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What Trump’s Peace Plan Gets Wrong About Hamas
Hamas fighters on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Majdi Fathi via Reuters Connect
Despite his successful effort to release the hostages, Donald Trump’s plan for peace in the Middle East is destined to fail. Among other things, the American peace plan fails to understand basic Hamas ideas of death and time. Without a correct understanding, Israel will be left hanging in the wind, directionless, desperately fighting an interminable and unwinnable war.
Truth is exculpatory. Contrary to Trump’s hopes, there is no credible outlook for genuine peace in the region. Though Palestinian violence has once again been turned on itself, including the extra-judicial Hamas executions of “collaborators,” longer-term consequences will imperil Israel. Soon, the newly-released Hamas criminals will prepare not just for “ordinary” terror attacks, but also for calibrated escalations to chemical, biological or nuclear (radiological) weapons.
There is more. Any future war between Israel and its jihadi adversaries would have little or nothing to do with Palestinian sovereignty or self-determination. To wit, the October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians was detached from any rational plan for a Palestinian state. This mega-crime’s only plausible motive was debasement and lascivious satisfaction.
While veiled from ordinary assessments of politicians, pundits and strategists, the most authentically animating motives for jihadi terror stem from primal needs to overcome personal mortality. It follows, ipso facto, that visible struggles between the Jewish State and Hamas et. al. are generally reflections of much deeper issues.
Rejecting the syntax and generalities of Trump’s “Board of Peace,” Israeli planners need to inquire: What are actual jihadi goals? If Hamas and kindred terror groups seek “power over death,” how should Israel respond? This query is urgent because the jihadist path to immortality is expressly linked to “terror-sacrifice” and “martyrdom.”
For Israel, the potentially existential threat stems from an adversary that regards violence against Jews and the Jewish State as “sacred.” Today, in the bewildering cacophony of a demonstrably false peace, Jerusalem should distinguish Middle Eastern reality from shadows of reality. To do this capably, three basic concepts will need to be examined in tandem: death, time, and immortality.
What can these three interrelated concepts teach Israeli planners about the force-multiplying perils of Trump’s agreement? To answer thoughtfully, refined thinkers should undertake disciplined inquiries at the individual level, i.e., the level of microcosm. Though an illogical assurance, the promise of “power over death” offers jihadists the greatest imaginable reward for faith-based destructiveness. Significantly, this reward pertains to Islamist adversaries both as direct beneficiaries and reciprocal benefactors.
But first there must be a prior order of business. A two-part question will need to be raised and answered:
How can any one individual, terror group, or state gain “power over death,” and what can such presumed gain have to do with Israel’s fate?
On occasion, as Israelis ought already to have learned, the search for “power over death” demands an explosive end to the jihadist’s life on earth. Although revered by Hamas as “martyrs,” virtually all jihadi leaders strive more-or-less desperately to avoid personal death. As recent facts will affirm, these openly-unheroic commanders are usually “willing” to endure Israeli military retaliations while residing in Qatari five-star hotels. For such senior commanders, it would be difficult to contest, life amid secular affluence remains preferable to a martyr’s existence in asphyxiating tunnels.
All jihadists welcome the “sacrifice” of “unbelievers.” On October 7, 2023, Hamas and kindred perpetrators raped children as well as adults, males as well as females. They burned alive more than a dozen “enemies of the faith.” To support these “battles,” and later engagements with IDF forces, absent Hamas leaders sent large sums of money to “heroic martyr’” families. Often, as a correlative benefit duly sanctified by Islamic clerics, these families were gifted “collective immortality.”
On such matters, history deserves pride of place. In his Lecture on Politics (1896), German historian Heinrich von Treitschke observed: “Individual man sees in his own country the realization of his earthly immortality.” Earlier, German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel opined in Philosophy of Right (1820) that the state represents “the march of God in the world.” Such widely-believed views link loyalty to the state with the promise of “power over death.” In world politics, this is always a monumental promise, but one recognizable only in the eternal shadows of death and time. In the issue at hand, Hegelian and von Treitschke linkages apply equally to an aspiring state (i.e., “Palestine”).
Though it is an incomparable promise, personal immortality still represents an unseemly and disfiguring goal. This judgment owes both to the promise’s calming expression of scientific nonsense (“An immortal person is a contradiction in terms,” reminds philosopher Emmanuel Levinas) and to the fact that any search for life everlasting can foster war, terrorism, and genocide. Looking beyond Trump “remedies,” Israel’s task should be not to remove adversarial hopes for personal and collective immortality, but to “de-link” this search from variously barbarous behaviors.
In Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time (1952), Karl Jaspers comments: “There is something inside all of us that yearns not for reason but for mystery – not for penetrating clear thought but for the whisperings of the irrational….” The most seductive of these irrational whisperings are ones that offer to confer some otherwise unattainable “power over death.” It is somewhere within the twisted criteria of such a “selection” (an appropriate term made infamous at Auschwitz) that rapidly expanding acts of terror-violence can be spawned. This is because any jihadi- promised power over death requires the “sacrifice” of specific “others.”
