What are the defining features of the hypothetical “new Middle East” emerging after the tragic events of October 7, 2023? Beyond the unspeakable tragedy unfolding in Gaza—a catastrophe not only of immense humanitarian proportions but also of deep political inconsistency—several recent developments stand out. These markers help illuminate the ongoing attempt to reshape the region, not necessarily toward lasting stability, but more plausibly toward a provisional armistice. Such a phase, though conditional, would nonetheless be welcome if it could create the groundwork for a genuine space for negotiation on the fundamental issues of the conflict.
What peace after the armistice?
The so-called peace plan—which is not yet a true plan but rather a fragile bilateral truce and a negotiating agenda—outlined in 20 points by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, includes elements that must still be implemented through negotiation. This was the case, for instance, with the ceasefire, the release of hostages, and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners.
What remains missing is the full and unconditional reopening of the border crossings, essential to allow humanitarian aid to reach those in need. It is unacceptable that such aid—vital to the population’s very survival—should be tied to external conditions, such as the conduct of Hamas.
It is certainly positive that the plan reaffirms no Palestinian from Gaza will be forced to leave the Strip and that Israel will neither occupy nor annex Gaza. However, this does not automatically mean that Israel will withdraw completely. The demilitarization of Gaza primarily concerns Hamas, but it should, even more appropriately, apply to Israel as long as it maintains a military presence within the territory.
What kind of government for Gaza?
The (relatively) novel elements concern the governance of the Gaza Strip, which is to be entrusted to a Palestinian “technocratic and apolitical” committee—as already outlined in the Arab peace plan—but under the “supervision” of a kind of “Board” chaired, no less, by Donald Trump himself, alongside other international figures (reportedly including Tony Blair).
The risk, however, is that without the full involvement of even the fragile existing Palestinian institutions, such an arrangement could resemble a colonial framework—a sort of patrimonial “New East India Company” for Gaza.
Security, meanwhile, is expected to be guaranteed by an “International Stabilization Force” that would gradually replace the Israeli army. Israel, however, intends to exercise a kind of veto power over the composition of this force, which, to be truly credible, would need to receive a mandate from the UN Security Council. At best, what can realistically be expected is a strengthened international monitoring mission—certainly not a “peace-enforcing” mission, a configuration that does not actually exist in international practice except in the form of national or coalition military interventions well outside the UN framework.
Such monitoring, moreover, would have to be bilateral—not directed only at Hamas and other terrorist or criminal groups within the Strip, but also at the IDF and its withdrawal process.
The disarmament of Hamas could plausibly take place in one of two ways: either through the reintegration of its militias into the Palestinian security forces (the Palestinian Authority has long upheld the principle of “one land, one government, one gun”), or through a complex disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) program managed by some form of international authority.
This remains an extremely difficult issue, as Hamas has tied any prospect of disarmament to a condition that is unlikely to be met in the short term: the end of the Israeli occupation.
Among the 20 points is also the issue of reconstruction—estimated to cost over 50 billion dollars—which, however, bears a strong resemblance to a massive real estate development project (the much-criticized “Riviera,” having been dismissed once, risks returning through the back door). It envisions the creation of special economic zones within the Strip and an explicitly “Trump-branded” economic and financial plan.
In essence, many of these points echo the Peace to Prosperity document (also known as the Vision) launched by Trump in January 2020, which, despite its deep inconsistencies and shortcomings, was in several respects more advanced. That earlier plan addressed key issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the determination of borders, the refugee question, and, above all, it openly mentioned the two-state solution—albeit one heavily conditioned by a series of complex preliminary criteria and objectives.
Even now, those who make recognition of a Palestinian state contingent on external circumstances—such as the disarmament of Hamas (which, in any case, would require time and careful negotiation)—end up, however unintentionally, assigning Hamas an improper political role. In effect, they grant it a de facto veto over Palestinian statehood, which should instead be regarded as an independent variable resting solely with the Palestinian Authority.
A separate protectorate?
In the 20-point plan—with its complex array of initiatives to be implemented, but first negotiated and agreed upon at the international and multilateral levels—there is no explicit mention of the Palestinian National Authority as the institutional link between Gaza and the West Bank. Gaza, treated as an autonomous territory, risks becoming a mini-state of its own: a kind of protectorate arbitrarily established by a coalition of states rather than managed under United Nations authority.
This would stand in stark contrast to the very different case of Kosovo, which was set on a path toward independence from Serbia. There, three international missions were deployed: UNMIK, which placed administrative governance under UN authority; EULEX, which assigned the European Union responsibility for rebuilding the rule of law; and KFOR, which entrusted security to NATO.
