Hamas, not Israel, is bound to blow up Trump’s plan
Dubious comments expressing moral equivalence and trust in an international force to demilitarize Gaza are at odds with the president’s tough talk about the terrorists.
By Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS
Oct 24, 2025
Hamas terrorists in Gaza City after a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, October 15, 2025.
Two things can be true at the same time. U.S. President Donald Trump and his foreign-policy team deserve enormous credit for brokering a ceasefire that achieved the release of the final 20 living hostages held by Hamas since Oct. 7, 2023.
It’s also the case that much of what the administration is saying about implementing and maintaining the ceasefire is not merely unrealistic. It may actually be giving the Hamas terrorists the impression that they can get away without disarming or giving up control of Gaza and validating their claims that they have won the war they started two years ago.
The Trump administration has been sending mixed messages about the situation in Gaza since the first stage of the ceasefire deal it brokered was put into effect. On one hand, the president, as well as his advisers, Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, have been taking some well-deserved victory laps since the hostages were released. On the other, there is a strong contrast between the threats being issued by Trump about what will happen if Hamas doesn’t disarm and a lot of what Witkoff, Kushner and Vice President JD Vance have said about the agreement to end the war.
The upshot of all this is the growing perception that there is a rift between the United States and Israel about next steps in Gaza.
The two countries may be allies and have interests that are closely related. But, as is always the case with any pair of sovereign nations, they are not identical.
As we sort out the various controversies that have arisen in the last weeks, the questions we need to be asking right now are not about the undoubtedly good intentions of the Trump team, or the resolve of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stay as close to the Americans as possible while also defending his country’s national security. Rather, they surround gaps between Washington and Jerusalem.
The expectations gap
It is neither criticism of Trump nor an attempt to diminish the praise he has justly received for the hostage release to point out that now that the live captives and more than half of the dead bodies have been returned to Israel, the gap between the other goals the deal seeks to accomplish, and what is likely to follow in the coming weeks, months and years in Gaza, may be enormous.
It is just as important to point out that the unwillingness of the Trump team to honestly address that chasm between the expectations they have encouraged and reality may be a source of real conflict between the United States and Israel. It’s also possible that the situation in Gaza that the U.S. now more or less owns will not only be a disaster, but will aid that element of Trump’s coalition that is both isolationist and hostile to the Jewish state.
So, while the alliance is still rock-solid and Israel’s strategic position may be more secure than it has ever been, the extent of what could prove to be a looming post-war fiasco in Gaza should not be underestimated. Far from being merely a complication in what is otherwise a brilliant piece of U.S. diplomacy, this situation could wind up bolstering the still marginal anti-Israel and antisemitic elements on the American right.
Some of the dissension between the allies is, as JNS’s Ruthie Blum has pointed out, doubtless the result of an effort by liberal media sources like The New York Times that are inveterately hostile to Israel. With its stories based on leaks from the White House, it is doing its best to foment tensions between the two governments at a time when they have actually been engaging in close and productive cooperation.
Myths and insults
Still, as much as the anti-Israel media’s motives are more than suspect, they wouldn’t be able to publish such stories without the help of some of those in the Trump camp who dislike the president’s pro-Israel policies. It’s also accurate to note that some of the talk about the relationship from top U.S. figures like Witkoff and Vance has shown disturbing symptoms of moral equivalence between the “two sides.”
As much as friends of Israel have reason to be grateful to Witkoff and Kushner for their work in freeing the hostages, it’s no good pretending that the framework they have created isn’t rooted in mistaken notions about the nature of the conflict and fantasies about things that are highly unlikely ever to occur.
All decent people may hope that Trump’s vision of a Gaza free of Hamas and ruled by entities—whether Palestinian Arabs or well-intentioned foreigners dedicated to peace and rebuilding the Strip in a manner that will allow its inhabitants a better life—is realized. But it’s not too soon to point out that the chances of this happening are, to understate the matter, highly unlikely.
The Times and other newspapers have covered the aftermath of the release of the hostages as if the main problem facing the United States in ensuring that the ceasefire holds is Netanyahu. The notion that Witkoff, Kushner and then Vance have been engaged in “Bibisitting” to prevent the prime minister from wrecking their hard-won accomplishment is part of the conventional wisdom in Washington and among the foreign-policy establishment.
That narrative was strengthened by the passage in the Knesset of a first reading of a bill to extend Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria (aka “the West Bank”). Vance bristled at the chutzpah of some right-wing Knesset members voting for something they’ve long supported while he was in Israel, treating it as an insult, in spite of the fact that Netanyahu opposed it and the measure isn’t actually going to be legislated for a very long time, if at all.
