Hours before he started his first day in office on 20 January, US President Donald Trump hailed the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in Gaza as “epic,” characterising it “as a first step towards lasting peace in the Middle East.”
The deal, which went into effect the day before Trump’s inauguration, together with the election of a new president in Lebanon and the downfall of Bashar Al-Assad regime in Syria, have generated hope that these three conflicts of unparalleled regional strategic significance may finally come to an end.
Moreover, the settlements have become a focal point for a region where the melting of the political ice is not only bringing the possibility of lasting peace and stability to the region but also the prospect of reshaping the physical landscape and even global geopolitics.
They have brought to a head the long-talked-about possibility that Saudi Arabia will end up joining the so-called Abraham Accords, a series of normalisation agreements between Israel and Arab nations championed by Trump during his first term in office.
Yet, with many contentious issues still unresolved, the future of these conflicts and their dramatic transformations are anything but certain, leaving the prospect of further difficulties rocking the regional boat for years to come.
For Gaza, the deal to end a war that has killed nearly 47,000 Palestinians over the course of 15 months could be doomed to failure as it moves through its challenging three phases. Even Trump, who boasted of helping finalise the agreement, said that he’s “not confident” that the ceasefire will hold.
One of the reasons that the Gaza deal to end the war that followed Hamas’ attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 remains elusive is that it is more obviously fraught than its architects claim.
The structure of the deal, constructed over three phases that require new negotiations to take place as the ceasefire goes forward, appears to be designed to invite multiple crises as it edges towards ever more difficult terrain.
Israel and Hamas lack trust in each other, and they have had different goals from the war. Israel has sought to secure the return of its hostages and to fully destroy Hamas.
Hamas, badly battered by the war, wants to have a break from the fighting and to see Israel remove its troops from Gaza while keeping the flame of resistance burning in the face of the occupation.
As the two sides will continue to adhere to the agreement until the captive and prisoner- exchange ends and Israel withdraws its troops from the Strip, their larger goals look in doubt, with the prospect of lasting peace remaining as distant as ever for them and for the Middle East.
Israel may have inflicted heavy losses on Hamas, killing its top leadership, including head of its Political Bureau Ismail Haniyeh and mastermind of the 7 October attack Yahya Al-Sinwar, and claiming to have killed thousands of the group’s fighters.
The war has left Gaza a wasteland of rubble, with 90 per cent of its buildings bombed out and uninhabitable.
However, Hamas remains defiant, and in the days since the ceasefire took effect it has moved quickly to reimpose security and to start restoring basic services to parts of the enclave.
Its leaders have showed no sign of surrendering, and they insist that Israel’s failure to eliminate the group or remove it from the political scene constitutes a victory.
Hamas has called on Palestinians in the West Bank to step up the fighting against Israel following an Israeli onslaught on Jenin on the heels of the ceasefire in Gaza. The escalation highlights the fact that Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas are unlikely to extinguish the cause of its struggle against Israel.
The worst-case scenario, however, will be that Netanyahu, who is reluctant to implement the Gaza deal in full, will seek to annex Palestine in its entirety with the blessing of Trump who has called for expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
The fallacy of the ceasefire agreement was highlighted by Trump’s shocking proposal to relocate the Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt and to “clean out” the Gaza Strip of the Palestinians. This was immediately rejected by the two countries, the Palestinian Authority and condemned worldwide.
Trump’s comments, which echo the Israeli far-right perspective, came as displaced people were delayed from returning to northern Gaza after Israel accused Hamas of breaching the terms of the deal.
In Lebanon, the election of a new president on 9 January after almost two and a half years of a political vacuum has raised hopes that the beleaguered country can end its government crisis and help consolidate a ceasefire with Israel.
Nearly 4,000 people have been killed in Lebanon and more than 6,000 injured by Israeli strikes over the past year. Among those killed by Israel’s raids were Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah and several of the group’s high-ranking officials.
Israel has also carried out large-scale offensives in Southern Lebanon with the aim of destroying Hizbullah’s military assets there and preventing the party from launching attacks on Israeli cities and towns. The operations forced thousands of families to flee their homes and villages for the north.
Israel’s overall goals in Lebanon are to decapitate Hizbullah and turn the ceasefire into permanent security arrangements as set forth by UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and other past accords. It is also pushing for additional guarantees to beef up its security against attacks from Lebanon.
The optimistic view suggests that ending the presidential vacuum by electing Lebanese Army Chief General Joseph Aoun as president and forming a new government headed by reformist Prime Minister Nawaf Salam will pave the way to transforming Lebanon into a country at peace with itself and Israel.
But even though Hizbullah might have emerged as the loser in the war with Israel, the Shia Party is far from being defeated and remains a powerful military, political, and communal force to reckon with in Lebanon.
Hizbullah may bow to the wind for the moment, but it is unlikely that the group, which has dominated Lebanon’s domestic politics and was a king maker for nearly four decades, will lay down its weapons or see its role severely curtailed in favour of state authorities on security and political matters.
Israel was expected to withdraw all its forces from Southern Lebanon this week as part of the deal that ended months of conflict with Hizbullah, but on Monday the United States which has brokered the deal said the Israeli forces will remain in Southern Lebanon until 18 February, a sign of fragility of the agreement.
At least two dozen Lebanese people were killed and wounded in Southern Lebanon this week as the Israeli military remained in parts of the country after the expiration of a deadline for their withdrawal and Hizbullah’s removal from the area.
The impact of resuming the war between Israel and Hizbullah and of attempts to deprive the party of its de facto veto power in Lebanese politics will be seismic in both Lebanon and the broader region.
At the same time in Syria, the fall of former president Bashar Al-Assad’s regime at the hands of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) in December has prompted jubilation among Syrians who suffered 13 years of Civil War and decades more of oppressive rule.
It has also raised hopes of reintegrating Syria into the region and the broader international order after years of isolation.
But as a new government takes shape in Damascus, Syrian and foreign observers alike are concerned about whether it will be possible to mend Syria, which has multiple internal conflicts and has seen the vested interests of key regional and international players intervene in its affairs.
There is also the challenge of the return of millions of Syrian refugees from abroad.
Syria’s most pressing challenge in the wake of Al-Assad’s fall is rebuilding the state and society after more than five decades under the brutal dictatorship of the Al-Assad family, Baath Party rule, and Alawite domination.
The key is to unify the country and alleviate fear and unease among its diverse minority communities.
The world is watching to see if HTS, itself a former affiliate of Al-Qaeda and designated a terrorist organisation by many countries, can change its spots and engage with the region and the rest of the world as a responsible partner.
In their efforts to woo Western nations back, Syria’s de facto rulers have promised to open its economy to foreign investment and privatise state-owned ports and factories. They say they want to invite foreign investment and boost international trade.
However, their success will depend on holding Syria together and creating an inclusive and representative system for all its ethnic and religious groups in a politically diverse landscape that can support a civic and democratic state.
Despite its leaders’ rhetoric about renouncing radicalism and readiness to talk to the opposition, the HTS must show through its actions that it is committed to a political transition that will establish a constitutional order and a democratic government in the country.
The biggest threat to the breakthroughs in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria and of other efforts to end other conflicts, such as that with Iran, is the lack of a viable vision and concrete plans to resolve the conflicts on the part of stakeholders that can succeed and win.
Unfortunately, it may be that such a strategy is not available and that like in other failed nations in the region such as Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, domestic turbulence combined with the competition of outside powers seeking geopolitical advantage will keep the conflicts alight without end.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 30 January, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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