1. Trump peace plan: Egypt as bellwether, Hamas as roadblock

Let’s start with Egypt.

If the Trump administration’s Peace to Prosperity plan is to have any hope of success (and there are doubts), it will depend in good part on Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s role in the following areas:

• Diplomacy: Any major initiative dealing with Israel and the Palestinians depends on Egypt. The Egypt-Israel peace treaty signed at Camp David in 1979 remains the gold standard of regional security achievements. Subsequent initiatives — including the Oslo Accords of 1993 and the 2002 Arab League peace plan, led by Saudi Arabia’s then-Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud — further advanced peace-making efforts, with Egypt, and the Camp David framework, key to progress. Egypt’s response to the Trump plan was predictably cautious. In an official statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on Israel and the Palestinians “to undertake a careful and thorough consideration” of the plan and “open channels of dialogue, under US auspices, for the resumption of negotiations.”
• Security: Israel-Egypt security and counterterrorism cooperation has, according to both Israeli and Egyptian sources, never been better. The Trump plan expects cooperation to deepen under its plan, not just with the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, where such cooperation is routine, but within two other new regional groupings: a regional security committee (RSC), which would include not only Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt, but also the United States, Saudi Arabia and the UAE; and an Organization for Security and Cooperation in the Middle East (the “OSCME”), which would formalize cooperation with Israel, Palestine, Egypt and Jordan with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states about the threat from Iran and other shared interests.
• Trade: The Trump plan offers an expansive vision of a more prosperous region based on trade. The Israeli (Erez) and Egyptian (Rafah) border crossings are economic lifelines for Gaza’s 1.8 million people. Egypt, as the region’s largest country, would be vital to expanding the economic potential for the Palestinians, especially in Gaza. The plan calls for the allocation of additional territory for Gaza in the context of economic expansion, which would depend on Egypt’s close partnership … but this only happens if Hamas is out of the picture.

And that brings us to Hamas … and Iran.

The Trump plan stipulates that Hamas, as a US-designated terrorist organization, has no place in its Israeli-Palestinian Peace to Prosperity vision. But how to unseat Hamas in Gaza? It won elections in 2006 and has ruled Gaza ever since. Its relationships with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and the rest of the PLO are acrimonious. Hamas, as well as the smaller and more militant Islamic Jihad, get financial and military support from Iran — the target of the security arrangements the United States wants to set up. A shaky cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, mediated by Egypt, has been broken several times over the past few months, perhaps at Iran’s instigation. In an unusual display of unity, Hamas and Islamic Jihad joined Fatah and all PLO factions in opposing the Trump plan.