However, treating Gaza as a separate entity—a distinct body seemingly detached from the broader vision of a Palestinian state—raises serious doubts about the plan’s ultimate objective. The final points of the proposal are particularly revealing: if and when Gaza achieves stability and Palestinian reforms advance, “conditions may emerge for a credible path toward Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
Such language takes us back in time—all the way to the period before the 1993 Oslo Accords. Despite close reading, one finds no reference in the convoluted American plan to the West Bank, nor any mention of Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories. By contrast, the 2020 Peace to Prosperity document explicitly cited UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, which called for such a withdrawal.
Trump has nonetheless stated—and one can only hope he maintains this position—that he will not support Israel’s intention to annex the entire Jordan Valley.
Beyond the two-state solution?
The plan merely reserves for the United States the role of facilitating dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on “a political horizon toward peaceful coexistence,” supposedly supported by “interreligious dialogue” aimed at promoting tolerance. Yet this conflict—before Hamas and, above all, before the rise of Israel’s fanatical religious right—had never been primarily religious in nature; it was territorial.
Instead of this baroque construction, one might simply return to an older but still relevant formula: land for peace—a land for the Palestinians, a land for the Israelis, and peace for the entire region.
Analysts of various leanings who describe themselves as realists now argue that the two-state solution is no longer feasible. But how realistic are the supposed alternatives? Is it realistic, for example, to imagine equal sharing of a single territory, full parity of rights between Arabs and Israelis, common and representative institutions in a federal or confederal state, freedom of movement for all, an end to the application of martial law in part of the land, active and passive suffrage without discrimination, and citizenship defined in secular rather than ethno-religious terms?
The core issues of the conflict have been avoided for far too long. The normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco—pompously labeled the “Abraham Accords,” invoking even the name of the great patriarch of the three monotheistic faiths, provided a perfect alibi for sidestepping the central question: finally granting the Palestinians a national home of their own.
After the peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, Israel hoped to complete the normalization process by bringing Saudi Arabia into the fold. Yet, however significant these agreements may be, they should never have been interpreted as the final word on the Palestinian issue—which recent Israeli governments have reduced to a mere matter of internal security, one from which the international community was expected to keep its distance.
Still, in this part of the world, no matter how many carpets lie in the halls of power, the Palestinian question cannot be swept beneath them like dust.
At the end of 2000, in an open letter to Prime Minister Ehud Barak entitled One Minute Before the Next War—remarkably relevant even today—Shaul Mishal, Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University, wrote:
“When the dust has settled after the next Israeli–Palestinian or Israeli–Arab war, we will surely be the victors. And you, Mr. Prime Minister, will emerge from the smoke of the battlefield to deliver the most eloquent eulogies before the freshly dug graves. You may even persuade many that it was the most justified of all wars ever fought by the Jews. It will be a war in which we win every battle, yet these victories will lead us nowhere but back to where we began. Who better than you knows that, when the final battle is over and we are once again compelled to sit at the negotiating table with the Palestinians and the representatives of the Arab states — with the Americans, the Europeans, and perhaps even under international participation — we will have to discuss the same painful territorial questions, those of Jerusalem and of the refugees’ right of return?[1]”
Destructive creation
On a broader scale, the Trump–Netanyahu axis inaugurated in the Middle East an era of “do-it-yourself” geopolitics—a kind of military “DIY” that completely disregards the role of multilateral institutions and international law. Evidence of this can be seen in the attacks on Iranian nuclear sites (carried out in the midst of ongoing negotiations), the strikes against the Houthis in Yemen, and the incursions into Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq—not to mention the most recent attack on a Hamas delegation in Qatar, which took place even as the United States was vigorously pushing for a new truce in Gaza.
One cannot so casually shift from talking to shooting. There is a clear discontinuity between words and bullets. Negotiating under the shadow of military threat—as in the familiar phrase “all options are on the table”—can no longer be called diplomacy; it is a form of intimidation.
Toward Iran, the very notion of “preventive war” has even been revived—a concept first articulated in President George W. Bush’s 2003 National Security Strategy.
In a recent Washington Post article—aptly titled An Attack on Diplomacy Itself—Qatari Minister of State Al-Qulaifi, referring to the Israeli missile strike on Doha, noted that there is no precedent in recent history of one of the negotiating parties attacking its own mediator.
