By Ibrahim BUNU
ibrahimbunu2520@gmail.com
There are wars that end when the guns fall silent.
And there are wars in which the silence of the guns merely creates the space for the next argument.
Gaza belongs to the second category.
The current confrontation surrounding America’s 15-point Gaza roadmap is therefore much bigger than a disagreement over the wording of a diplomatic document. Beneath the language of ceasefire, disarmament, withdrawal, reconstruction and international security lies a much older and much more difficult question:
Can Israel be persuaded to surrender military leverage before it is convinced that the threat which made that leverage necessary has permanently disappeared?
And on the other side:
Can Palestinians, particularly Hamas, be expected to surrender their principal military leverage before receiving an irreversible guarantee that Israeli forces will withdraw and that Palestinian political self-determination will eventually follow?
That is the knot.
America is attempting to untie it.
Israel is afraid that cutting the knot may be safer than untying it.
Hamas is afraid that surrendering the knot means surrendering its only bargaining power.
And Palestinians, caught beneath the weight of this strategic struggle, are asking a different question altogether:
When does the end of war finally become the beginning of freedom?
That is why Gaza’s 15-point roadmap deserves to be examined not merely as a peace proposal, but as a test of history, power, distrust and political imagination.
THE REAL DISPUTE IS NOT WHETHER THERE SHOULD BE PEACE
It is tempting to reduce the disagreement between Washington and Jerusalem to a simple headline:
America wants peace; Israel refuses.
That would be politically convenient.
It would also be analytically inadequate.
The United States and Israel remain extraordinarily close strategic partners. Their intelligence, military, diplomatic and technological relationships are deeply institutionalised.
The disagreement is therefore not fundamentally about whether Israel should be secure or whether Gaza should eventually become peaceful.
The disagreement is over how peace is reached, who moves first, who guarantees the agreement, and what political order emerges afterwards.
That distinction is crucial.
The American approach seeks to create a chain of reciprocal actions:
disarmament → withdrawal → international stabilisation → reconstruction → Palestinian administration → political transition.
Israel’s security logic is considerably more cautious:
disarmament → verification → destruction or removal of military capability → credible security guarantees → substantial withdrawal.
Hamas’s logic points in the opposite direction:
Israeli withdrawal and cessation of attacks → guarantees → negotiated disarmament.
Three actors.
Three sequencing preferences.
One territory.
And almost no trust.
That is the architecture of the deadlock.
THE 15 POINTS ARE NOT THE WHOLE PEACE PLAN
Another important distinction must be made.
The 15-point document should not be treated as if it suddenly appeared from nowhere. It belongs to the wider American framework for ending the Gaza conflict and is principally concerned with implementation.
The larger architecture envisages a Gaza that is no longer governed militarily by Hamas, that becomes demilitarised, that receives international security assistance, that is reconstructed and that eventually returns to Palestinian civilian administration.
The framework also contains language pointing towards Palestinian self-determination and, under specified conditions, a possible pathway toward statehood.
On paper, that sounds like a remarkable convergence of objectives.
Israel wants Hamas removed as a military threat.
America wants Hamas removed as a military and governing authority.
Arab states want the war ended and Gaza reconstructed.
Palestinians want the destruction stopped and political control returned to Palestinians.
The international community wants a sustainable settlement.
So why is the plan struggling?
Because the hardest part of diplomacy is rarely agreeing on the destination.
It is deciding who takes the first irreversible step toward it.
THE FIRST-STEP PROBLEM
Imagine two men standing on opposite sides of a bridge that has collapsed between them.
Each is told:
“Take one step forward and the other side will follow.”
Neither believes the promise.
Israel looks at Gaza and remembers October 7.
Hamas looks at Israel and remembers decades of occupation, military operations, blockade and the destruction of Gaza.
Both sides therefore interpret the other’s demand for trust as a request for vulnerability.
Israel asks:
“Why should we withdraw before we know Hamas is permanently incapable of attacking us?”
Hamas asks:
“Why should we surrender our weapons before we know Israel will actually withdraw?”
The American proposal attempts to answer:
“Neither side needs to surrender everything first; both sides should move simultaneously under international supervision.”
That is intellectually attractive.
But simultaneous movement only works when the mechanism enforcing it is stronger than the incentive to cheat.
