By Ashok Nilakantan Ayer
NEW YORK: As Israel marks the second anniversary of the October 7 2023 starting of Israel-Hamas war , the cruel arithmetic of war has produced a sobering equation: 1,200 Israeli lives lost in Hamas’s brutal assault have been answered with over 67,000 Palestinian deaths, most of them civilians.
Now, as indirect negotiations as a follow up of Trump’s peace plan on Gaza , are on in Egypt, the question is whether Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan can succeed where decades of diplomacy have failed—or whether it represents merely another hopeless dawn in the world’s most intractable conflict.
The transformation wrought by October 7, 2023, and its aftermath extends far beyond the grim body count. What began as a shocking terrorist attack—Hamas fighters on gliders descending upon a music festival, militants seizing kibbutzim along the Gaza border—has metastasized into a regional conflagration that has fundamentally altered Middle Eastern geopolitics. Israel has struck Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised would “change the Middle East.” That promise, at least, has been kept, though not in ways that bring comfort to anyone involved.
Gaza itself has been reduced to a humanitarian catastrophe of such magnitude that comparisons fail. More than two million people—the enclave’s entire population—have been displaced, many multiple times. Famine has been declared in parts of the territory. The physical infrastructure of civil society—schools, universities, hospitals—lies in ruins. As Ahmed Benchemsi of Human Rights Watch puts it starkly: “It’s hell on earth.”
The human stories behind these statistics defy adequate description. Doaa Basem al-Masri, a pharmacist who graduated with honours and dreamed of studying cancer research abroad, now shares a two-by-two-meter space in a converted school with nine family members. “There is no longer a university, no home, no country, nothing left of these dreams,” she tells NBC News. “We are only struggling through our days to survive.”
Into this maelstrom steps Trump, whose confidence in brokering Middle East peace has rarely been troubled by the region’s complexities. “I think we’re going to have a deal,” he announced on Monday. “I’m pretty sure.” This certainty, characteristic of Trump’s approach to negotiation, now confronts the stubborn realities that have confounded more experienced diplomats for generations.
The framework under discussion in Sharm el-Sheikh involves a hostage-for-prisoner exchange: approximately 20 Israeli hostages still believed alive in Gaza (along with the remains of 25 others) would be swapped for 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and 1,700 Gazans detained during the war. Trump’s plan demands Hamas disarm and relinquish any role in Gaza’s governance—longstanding Israeli positions that Hamas has consistently rejected.
The most contentious issue remains Israeli military withdrawal. While Hamas has historically demanded complete Israeli withdrawal as a precondition for any agreement, Trump’s plan would leave Israeli forces positioned deeper inside Gaza than previous negotiating frameworks allowed. According to Egyptian officials, negotiators are now discussing “a security mechanism that would ensure a complete Israeli withdrawal,” suggesting some flexibility on this crucial point.
Yet optimism must be tempered by experience. As Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, observes: “We have been here before. Netanyahu will not end his war in Gaza without real pressure by Trump.” The Israeli prime minister faces fierce opposition from far-right coalition partners who have threatened to dissolve his government if he agrees to a deal. Conversely, he confronts mounting domestic pressure from families of hostages and an Israeli public exhausted by two years of conflict.
The war has profoundly reconfigured international alignments. Israel’s initial wave of global sympathy—strong even in quarters historically critical of Israeli policy—has dissipated as the civilian toll mounted. What Yossi Mekelberg of Chatham House calls Israel’s international “isolation” reflects a widespread view that, as horrific as October 7th was, it cannot justify the scale of destruction visited upon Gaza’s civilian population.
European leaders, marking the anniversary with expressions of solidarity for Israeli victims, simultaneously call for immediate ceasefire and hostage release. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of “unspeakable horror,” while British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned “brutal, cold-blooded torture.” Yet both emphasized the urgent need for humanitarian aid and movement toward a two-state solution—positions that implicitly criticize Israeli conduct of the war.
The United States has provided $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel since October 7th, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project, with another $12.3 billion spent on U.S. regional military operations. Israel’s entire combat aircraft inventory—75 F-15s, 196 F-16s, and 39 F-35s—comes from American manufacturers, making the United States inescapably complicit in how those weapons are employed. This raises uncomfortable questions about American leverage: if $34 billion in aid and military support cannot secure Israeli compliance with U.S. diplomatic objectives, what kind of “pressure” can Trump realistically apply?
Regional powers watch nervously. Saudi Arabia, which had been preparing to normalize relations with Israel before the attacks, has watched its criticism of Israeli actions grow louder even as its main rival Iran and its proxies have been significantly weakened. Qatar, the tiny but wealthy emirate that has faced missiles from both Iran and Israel, received an unprecedented pledge of U.S. military defense from Trump—a commitment that reshapes regional security architecture.
These Gulf states are, as NBC’s Keir Simmons notes, “praying” Trump’s plan works. They have considerable skin in the game: continued conflict threatens the fragile détente emerging between Israel and Arab states, undermines economic development plans, and risks drawing them into a broader confrontation they desperately wish to avoid.
For Israelis, the trauma remains immediate. “Israelis are still there on October 7, still in the trauma,” observes Mekelberg. Families like the Goldberg-Polins, whose son Hersh was murdered by Hamas after 11 months in captivity, and the Davids, whose son Evyatar remains a hostage, live in suspended agony. Ilay David describes his existence: “It feels like I’m on the same day. It’s still October the 7th.”
Yet their Palestinian counterparts endure comparable anguish at vastly greater scale. Alaa Abu Daraz has been displaced ten times in two years with her children, living on the streets. “We have spent two years in humiliation,” she says, facing winter without basic necessities.
Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman, Majed al-Ansari, counsels against premature optimism or pessimism: “It is too early.” The obstacles lie not in approving principles—both sides profess willingness to end the conflict—but in implementation details that have historically proven insurmountable.
Can Trump succeed where others failed? His transactional approach and relationships with regional leaders provide some advantages. His willingness to break with diplomatic convention might enable creative solutions. Yet the fundamental issues remain: Israeli security concerns versus Palestinian sovereignty; the fate of Gaza’s governance; the rights of return and reconstruction; the path toward or away from a two-state solution.
What makes this moment potentially different is exhaustion. Hamas has been militarily devastated, its leadership decimated, its tunnel network destroyed. Israel has achieved many of its military objectives but finds victory hollow without hostage return and at tremendous cost to international standing. Both sides face domestic populations desperate for respite. Whether that exhaustion proves sufficient to overcome decades of mutual grievance and distrust remains the essential question.
As negotiations continue in Sharm el-Sheikh with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff joining discussions, the world watches with wary hope. Two years of bloodshed demand more than another failed attempt at peace. The question is whether any diplomatic framework, however creatively constructed, can bridge chasms this deep or heal wounds this raw. The answer will determine not just the fate of Israelis and Palestinians, but the trajectory of an entire region for years to come. (IPA Service)
