Inside the Trump-backed Gaza deal: How Washington turned crisis into diplomacy – opinion

The failed Israeli assassination attempt in Qatar was the lever that turned the Arab states against Hamas.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The top Israeli political and military echelon has lauded the IDF’s success in the Gaza Strip in general, and the Gaza City offensive in particular, as being the key to getting Hamas to agree to the Trump peace plan — and, first and foremost, the release of all the living hostages in a single tranche.

This is only part of the story, according to a Friday report by Amit Segal in Israel Hayom.

The failed Israeli attempt to assassinate a group of top Hamas officials in Doha, Qatar, on Sept. 9 was the major catalyst, wrote Segal, citing Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, who was intimately involved in every stage of the talks between Israel, Arab states, and, most especially, the US.

According to Dermer, the Qataris had thought that because they were hosting hostage negotiations, they would be protected from any Israeli attack on their country.

They were tremendously angered when there was “a blatant, offensive breach of that commitment” – but the Israelis had never made such a pledge, Segal wrote, and the idea hadn’t even come up when the airstrike was approved.

When all the major Arab countries joined a meeting called by Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani to condemn Israel, out of anger “and fear of a blue-and-white domination of the Middle East,” the Trump administration saw a golden opportunity to act, he wrote.

“The Americans’ genius was to convert that negative energy into fuel to propel negotiations to their goal. You want Israel to stop? Then let’s end the war, they told the Sunni countries, and thus enlisted them in a framework that seemed impossible: a pan-Arab, almost pan-Muslim commitment to the elimination of Hamas,” Segal explained.

The plan had already been in the works as the IDF began its raid into Gaza City in late August, he wrote.

Dermer was its main composer in collaboration with US officials, with the understanding that President Trump would announce it as an American deal because “any plan presented as purely Israeli would be pronounced dead before it was even born.”

Arab states were also brought into the conversation in New York, Segal wrote, with Israel receiving “17 substantive comments from the Sunni states and even an agreement in the offing.”

According to the report, Doha had already started thinking of Hamas as “a burden and a stain” in April, and the failed Israeli strike then became the opportunity to turn on their terrorist protégé, whom it had supported with billions of dollars over the last two decades.

There are other important achievements for Israel in the deal as well, Segal pointed out.

The Arab world, he wrote, is now “enlist[ed] for a framework that does not include the Palestinian Authority in the foreseeable future…. Before the plan, Gaza belonged to the Palestinian Authority; now it is Arab-international until further notice. The PA, meanwhile, hates Hamas so much that it agreed.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had always firmly rejected the idea that the PA, which Israel considers a terror-promoting entity rather than a peace partner, could take over Gaza after the war ended.

The plan makes clear that the PA has to undergo transformative reforms before “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood,” as Clause 19 states.

While the Israelis obviously agreed to this phrasing, Netanyahu told Fox News in a recent interview that he does not believe “the tiger will change its stripes” to make this possible.

Segal cited Dermer as saying that the “two-state solution” would only be seen in Gaza itself.

Reconstruction will take place only in the half of the Strip under Israeli control if Hamas does not disarm, as per the agreement – and Hamas officials have repeatedly declared that they will not do so unless a Palestinian state is established.

The Gazans will then have a clear choice, according to Segal.

“What two years of war did not accomplish will be done by market forces: Where will the population feel it is better to live—amid the ruins under Hamas boots, or in a rehabilitated area with an Emirati-funded school and a trailer home for each family?” he wrote.

Amit Segalassassination attemptgaza dealHamasQatarRon Dermer