That is the problem.
WHY ISRAEL’S MEMORY OF 2005 MATTERS
To understand Israel’s position today, one must understand the psychological importance of the 2005 Gaza disengagement.
Israel removed its settlements and permanent military presence from inside Gaza.
From the Israeli perspective, withdrawal did not lead to the peaceful, demilitarised territory that many hoped might emerge.
Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006.
Violent conflict between Hamas and Fatah followed.
In 2007, Hamas seized control of Gaza.
Over subsequent years, Hamas and other armed groups developed increasingly sophisticated military capabilities.
Rockets were fired into Israel.
Tunnels became an important part of Palestinian militant strategy.
Repeated rounds of warfare followed.
Then came October 7, 2023.
For many Israelis, the historical lesson became brutally simple:
Withdrawal without demilitarisation can create strategic danger rather than peace.
Palestinians understandably read the same history differently.
They point to the blockade, restrictions on Gaza, continuing Israeli military dominance over Palestinian life, the failure of the peace process and the absence of Palestinian sovereignty.
Both narratives exist.
But when analysing Netanyahu’s current position, the Israeli narrative cannot simply be wished away.
For the Israeli security establishment, October 7 turned an argument about risk into an existential political memory.
OCTOBER 7 CHANGED THE MEANING OF SECURITY
October 7 was not merely another round of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
It represented a profound failure of Israel’s assumptions about deterrence, intelligence and containment.
Hamas-led fighters crossed the Gaza border, killing approximately 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures cited in international reporting.
The psychological consequences were immense.
For years, Israel had attempted to manage Hamas as a dangerous but containable adversary.
October 7 shattered that assumption.
The lesson many Israelis drew was not:
“We need a better ceasefire.”
It was:
“A hostile armed organisation cannot be permitted to retain the capability to launch another strategic attack.”
That is why Netanyahu’s demand for complete disarmament is not merely negotiating theatre.
It is connected to the post-October-7 transformation of Israeli security thinking.
Israel no longer wants to gamble that deterrence will work tomorrow simply because it worked yesterday.
The problem is that absolute certainty is almost impossible in asymmetric warfare.
And that brings us back to the question of verification.
WHAT DOES “DISARMED” ACTUALLY MEAN?
This is perhaps the most underestimated question in the entire roadmap.
Disarming Hamas is not simply a matter of collecting rifles.
What happens to:
* rockets?
* explosives?
* weapons factories?
* tunnels?
* command centres?
* communications networks?
* hidden weapons depots?
* military intelligence infrastructure?
* trained fighters?
* financial networks?
* underground cells?
Suppose most heavy weapons disappear but thousands of rifles remain.
Is Hamas disarmed?
Suppose the rockets disappear but tunnels remain.
Is Hamas disarmed?
Suppose the military wing is formally dissolved but former fighters enter a new security institution.
Is Hamas disarmed?
Suppose Hamas surrenders visible weapons while keeping a clandestine reserve.
Who discovers it?
And who decides that the disarmament obligation has been fulfilled?
These are not semantic questions.
They are the difference between an agreement and a future war.
Israel therefore wants irreversible demilitarisation.
The American framework is attempting to create verified transition.
Those concepts overlap, but they are not identical.
THE TUNNELS MAKE THE PROBLEM EVEN HARDER
Gaza’s underground infrastructure makes traditional arms inspections extraordinarily difficult.
A rifle can be counted.
A rocket launcher can be destroyed.
A weapons factory can be located.
But a tunnel network can extend beneath civilian areas, roads, homes and buildings.
A hidden underground command structure may survive long after an organisation publicly declares that it has surrendered its military capability.
This is why Israel is unlikely to accept a simple declaration from Hamas that it has disarmed.
Israel will want evidence.
And evidence requires access.
Access requires security.
Security requires international forces or Israeli forces.
And once foreign troops begin searching Gaza for weapons, another political problem appears:
Who has sovereignty over the search?
That question leads directly into the next problem.
CAN AN INTERNATIONAL FORCE REPLACE ISRAELI MILITARY POWER?
America’s proposal depends heavily upon an international stabilisation architecture.
That is logical.
If Israel withdraws, something must fill the security vacuum.