To deal satisfactorily with both immediate and long-term security threats, Israeli policy-makers will have to understand the most elemental sources of war, terror, and genocide. These sources, which generally evade analytic scrutiny, are rooted in complex intersections of death, time, and immortality. In the end, ipso facto, it is at the conceptual or theoretical level that Israeli scholars and policy-makers must fashion pragmatic operational responses to jihadist violence.
Donald Trump will not save Israel. The Hamas/jihadi terror threat has not been eliminated or reduced. In significant measure, this continuing vulnerability is explicable by enemy ideas of time. Ultimately, it is to “sacred time” rather than “profane time” that jihadi criminals will turn for confirming chronologies of life-everlasting.
Prof. Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and scholarly articles dealing with international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. In Israel, Prof. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon). His 12th and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018).
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Trump Cancels Envoys’ Pakistan Trip, in Blow to Hopes for Iran War Breakthrough
US President Donald Trump speaks on the day he honors reigning Major League Soccer (MLS) champion Inter Miami CF players and team officials with an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, March 5, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
President Donald Trump canceled a trip by two US envoys to Iran war mediator Pakistan on Saturday, dealing a new setback to peace prospects after Iran’s foreign minister departed Islamabad after speaking only to Pakistani officials.
While peace talks failed to materialize Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his troops to “forcefully” attack Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, his office said, further testing a three-week ceasefire.
Trump told reporters in Florida that he decided to call off the planned visit by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner because the talks in Islamabad involved too much travel and expense, and Iran’s latest peace offer was not good enough for him.
Before boarding Air Force One on Saturday for a return flight to Washington, Trump said Iran had improved an offer to resolve the conflict after he canceled the visit, “but not enough.”
In a social media post, Trump also wrote there was “tremendous infighting and confusion” within Iran’s leadership.
“Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also, we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!” he posted on Truth Social.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi earlier left the Pakistani capital without any sign of a breakthrough in talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other senior officials.
Araqchi later described his visit to Pakistan as “very fruitful,” adding in a social media post that he had “shared Iran’s position concerning (a) workable framework to permanently end the war on Iran. Have yet to see if the U.S. is truly serious about diplomacy”.
Iranian media reported that Araqchi had flown to Oman’s capital Muscat, saying he will meet with senior officials to “discuss and exchange views on bilateral relations and regional developments”.
Sharif wrote in a post on X that he spoke with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian about the regional security situation and told him that Pakistan was committed to serving “as an honest and sincere facilitator — working tirelessly to advance durable peace and lasting stability.”
Tehran has ruled out a new round of direct talks with the United States and an Iranian diplomatic source said his country would not accept Washington’s “maximalist demands.”
IRAN AND US AT AN IMPASSE
Washington and Tehran are at an impasse as Iran has largely closed the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments, while the US blocks Iran’s oil exports.
The conflict, in which a ceasefire is in force, began with US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran on February 28. Iran has since carried out strikes against Israel, US bases and Gulf states, and the war has pushed up energy prices to multi-year highs, stoking inflation and darkening global growth prospects.
Araqchi “explained our country’s principled positions regarding the latest developments related to the ceasefire and the complete end of the imposed war against Iran,” said a statement on the minister’s official Telegram account.
Asked about Tehran’s reservations over US positions in the talks, an Iranian diplomatic source in Islamabad told Reuters: “Principally, Iranian side will not accept maximalist demands.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had said the US had seen some progress from the Iranian side in recent days and hoped more would come over the weekend, while Vice President JD Vance was ready to travel to Pakistan as well.
Vance led a first round of unsuccessful talks with Iran in Islamabad earlier this month.
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Hezbollah Says Ceasefire ‘Meaningless’ as Fighting Continues in South
Israeli military vehicles and soldiers in a village in southern Lebanon as the Israeli army operates in it as seen from the Israeli side of the border, April 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ayal Margolin
Lebanon’s Hezbollah said a US-mediated ceasefire in the war with Israel was meaningless a day after it was extended for three weeks, as Lebanese authorities reported two people killed by an Israeli strike and Hezbollah downed an Israeli drone.
US President Donald Trump announced the three-week extension on Thursday after hosting Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors at the White House. The ceasefire agreement between the governments of Lebanon and Israel had been due to expire on Sunday.
While the ceasefire has led to a significant reduction in hostilities, Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have continued to trade blows in southern Lebanon, where Israel has kept soldiers in a self-declared “buffer zone.”
Responding to the extension, Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Fayyad said “it is essential to point out that the ceasefire is meaningless in light of Israel’s insistence on hostile acts, including assassinations, shelling, and gunfire” and its demolition of villages and towns in the south.
“Every Israeli attack… gives the resistance the right to a proportionate response,” he added.
Hezbollah is not a party to the ceasefire agreement, and has strongly objected to Lebanon’s face-to-face contacts with Israel.
BUFFER ZONE
The April 16 agreement does not require Israeli troops to withdraw from the belt of southern Lebanon seized during the war. The zone extends 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 miles) into Lebanon.
Israel says the buffer zone aims to protect northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah, which fired hundreds of rockets at Israel during the war.
Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when the group opened fire in support of Iran in the regional war. The ceasefire in Lebanon emerged separately from Washington’s efforts to resolve its conflict with Tehran, though Iran had called for Lebanon to be included in any broader truce.
Nearly 2,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since March 2, the Lebanese health ministry says.
ISRAELI MILITARY WARNS RESIDENTS TO LEAVE TOWN
Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli airstrike killed two people in the southern village of Touline on Friday.
Hezbollah shot down an Israeli drone, the group and the Israeli military said. Hezbollah identified it as a Hermes 450 and said it had downed it with a surface-to-air missile.
An Israeli drone was heard circling above Beirut throughout the day on Friday, Reuters reporters said.
The Israeli military warned residents of the southern town of Deir Aames to leave their homes immediately, saying it planned to act against “Hezbollah activities” there.
Deir Aames is located north of the area occupied by Israeli forces, and it was the first time Israel had issued such a warning since the ceasefire came into force on April 16. Posted on social media, the Israeli warning gave no details of the activities it said Hezbollah was conducting in the town.
The Israeli military also said it had intercepted a drone prior to its crossing into Israeli territory, and that sirens were sounded in line with protocol.
WAR-WEARY RESIDENTS SEEK END TO FIGHTING
The continued fighting has angered war-weary Lebanese, who say they want to see a genuine ceasefire put a full halt to violence.
“What’s this? Is this called a ceasefire? Or is this mocking (people’s) intelligence?” said Naem Saleh, a 73-year-old owner of a newsstand in Beirut.
Residents of northern Israel had mostly returned to daily life, but expressed pessimism about the longevity of the ceasefire with Lebanon.
“I believe that the ceasefire is so fragile, and unfortunately it won’t stand long, in my opinion,” said Eliad Eini, a resident of Nahariya, which lies just 10 km (6 miles) from the border with Lebanon.
On Wednesday, Israeli strikes killed at least five people in the south, including a journalist.
Israel’s Ambassador to Washington Yechiel Leiter, in his opening remarks at Thursday’s talks, said “Lebanon should acknowledge the temporary presence of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and the right of Israel to defend itself from a hostile force that is firing on the population.”
Lebanon’s Ambassador to the United States Nada Moawad, in a written statement sent to Reuters, called for the ceasefire to be fully respected and said it would allow the necessary conditions for meaningful negotiations.
Lebanon has said it aims to secure the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from its territory in broader talks with Israel at a later stage.
Trump said on Thursday that he looked forward to hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the near future, and said there was “a great chance” the two countries would reach a peace agreement this year.
Hezbollah attacks killed two civilians in Israel after March 2, while 15 Israeli soldiers have died in Lebanon since then, Israel says.
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Only Five Ships Pass Through Strait of Hormuz in 24 hours
FILE PHOTO: A map showing the Strait of Hormuz is seen in this illustration taken March 23, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Only five ships, including one Iranian oil products tanker, have passed through the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours, Friday shipping data showed, after Iran seized two container ships this week and the US continues to blockade Iranian ports.
Shipping traffic passing through the crucial waterway at the entrance to the Gulf during an uneasy ceasefire between Washington and Tehran represents a fraction of the average 140 daily passages before the Iran war began on February 28.
“For most shipping companies, they will need a stable ceasefire and assurances from both sides of the conflict that the Strait of Hormuz is safe to transit,” said Jakob Larsen, chief safety and security officer at shipping association BIMCO.
“In the meantime, shipping will be restricted to using routes close to Iran and Oman. Due to their confined nature, these routes cannot safely accommodate the normal volumes of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz,” Larsen added.
The Iranian-flagged oil products tanker Niki, which is subject to US sanctions, was among the few vessels that sailed out of the strait with no destination listed, Kpler analysis and tracking data on the MarineTraffic platform showed on Friday.
It was unclear what would happen if it continued to sail further east towards the blockade line imposed by the US Navy.
Nearly two months after the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran, there is little sign of peace talks resuming.
Container shipping group Hapag-Lloyd said on Friday that one of its ships has crossed the strait but did not provide any information on the circumstances or timing.
The Comoros-flagged supertanker Helga arrived at an offshore oil loading terminal in Iraq’s southern Basra port on Friday, the second vessel to reach Iraq since the strait’s closure.
Iran’s use of a swarm of small, fast boats to seize two container ships near the strait on Wednesday has heightened concerns among many shipping and oil companies.
“The latest seizures make clear, even an ‘open’ Strait of Hormuz is not a safe Strait of Hormuz for seafarers, ships and cargo,” Peter Sand, chief analyst with ocean and air freight intelligence platform Xeneta, said in a note.
Between April 22 and early April 23, seven vessels transited the strait, six of which were involved in Iran-related trade, analysis from Lloyd’s List Intelligence showed.
The closure of the strait has disrupted a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies and triggered a global energy crisis.
Hundreds of ships and 20,000 seafarers remained stranded inside the Gulf with war risk insurers and oil companies watching for any sign that the risks may have eased so they can prepare to sail through.