they are prepared to do to support Trump’s plan.
A Gaza-first policy cannot be allowed to become a Gaza-only one. The Trump administration has acknowledged this in its 20-point plan by agreeing to a formula stating, “While Gaza re-development advances and when the PA reform program is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” And it has made it clear that its red line is no annexation. But Trump has done little in practice to try and constrain the annexationist policies of Netanyahu’s government. And both the Israeli politics surrounding the issue and the practical realities suggest that there won’t be a pivot to envisioning a more central role for the Palestinian Authority, let alone a political horizon that might actually strengthen its influence vis-à-vis Hamas and create more credibility among Palestinians, Gazans, and those in the West Bank alike.
Trump may not have any intrinsic interest in the Palestinian issue writ large. But he is interested in regional peace and Israeli-Saudi normalization. After Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Washington last year, Trump realized that there isn’t much of a chance of normalization without a pathway for Palestinians. The Arab factor remains critical: Trump stopped the fighting between Israel and Hamas by leveraging his relationships with key Arab states to pressure Hamas, countries that could play a critical role in shaping Gaza’s future if they are able to stand united. Jared Kushner’s recent multibillion-dollar development plan for Gaza seems to treat the Palestinian problem as a real estate deal. But both Kushner, who is Trump’s son-in-law, and the Arab states know it isn’t. This is a conflict that spans questions of self-determination, territory, security, and political and religious identity.
And here lies the paradox: Trump’s plan faces enormous challenges, but it is almost certain to remain the only one on the table.
Hamas may acquiesce in a technocratic administration, but it will maintain control on anything that is related to security and money it can make from taxes and outside funders. The deployment of thousands of civil servants and police will remain vulnerable to cooptation, intimidation, and a preference for Hamas over criminal gangs and clans. If—and it’s a big if—Arab states can bring enough pressure to bear, there might be some performative demilitarizing.
But shutting down tunnel infrastructure and weapons production cells is unlikely. Hamas can always fall back on the fact that Trump’s plan stipulates Israeli withdrawal, which will also be performative under the best of circumstances. One might note that the Northern Ireland decommissioning process took seven years and offered the Irish Republican Army and paramilitaries a central role in power-sharing. Can Hamas be tamed, domesticated, and brought into the Palestine Liberation Organization as a moderated force? It’s doubtful. As for any ISF force, if it deploys, it will almost certainly be in the Israeli-controlled zone. The same is true for any serious reconstruction for the few thousands of Palestinians in the Israeli-controlled zone, most likely funded by Arab states.
And what of broader plans for conflict-ending solutions? Oct. 7 will cast a long, dark shadow over Israelis and Palestinians alike, narrowing, not expanding, the possibility for peace. Any solution—whether two states, expanded autonomy, or a confederation—requires what is not available right now: Israeli and Palestinian leaders who are masters of their politics but also able to see beyond them in terms of strategic benefits for both their peoples. A solution also needs leadership from key Arab states and a determined U.S. administration that understands that the region rarely rewards quick wins.
The Trump administration may well turn out to be a casualty of its own success. In implementing the first phase of its peace plan, it paradoxically lowered the urgency with which the world views Gaza. Distractions now loom: war with Iran, Israeli elections, Russia-Ukraine, and the U.S. president’s domestic travails. One can be forgiven for fearing that Gaza might easily be lost amid Trump’s distractions and condemned to remain the site of an irreconcilable conflict between Israel and Hamas.