The concept is straightforward:
Israeli forces leave → international forces enter → Palestinian police develop → Hamas loses independent military authority → reconstruction expands.
But Israel will inevitably ask:
What happens when an international soldier encounters a Hamas weapons cache?
What happens when militants refuse to surrender?
What happens when a tunnel is discovered?
What happens when a splinter group fires a rocket?
Will foreign troops enter combat?
Will their governments accept casualties?
Will they search homes?
Will they arrest armed fighters?
Will they destroy weapons?
Or will they eventually become another monitoring mission that reports violations without possessing the political will to stop them?
That is why Israeli scepticism toward international guarantees cannot simply be dismissed.
Peacekeeping is not the same thing as combat enforcement.
A force designed to observe peace may not have the political mandate or domestic support to impose peace.
And Israel is unlikely to surrender its freedom of action unless it believes that somebody else can reliably perform the security function.
THE UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTION OF ISRAEL’S MILITARY FREEDOM
This issue deserves much greater attention.
Suppose the international force is deployed.
Suppose Palestinian police are operating.
Suppose reconstruction has begun.
Then Israeli intelligence identifies a suspected Hamas weapons facility.
What happens?
Can Israel strike?
Can Israeli troops enter?
Must Israel obtain American approval?
Must it inform the international force?
What if foreign troops are standing nearby?
What if Israel believes the threat is immediate but Washington disagrees?
This is where peace diplomacy encounters national sovereignty.
Israel has historically insisted on maintaining the ability to act against threats it considers imminent.
An internationalised Gaza could restrict that freedom.
From Washington’s perspective, restricting unilateral Israeli military action may be necessary to convince Palestinians that the new order is genuinely different from the old one.
From Israel’s perspective, surrendering that freedom may mean surrendering the very capability that guarantees Israeli survival.
That is not a minor disagreement.
It is a clash between international order and national security doctrine.
THE PALESTINIAN FEAR IS THE MIRROR IMAGE
It would be intellectually dishonest to examine Israeli fears without examining Palestinian fears.
Imagine Hamas agrees to surrender its weapons.
Israel remains militarily present.
Then negotiations stall.
What happens?
What guarantees that Israel completes its withdrawal?
What guarantees that reconstruction continues?
What prevents permanent military control?
What guarantees Palestinian political authority?
What guarantees eventual self-determination?
That is why Hamas is reluctant to make irreversible concessions without reciprocal Israeli commitments.
From the Palestinian perspective, weapons may be regarded not only as instruments of war but also as bargaining leverage.
Hamas therefore fears:
“If we surrender everything first, we may have nothing left with which to enforce the promises made to us.”
This does not mean Hamas’s armed strategy is morally or politically justified.
It means the strategic calculation exists.
Understanding a position is not the same as endorsing it.
That distinction is essential in serious analysis.
THE PALESTINIAN STATE IS THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
The debate over Hamas’s weapons may actually be concealing an even larger disagreement.
What happens after Gaza is stabilised?
If Hamas disappears as Gaza’s governing force, who governs?
If the Palestinian Authority or a reformed Palestinian administration takes control, what is its political future?
If Gaza is connected to the West Bank politically, what happens next?
Does that eventually lead to a Palestinian state?
Does Israel accept that?
Do Israeli settlements remain?
What happens to East Jerusalem?
What happens to borders?
What happens to refugees?
The international community has repeatedly suggested that the ultimate destination must include Palestinian political self-determination.
But within Israel, Palestinian statehood remains one of the most politically explosive issues imaginable.
For Netanyahu, therefore, the Gaza agreement is not simply about ending today’s war.
It potentially determines the political architecture of tomorrow’s Middle East.
That is why the stakes are much higher than they appear.
NETANYAHU IS NEGOTIATING WITH WASHINGTON AND WITH HIS OWN COALITION
There is another reality that cannot be ignored.
Benjamin Netanyahu is not negotiating alone.
He governs within a political environment containing powerful nationalist and religious-right constituencies that oppose major territorial concessions and reject Palestinian statehood under many circumstances.
His coalition partners have their own political calculations.
His domestic opponents have their own calculations.
Israeli public opinion has been transformed by October 7, the hostage crisis and the subsequent war.
Therefore Netanyahu faces two pressures.
