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Donald Trump’s victory speech following the release of the last surviving Israeli hostages won a standing ovation from the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. The euphoria was understandable. 

There is no question that Trump played a major role in pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire. It’s even more impressive because peace in Gaza could very well spell the end of Netanyahu’s political career. Given that reality and Netanyahu’s record as a Machiavellian political infighter, getting him to go along with the ceasefire was no small feat. 

It was increasingly obvious that the ongoing war in Gaza was serving as a political lifeline for Netanyahu. No one was going to remove him as prime minister while the fighting was still going on. But wars can’t last forever and, before the rampage against Gaza had even started, Netanyahu was already defending himself against a criminal indictment on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. 

At least some Israelis blamed what they saw as Netanyahu’s misguided priorities for creating the conditions that led to the October 7 massacre. Others hold Netanyahu responsible for aiding Hamas’s rise to power by systematically sabotaging the Palestinian Authority’s presence in Gaza.

Mission Accomplished?

Understandably, no one wanted to talk about any of that in the jubilant atmosphere brought on by the hostage release, although Trump did manage to call attention to Netanyahu’s precarious situation when he suggested to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, that he might make the mess go away by issuing Netanyahu a blanket pardon.

In the wake of Trump’s self-congratulatory euphoria, most Arab leaders fretted over how long Trump was likely to remain focused on the region. If he lets the ball drop, the conflict is likely to resume with even greater brutality than before.   

The major point in Trump’s speech to the Knesset was captured in his declaration that the ceasefire marks a “historic dawn of a new era in the Middle East.” The hyperbole can be excused as triumphalist rhetoric, but the contention that a momentary ceasefire marks the beginning of a stable peace brings back memories of George W. Bush’s infamous speech announcing the end of the Iraq war in 2003. 

Standing in front of a banner declaring “Mission Accomplished” on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, Bush also thought the war was over. But far from over, it was just beginning. The Iraq war dragged on through 2011 and, by the time it had finished, resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 US servicemen. Another 32,000 were wounded, and more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. The cost to US taxpayers has been estimated at a trillion dollars.  

In the wake of Trump’s self-congratulatory euphoria, most Arab leaders fretted over how long Trump was likely to remain focused on the region. If he lets the ball drop, the conflict is likely to resume with even greater brutality than before. 

Learning the Wrong Lessons?  

An even more serious concern is that Trump’s enthusiasm over his momentary success may lead him to make wrong decisions in future conflicts. The US Army maintains a program dubbed “Lessons Learned.” In the case of Gaza, Trump may have learned the wrong lessons.

To begin with, Trump made it clear to the Knesset that he is extremely impressed by the success of his special envoy and good friend, real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff. The obvious conclusion appeared to be that a savvy deal-making businessman can prove more effective at complex negotiations than the professional diplomats at the US State Department, who have been inhibited by decades of experience. 

There is no question that Witkoff did a competent job at communicating with the major players in securing a ceasefire, but it also seems very likely that the truce was due more to the total destruction of Gaza brought on by Israel’s massive bombing campaign than to anything that Witkoff had to say.  

According to Reuters, the campaign of revenge against Gaza has resulted in the death of more than 67,000 Palestinian civilians in just a little more than two years. A third of the civilians killed were under the age of 18. More than 20,000 were children. None of them had any demonstrable connection to the October 7 massacre. At that rate, each living Israeli hostage who was returned was matched by 1,000 Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs. It didn’t need Steve Witkoff to convince the world that a ceasefire was necessary. The mathematics of the situation did the trick.  

The advantage that experienced State Department diplomats have over canny businessmen like Witkoff and Trump is that they are more likely to know what to expect next. Trump may see a future Gaza as a rosy, peaceful Eden in which everyone can make money from newly available Mediterranean real estate. The experienced diplomat knows that reality is certain to be more complicated than that. 

At the same time that the 20 hostages were released, Israel was forced to release nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. The deal, which Trump boasted about, required that this latter release be carried out without fanfare, and barely noticed by the public. But each released prisoner constitutes a potential time bomb that may go off sometime in the future. Many appeared to be in bad physical shape; some claim to have been tortured. At least 250 were prisoners whom Israel had specifically considered to be a serious threat. 

A convincing example of the threat a badly mistreated prisoner poses is Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas commander who organized the October 7 massacre. Sinwar spent 20 years in an Israeli prison. The experience taught him what he needed to know in order to create the current crisis. 