To cite just one example: the United States never targeted the Taliban office in Doha while negotiations for an agreement with the group were underway—with Qatar acting as mediator. If mediation is a form of “assisted negotiation,” then striking those who provide that assistance is not only self-contradictory but also an unmistakable declaration of substantive disinterest in the political and diplomatic path.
More broadly, it is evident that after October 7, Israel radically altered its security doctrine—shifting from a defensive posture to an aggressive one. In political science terms, this could be described as a transition from Kenneth Waltz’s “defensive realism” to John Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism,” as reflected in Israel’s actions toward Lebanon, Iran, Syria, and Yemen. A segment of Israel’s political class—its most extremist faction—clearly harbors hegemonic ambitions.
Such martial unilateralism, if pursued in the future, will make it exceedingly difficult to establish any form of cooperative security in the region.
If in economics there is the notion of “creative destruction,” the brand of aggressive constructivism unfolding in the Middle East evokes, instead, its inverted and illusory counterpart—“destructive creation.” The ruins of Gaza and the tens of thousands of innocent civilian victims stand as stark symbols of this inverted diplomacy.
Multilateral disengagement
Other destabilizing signs—mentioned here by way of example—concern the multilateral dimension.
The first comes from the United Nations, more precisely from the Security Council, and relates to the effective “liquidation” of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the peacekeeping mission established in 1978 and revived in 2006, in the aftermath of Israel’s second invasion of Lebanon against Hezbollah (following Begin’s ill-fated 1982 incursion against Palestinian armed factions).
That mission, strongly supported by Italy—which, at the height of hostilities, convened an international conference in Rome that paved the way for a ceasefire and for an international peacekeeping presence in southern Lebanon—has always been poorly received in Tel Aviv. Israel long regarded it as ineffective in disarming Hezbollah (though that was never its mandate) and as an obstacle to the IDF’s freedom of action in its northern neighbor.
Now, the mission has in effect been dismantled, despite expectations from Italy and France—the two countries most deeply engaged on the ground, along with Spain—that it would remain operational until at least 2027. In theory, the Lebanese Armed Forces should assume control of the territory south of the Litani River, but they still lack full logistical and military capacity.
The risk is that a power vacuum may emerge, potentially paving the way for renewed hostilities in a strategically vital area for Israel’s own security—all the more so given that normalization of relations between Israel and Lebanon remains a distant prospect.
The second marker of the Middle East’s strategic regression is the decision taken on August 28 by three European powers—France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—to abandon, before the UN Security Council, the diplomatic path for addressing what remains of Iran’s nuclear program. They are now moving toward reimposing the sanctions that preceded the 2015 agreement with Tehran—the so-called snapback mechanism.
This choice by the three European countries is heavily influenced by a parallel agenda, not directly related to the substance of the nuclear negotiations but linked instead to other serious issues—such as the illegal detention of their citizens in Iran and subversive activities carried out on their own soil. These are grave matters indeed, but they should be addressed on their own merits, rather than using the nuclear negotiations as a means of “punishing” the Ayatollahs. It is essential to distinguish diplomacy from reprisal.
The likely outcome, once again, is to push Iran into a more intransigent position—strengthening the arguments of domestic hawks who are calling for Tehran to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty altogether.
Toward peaceful coexistence?
Within this broader—and certainly discouraging—picture, the good news is that through the American initiative, and despite the “peace through strength” philosophy guiding Trump’s second administration, the diplomatic track has paradoxically been revived. In other words, a political pathway is re-emerging after the clear failure of the military one.
Indeed, in the two years since October 7, not a single Israeli hostage has been freed through IDF raids, but only through the patient efforts of mediators who have woven together—and in several cases successfully concluded—negotiations of extreme complexity and sensitivity.
One can only hope that this fundamental lesson, grounded in empirical evidence, might serve as a compass for a genuine reconfiguration of the Middle East—one that does not proceed through exclusion and interdiction, from whichever side they come, but rather through a comprehensive strategy of inclusion and mutual acknowledgment of the priorities of the region’s peoples.
It would be naïve to expect that the near future will bring conditions of cooperation built on widespread trust. Yet it remains possible to aspire to a minimalist, though in this context highly ambitious, goal: a peaceful coexistence—one far broader in scope than the limited coexistence envisioned in the Trump plan between Israelis and Palestinians.
[1] Alan Gresh, Israel, Palestine: Truths of a Conflict (2001).
Cover photo: US President Donald Trump (center R) and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (center L) sign documents during a summit on Gaza in Sharm el-Sheikh on October 13, 2025. (Photo by Saul Loeb / AFP)
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