Washington can say:
“You need to accept the roadmap.”
His domestic opponents can ask:
“After everything Israel has sacrificed, why are you withdrawing before Hamas is completely eliminated?”
Those pressures pull in opposite directions.
Consequently, Netanyahu’s resistance cannot be explained purely through ideology or purely through military calculation.
It is the intersection of:
security doctrine + political survival + historical memory + coalition politics.
THE SHADOW OF OSLO
Israel’s distrust did not begin with October 7.
It reaches back through decades of failed agreements.
The Oslo process of the 1990s created enormous hope.
Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands.
Palestinian self-government expanded.
Security cooperation was established.
The world believed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might finally be moving toward permanent settlement.
But Oslo ultimately failed to deliver the promised final peace.
Violence continued.
Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli extremist.
Palestinian militant attacks continued.
Settlements expanded.
Trust deteriorated.
The Second Intifada erupted.
The peace process collapsed into mutual suspicion.
Israel learned one lesson.
Palestinians learned another.
For many Israelis:
territorial concessions without security guarantees are dangerous.
For many Palestinians:
agreements without an end to occupation and a clear path to sovereignty are insufficient.
Those two conclusions have been fighting each other ever since.
THE SAME PROBLEM WAS ALREADY PRESENT AT CAMP DAVID
The underlying question is even older.
The 1978 Camp David framework already contemplated Palestinian self-government, Israeli military redeployment, Palestinian policing and security arrangements.
The central questions were familiar:
Who controls the territory?
Who carries weapons?
Who guards borders?
Who polices civilians?
Who guarantees security?
Who determines whether an agreement has been violated?
Nearly half a century later, the vocabulary has changed.
The strategic dilemma has not.
This is why Gaza cannot be understood simply through the events of the last three years.
The current crisis is the latest chapter of a much longer conflict over land, identity, security, sovereignty and political legitimacy.
THE AMERICAN PLAN HAS A LOGIC OF ITS OWN
It would be unfair to portray Washington’s approach as naïve.
America appears to recognise a basic reality:
Military victory is not the same thing as political victory.
Israel can destroy Hamas’s military infrastructure.
But that alone does not answer the question of governance.
Who collects rubbish?
Who runs hospitals?
Who operates schools?
Who maintains roads?
Who controls police stations?
Who prevents armed groups from emerging?
Who rebuilds the economy?
Who gives young Palestinians a political alternative to armed resistance?
This is why the American model attempts to combine:
security + governance + reconstruction + economic recovery + political transition.
The theory is that if Gaza is merely pacified militarily without being given a credible political and economic future, another armed organisation may eventually emerge.
Hamas could disappear.
But the conditions that produced Hamas might remain.
And if those conditions remain, history could simply produce another name.
THE MOST DANGEROUS WORD MAY BE “PHASED”
The roadmap depends on phases.
That is both its strength and its weakness.
Phased implementation allows both sides to avoid making one enormous irreversible concession.
But phased implementation also creates opportunities for disagreement at every stage.
Imagine:
Stage One succeeds.
Stage Two succeeds.
Then a dispute emerges over Stage Three.
Does the process stop?
What if Hamas claims Israel violated the agreement?
What if Israel claims Hamas concealed weapons?
What if Islamic Jihad fires a rocket?
What if a rogue faction attacks Israeli troops?
What if an Israeli strike kills civilians?
Does the entire agreement collapse?
Who investigates?
Who judges?
Who imposes consequences?
These questions are more important than the ceremonial signing of the agreement.
THE REALITY
Most of the diplomatic language surrounding Gaza can be reduced to four questions.
Who disarms first?
Who withdraws first?
Who verifies compliance?
Who controls Gaza afterwards?
Solve those four questions and much of the roadmap becomes workable.
Fail to solve them and another fifty clauses will not save it.
That is the 80/20 reality.
The Gaza crisis is not suffering from a shortage of diplomatic vocabulary.
It is suffering from a shortage of credible trust mechanisms.
WHERE ISRAEL’S ARGUMENT CAN FAIL
Israel’s security concerns are real.
But that does not automatically make every Israeli policy strategically sustainable.
There is a dangerous assumption that military domination can eventually produce permanent security.
History offers little guarantee of that.
Military occupation can suppress violence temporarily.
