President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Gaza conflict is not a peace proposal; it is a declaration of war on strategic delusion. To the architects of decline in Washington and Brussels, it will appear to be a reasonable offer of reconstruction, aid, and autonomy. They will wring their hands in frustration when it fails, but they miss the point entirely. The plan’s true genius lies not in its potential for success, but in its predetermined failure. It is a final, clarifying test designed to unmask Israel’s enemies, expose their patrons, and provide justification for the only policy that can bring a lasting peace to the region.
Lasting peace is not the product of a shared understanding; it is imposed upon a defeated enemy whose will to fight is broken.
That policy is grounded in a simple, historically undeniable truth: Conflicts do not end through negotiation or compromise when one side is an implacable, ideological foe. Lasting peace is not the product of a shared understanding; it is imposed upon a defeated enemy whose will to fight is broken. The path to making Japan and Germany peaceful democracies after World War II required their unconditional surrender and societal transformation. This is the necessary, if brutal, reality that a generation of Western policymakers has refused to accept.
On its face, Trump’s proposal presents Hamas with a golden bridge to surrender. It offers a ceasefire, a massive prisoner exchange, amnesty for fighters who disarm, and a multibillion-dollar international effort to rebuild Gaza. It is an off-ramp from a war Hamas started and cannot win, a superficially attractive alternative to its own destruction. To the Western mind, addicted to the fantasy that all conflicts are simply misunderstandings that dialogue can solve, this will seem like an offer Hamas cannot refuse.
But this is the failure of imagination that led to the October 7, 2023, massacre. Hamas is not a rational actor pursuing negotiable political goals; it is an ideological death cult, a totalitarian movement whose entire identity is predicated on a genocidal rejection of Israel’s existence. While its leaders now claim they will review the plan in “good faith,” the rejectionist axis has already shown its hand. Its allies like Islamic Jihad have denounced the proposal, and Iran’s proxies have called it a “plot.” The Trump plan demands that Hamas disarm, renounce its power, and accept a reality of peaceful coexistence. For Hamas, this is not a compromise; it is an act of suicide. Their rejection is a certainty, and it is this certainty that gives the plan its true value.
When Hamas says no, it will place its primary patron, Qatar, in an impossible position. For years, the Qataris have played a double game, presenting themselves to the West as indispensable mediators while simultaneously acting as the chief financial patrons and ideological protectors of Hamas and the global Muslim Brotherhood. With a broad coalition of Arab and Muslim foreign ministers publicly welcoming the American effort, the pressure on Qatar to deliver a compliant Hamas is immense. Its failure to do so will be a global humiliation, exposing it as either unwilling or unable to control its proxy. This is the moment to finally break the Hamas-Qatar axis.
The conflict persists not for a lack of Israeli concessions ... but because of a Palestinian commitment to Israel’s destruction.
Hamas’s “no” will be the most clarifying moment in this conflict since the massacre itself. It will strip away the last excuse for the West’s moral cowardice. It will prove, once and for all, that the conflict persists not for a lack of Israeli concessions—which even opposition leader Yair Lapid now supports—but because of a Palestinian commitment to Israel’s destruction. When Hamas rejects this final, generous offer of surrender, it will provide Israel with the moral clarity and the international legitimacy to deliver the only alternative. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to “finish the job” will no longer be a threat; it will be a necessity, and one with Trump’s “full backing.”
This plan is not about peace processing; it is about ending the peace process, a strategic fraud that has rewarded Palestinian rejectionism for thirty years. By forcing Hamas to reject a path to life, the Trump plan paves the way for the group’s necessary demise. It is the final act in a theater of the absurd, and its failure will be the curtain-raiser for a new and more realistic order—one built not on the shifting sands of diplomatic delusion, but on the bedrock of an Israeli victory.