Vance’s response was reminiscent of then-Vice President Joe Biden’s claim that he was insulted by the Israelis when a measure approving housing units in Jerusalem was allowed to proceed while he was visiting the capital in 2010. That spat was used by the Obama administration as an excuse for a round of Israel-bashing that did nothing to advance the cause of peace and much to encourage the Jewish state’s enemies’ belief that it was being abandoned by its sole superpower ally.
Trump even echoed Vance, railing against the idea of annexation as violating the promises that he has given the Arab states.
Hamas intentions
Yet the notion that Israel is the obstacle to implementing the peace deal isn’t just wrong; it’s completely disconnected from reality. It is, after all, Hamas, the party that is supposed to disarm and give up control of Gaza, which has been openly carrying out mass killings of Palestinians it sees as political foes or dissidents. These actions make it crystal clear that the Islamist terrorists have no intention of relinquishing control of Gaza and that they are using the current period to rebuild, rearm and reestablish the terrorist state they ruled from 2007 to 2023. This is notwithstanding the fact that they are far weaker and in control of less territory than they were before they launched the orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction on Oct. 7 that began the war.
Nevertheless, the messages coming from the U.S. remain mixed. Trump may keep saying the right things about “obliterating” the terrorists if they don’t do as he says. But his envoys continue to make noises about the ceasefire holding nicely and that they believe their “partners” in Qatar and Turkey will help solve the problem.
Even Trump seems to have swallowed the Kool-Aid about Qatar’s being a good friend of the United States and a tireless worker for peace. That’s in spite of the fact that the Gulf emirate is largely responsible for enabling Hamas to start the war and also spreading Islamist propaganda via its Al Jazeera media outlet and by sponsoring and funding the Muslim Brotherhood.
Fantasy security force
The above is troubling in and of itself. But even more disturbing is the way the U.S. team, and most particularly Vance, continues to speak of Hamas’s disarmament being accomplished via an international security force made up of contingents from various Muslim and Arab countries, but not Americans, and even to claim that the pro-Hamas United Nations might also be involved in some way.
One doesn’t need to be a pessimist to observe that such a force being able or willing to take on Hamas is nothing more than a fantasy. Arab governments may dislike Hamas and wish to be rid of it, but the chances that any of them would actually take on that job themselves are about as close to zero as one can get.
The same is true of any belief that a renewed flow of billions in foreign aid into Gaza will not be misused,
The only ones who can deal with Hamas are the Israel Defense Forces. Yet if, as he has seemed to suggest at times, Trump gives the green light to Israel to finish off Hamas, that will not only end the ceasefire. It will also effectively blow up the entire process that Witkoff and Kushner and the rest of the U.S. team have labored so hard to create.
Israelis understandably dread the prospect of the war restarting and the casualties that the IDF would suffer in any campaign to eliminate the Hamas cadres that have benefitted from the respite the ceasefire afforded them. But most understand that it may be necessary.
Yet it would, despite Trump’s tough talk, be a terrible blow to his administration’s foreign-policy objectives. And even with the best of wills on both sides of the U.S.-Israel relationship, that is going to cause problems. It is why Hamas is betting that Washington will opt to let it stay where it is rather than blow up Trump’s signal achievement.
Either way, the tension over a renewed war or a failure to enforce the Trump plan’s points about disarming Hamas and replacing it in Gaza with what is likely to be an equally mythical government of apolitical Palestinian technocrats is going to create problems for the U.S.-Israel alliance that won’t be easily papered over. Among other things, it will be fodder for those heretofore marginal elements on the right that are already growing louder with their resentments about Israel and Netanyahu.
Faith in Trump
Those in both countries who value the alliance are going to have to place their faith in two factors.
One is Netanyahu’s good judgement in knowing how and when to say “no” to the Americans when it is necessary—an exercise in which he has been forced repeatedly to engage with friendly and unfriendly American governments over the last three decades.
The other is Trump’s good faith.
There is every reason to believe that he means what he says about eliminating Hamas and being willing to support the use of force to do it. Though his political opponents have continually predicted that he would betray the Jewish state, he’s done the opposite over and over again during the course of his times in office, building a record as the most pro-Israel president ever to sit in the White House.
Yet too many of those who work for the president seem invested in fantasies about Hamas, the Palestinians, Qatar and Turkey, rooted in naive beliefs about genocidal Islamists having the same hopes and dreams as Americans, Israelis and the people of the West. They don’t. And, sooner or later, that dismal fact is going to blow up the peace plan that Trump is so proud of. When this happens, we need to hope that he and his foreign-policy team are able to divest themselves of the same sort of foolish arrogance that characterized the beliefs of their predecessors in the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations about the Palestinians wanting peace and being willing to give up their century-old war on the Jews.
As much as the hostage release should be celebrated, history didn’t end when they were liberated. And even an indomitable force like Donald Trump can’t wish away the Palestinian desire to destroy Israel.
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