It cannot necessarily extinguish political grievances.
A population that sees no political future may produce another generation of militants.
The destruction of Hamas does not automatically destroy the ideology, anger or political conditions that enabled Hamas to recruit.
And permanent military control creates its own costs:
military costs,
economic costs,
diplomatic costs,
international pressure,
political radicalisation,
and the possibility of endless insurgency.
Israel can therefore win another battle and still lose the larger strategic contest if it cannot create a political order that Palestinians consider worth defending.
WHERE THE AMERICAN PLAN CAN ALSO FAIL
Washington faces an equally serious danger.
Diplomats can construct elegant agreements that assume rational compliance.
Conflict actors are not always rational in the conventional sense.
A peace document cannot physically confiscate weapons.
A UN resolution cannot automatically destroy a tunnel.
An international force cannot enforce peace if its contributing states refuse to fight.
Reconstruction money cannot guarantee political stability.
And no foreign administration can remain legitimate indefinitely if Palestinians believe it exists primarily to satisfy Israel, America or Arab governments.
Therefore the American plan requires more than signatures.
It requires:
verification, enforcement, legitimacy and incentives.
Without those four elements, the roadmap may become another temporary pause between wars.
WHAT WOULD A WORKABLE COMPROMISE LOOK LIKE?
The answer may lie in neither Israel’s preferred sequence nor Hamas’s preferred sequence.
It may lie in micro-sequencing.
Instead of demanding that one side surrender everything first, the agreement could be implemented geographically and incrementally.
For example:
A defined zone is demilitarised.
Weapons and tunnels in that zone are independently verified.
Israeli forces withdraw from that zone.
International forces enter.
Palestinian police assume civilian responsibilities.
Reconstruction begins.
Only after successful verification does the process move to the next zone.
That creates a principle of:
“No trust required beyond the next verified step.”
That may be more realistic than asking either side to trust the other with its national security.
THE AGREEMENT NEEDS TEETH
Every successful peace architecture requires consequences for violations.
If Hamas violates the agreement, there must be predetermined consequences.
If Israel violates the agreement, there must also be predetermined consequences.
If a smaller armed faction violates the agreement, the mechanism must specify how it is handled without destroying the entire settlement.
The parties must know before signing:
What happens if we cheat?
But equally important:
What happens if we comply?
Peace must produce rewards.
War must produce costs.
That is the basic architecture of enforceable diplomacy.
THE HARD TRUTH: ABSOLUTE SECURITY DOES NOT EXIST
Israel’s desire for security is understandable.
October 7 demonstrated what happens when a state misjudges the capabilities and intentions of a hostile armed organisation.
But absolute security is impossible.
A state can build walls.
It can deploy soldiers.
It can develop sophisticated intelligence systems.
It can destroy weapons.
It can control territory.
Yet political violence can still regenerate if the underlying conflict remains unresolved.
Likewise, Palestinian sovereignty cannot be separated from Israeli security.
No Israeli government is likely to accept a Palestinian political arrangement that permits an independent armed organisation to maintain the capability to launch another October 7-style attack.
Therefore the sustainable formula cannot be:
Israeli security OR Palestinian freedom.
It must eventually become:
Israeli security AND Palestinian political self-determination.
That is the difficult equation.
It is also the only one capable of producing a peace that survives the generation that signs it.
THE FUTURE: THREE ROADS
THE FIRST ROAD — A MODIFIED AGREEMENT
Washington could adjust the sequencing.
Hamas would disarm incrementally.
Israel would withdraw incrementally.
International forces would enter simultaneously.
Weapons would be independently verified.
Reconstruction would begin in secured areas.
Neither side would be asked to surrender all leverage at once.
This is probably the most practical route.
THE SECOND ROAD — PERMANENT DEADLOCK
Israel refuses further withdrawal.
Hamas refuses complete disarmament.
Washington continues negotiating.
International forces remain limited.
Reconstruction proceeds slowly.
Gaza becomes divided between different forms of control.
Periodic violence continues.
This would not necessarily be full-scale war.
But it would not be genuine peace either.
It would be managed instability.
THE THIRD ROAD — COLLAPSE
One major incident could destroy the entire architecture.
A rocket attack.
A massacre.
