Ceasefire. Nice work! Peace? Not so fast...
B. Jay Cooper credits Trump for the Middle East ceasefire and the hostage returns, but says lasting peace needs Hamas disarmament, viable Gaza governance, Israeli concessions and rebuilding. A durable settlement remains uncertain.
P resident Trump rightfully is getting credit for the ceasefire and return of hostages in the Middle East. Period, full stop.
Are the “3,000 years” of conflict over? Not so fast.
Trump Special Envoy Steve Witkoff made the right call to split negotiations into two parts – that got us to a ceasefire and hostage/prisoner exchange, not an easy task.
The more difficult work is the second half, especially getting Hamas to disarm and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to agree to some type of governance in Gaza that isn’t Israeli-dominant.
Trump said, among other things, “Like the USA right now, it will be the golden age of Israel and the golden age of the Middle East.”
Spoken like the true showman he is.
Trump is, as he likes to say, a deal-maker. A guy who is transactional – someone who views interactions as a series of exchanges, expecting a tangible or immediate return for his contributions – sees everything as a deal. You get something, I get something. Has to be of equal value to each side, or at least of more value to his side. That isn’t necessarily how you make peace, or win a Nobel Peace Prize.
President Trump, we must never forget, is a narcissist, a man who thinks primarily (only) about himself. He also thinks like a television producer – in 30-minute episodes. How will the pictures look? What’s the narrative? How do I look my best?
On to the next episode, new plot, new expectations.
He was greeted in the Middle East as a hero. And in many ways, he deserved that. But it cannot be equated with total success in the Middle East. Yes, the hostages are home, thank goodness. The visuals of the families greeting their loved ones indeed are priceless.
President Trump may have been the only recent president to be able to hold Netanyahu to account as he did. The only one who could bomb Iran as he did and get away with it. Those are among the steps it took to get to a ceasefire and get the Arab world mostly on his side for this deal, a ceasefire with potential for more.
Peace in the Middle East will come at a higher cost. Rebuilding Gaza, using funds donated by wealthy Arab countries, is another thing, too. As wealthy as they are, they aren’t going to donate billions without a higher payback than peace with Israel.
Hamas (full name: Islamic Resistance Movement) is not going to just lay down its arms. And they haven’t yet. That’s part of the second half of negotiations, just as is a full Israeli pullback from Gaza.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope this deal results in long-term peace for the Middle East. People there, on all sides, have suffered long enough.
Donald Trump, the dealmaker, got them to this point, and he deserves praise for that.
Getting to long-lasting peace is another deal altogether.
GOING FURTHER
Sources:
▪ This piece was first published in The Screaming Moderate and re-published in Europeans TODAY on 25 October 2025 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. | The author writes in a personal capacity.
▪ Cover: Dreamstime/Korwen.