A Fraught Future

Regardless of the ceasefire and any peace settlement in the future, Israel has severely damaged itself by engaging in behavior that has isolated it from much of the Western world. The Israel Defense Forces, which once had earned enormous respect, has been coarsened and its image to a large extent has been altered from a protector of the homeland to that of a harbinger of violent death. 

Trump’s speech to the Knesset made it clear that Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and the rest of Trump’s team were thinking primarily in terms of dealmaking. If they thought about the future at all, it was in terms of future profits and million-dollar building schemes. Anything else was not their concern. It is of enormous concern, however, to the rest of the region.  

Netanyahu’s campaign has also led Israel to cut itself off from what has been happening in the world by sealing itself in what amounts to an information bubble. Israeli bombers wreaked havoc on Gaza, but the Israeli public rarely got to see the full extent of the damage. Foreign reporters and international news agencies have been forbidden entry into Gaza, and Israeli soldiers have even shot at reporters who tried to cover what was happening. 

All of that has had a corrosive effect on Israeli society, and that is exactly what Sinwar intended to accomplish when he planned and launched the October 7 massacre. Because Israel’s public has been largely kept in the dark about what the IDF has actually been doing, most Israelis cannot understand why the rest of the world is upset.

Trump’s speech to the Knesset made it clear that Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and the rest of Trump’s team were thinking primarily in terms of dealmaking. If they thought about the future at all, it was in terms of future profits and million-dollar building schemes. Anything else was not their concern. It is of enormous concern, however, to the rest of the region.  

The fact is that, regardless of the current euphoria, the future still looks pretty bleak. The fate of more than 2 million Palestinians is still undetermined. Ceasefire or no ceasefire, Israel cannot simply make them vanish. Refugee camps are incubators for terrorists of the future. Sinwar was a product of a refugee camp, and the injustice of it filled his heart with hatred and turned him into a killing machine. Many more are waiting in the production line. 

Even without the concentrated populations in refugee camps, Israel’s destruction of schools, hospitals, and basic infrastructure will set in motion counterforces that Israel will need to contend with in the future.  

A child who grows up without education has few options for the future except to turn to crime or join a warlord putting together an armed gang. The Middle East is full of them. Pulling the trigger on a gun requires no education, at least not the kind that is learned in school. Israel has no answer to that looming storm, except to prepare itself for continuous warfare. 

The ‘Peace President’ Talks War

Trump’s apparent conviction that dealmaking is all you need is one thing. His ideas concerning the US military are something else. In his speech, Trump boasted that he had asked US generals in Washington how long it would take to rout out ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). Trump said he asked the same question of Air Force Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, who said he could do the job in four weeks. 

Caine’s primary experience was as an F-16 pilot. He never had the command management training that is legally required for promotion to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That didn’t bother Trump, who had met Caine at a conservative political rally and was smitten by his nickname. When Trump picked Caine to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Caine allegedly said, “I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’d kill for you, sir.” That cemented the relationship. 

In his speech to the Knesset, Trump compared Caine’s go-getter attitude to what he referred to as the “TV generals” at the Pentagon, who, Trump is convinced, obviously have trouble getting the job done. All of that sounds fine, except that the threats the military faces today require more than simply shooting at people or imposing a lightning victory. To be effective, military commanders need to understand the complex issues that made a shooting war inevitable to begin with. 

The Pentagon has made considerable progress in that direction. Hamas may be finished as an organization, but some of the people who made it work are still there, and the forces that motivated them have not disappeared. Shakespeare said that a rose by any other name smells as sweet. Unless its grievances are dealt with, Hamas will reconstitute itself. The name may change, but the threat is likely to be just as deadly. 

The ancient Greeks understood that. Their metaphor for the phenomenon was the many-headed Hydra. You cut off a head, and two more appeared in its place. Hercules wrestled the Libyan giant Antaeus, whose mother was the Earth goddess Gaia. Every time Hercules threw Antaeus to the ground, he drew more strength from his mother. Finally, Hercules defeated Antaeus by holding him aloft in the air. Victory is rarely simple. 

Trump doesn’t see that, and his momentary victory and the corresponding adulation that followed the ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza may further fuel his personal conviction that the experts don’t really know what they are talking about. 

It’s a dangerous world out there, and a president who fails to understand its complexity makes it even more dangerous. Gaza is not over yet.