An Israeli assassination.
A confrontation with international troops.
A dispute over weapons.
A mass-casualty incident.
A political crisis.
The process could collapse rapidly.
And once trust disappears, rebuilding it may take years.
THE QUESTION
Perhaps the central question should not be:
“How do we persuade Israel and Hamas to accept the 15 points?”
The deeper question is:
“How do we construct an agreement in which Israel and Hamas do not have to trust one another in order to comply?”
That is the real challenge.
Peace between enemies is rarely built upon friendship.
It is built upon:
verification, reciprocity, deterrence, incentives and consequences.
The genius of a durable peace agreement is not that it makes enemies trust each other.
It makes betrayal too expensive and cooperation sufficiently rewarding.
THE DEEPEST LESSON FROM GAZA
Gaza is teaching the world an uncomfortable lesson.
A war can be won militarily and still be lost politically.
A ceasefire can stop bullets without resolving the conflict.
An international force can create breathing space without creating legitimacy.
Reconstruction can rebuild buildings without rebuilding trust.
And diplomacy can create agreements without creating peace.
The destruction of Hamas, even if achieved, would not automatically solve the Palestinian question.
Conversely, Palestinian statehood without credible Israeli security arrangements would not produce sustainable peace.
Both realities have to exist together.
That is why the Gaza question cannot ultimately be solved only inside Gaza.
It is connected to the West Bank.
It is connected to Jerusalem.
It is connected to Israeli settlements.
It is connected to Arab diplomacy.
It is connected to Iran and the wider regional security system.
It is connected to American power.
And above all, it is connected to the fundamental question of whether two peoples can ultimately possess political futures without one believing that the other’s freedom constitutes an existential threat.
THE FINAL VERDICT
The current confrontation between Washington and Benjamin Netanyahu should therefore not be reduced to the simplistic statement that Israel does not want peace.
Nor should Hamas’s conditional acceptance of the framework automatically be interpreted as proof that Hamas has abandoned armed resistance.
Those conclusions go beyond the evidence.
The deeper explanation is structural.
Israel wants security before surrendering strategic leverage.
Hamas wants Israeli withdrawal before surrendering strategic leverage.
America wants both sides to surrender leverage simultaneously under international supervision.
And history explains why all three positions exist.
Israel remembers 2005.
Israel remembers the wars that followed.
Israel remembers Oslo’s collapse.
Israel remembers October 7.
Palestinians remember 1948.
They remember 1967.
They remember occupation.
They remember blockade.
They remember failed negotiations.
They remember displacement.
They remember the destruction of Gaza.
These memories are not footnotes.
They are active political forces.
They sit beside every negotiator at the table.
That is why the 15-point roadmap is both ambitious and fragile.
It is attempting to solve, in one architecture, problems that have defeated diplomacy for generations.
The real test is therefore not whether America can produce another document.
It is whether America can build a system in which:
Israeli withdrawal does not produce Hamas rearmament;
Hamas disarmament does not become Palestinian political surrender;
international forces have enough authority to enforce the agreement;
Palestinian governance possesses enough legitimacy to survive;
Israel retains credible security guarantees without permanent military domination;
and reconstruction leads somewhere politically meaningful.
Because if Gaza is merely rebuilt without being politically transformed, the world may simply be reconstructing the stage for another war.
And if Gaza is merely demilitarised without offering Palestinians a credible political future, the world may be removing the weapon without removing the grievance.
That is the paradox at the heart of the entire exercise.
Israel cannot bomb its way permanently out of the Palestinian question.
Hamas cannot fight its way permanently into Palestinian freedom.
America cannot negotiate its way to peace without credible enforcement.
And Palestinians cannot be expected to accept endless destruction as the price of Israeli security.
The ultimate objective must therefore be more ambitious than simply stopping the shooting.
It must be to construct a political order in which Israeli children can grow up without fear of another October 7, while Palestinian children can grow up without believing that their only inheritance is occupation, blockade, displacement and war.
That is the real meaning of peace.
Not merely the absence of gunfire.
But the presence of a future.
And until both peoples can see that future—and until the agreement is strong enough to survive the people who sign it—the silence in Gaza will remain only the silence between wars.
By Ibrahim BUNU
ibrahimbunu2520@gmail.com
