All the living hostages held by Hamas returned to Israel this week. The 20 men have been reunited with their ecstatic families. It’s extraordinary that they are still alive, more than two years after Hamas and its allies seized them along with around 230 others after the attacks of October 7. They survived two years of captivity, of war, of privation. They survived when other hostages died during Israeli raids. They survived when the Israel Defense Forces killed at least 67,000 Palestinians—more than 80% of them civilians, according to leaked Israeli sources—during two years of aerial and ground assaults.

The survival of these 20 Israelis is a testament to their resilience, yes, but more so to their value. The hostages were the only asset that Hamas could trade for the release of Palestinian prisoners, a ceasefire to end the war, and a deal to guarantee a Palestinian state.

Israel released 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for these 20 men and more than 20 dead hostages. It has stopped bombing Gaza (though it is still killing people on the ground for alleged ceasefire violations). The IDF has withdrawn from some of the land it has occupied in Gaza. Israel is still restricting aid to the region to punish Gazans because Hamas has not returned all the bodies of the dead hostages (which may be held by other factions or lie inaccessible under the rubble).

Hamas is left with almost nothing. True, it too has survived, even though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had promised not to end the war without extinguishing Hamas. But without the hostages as collateral, the organization has no leverage to force the IDF to relinquish further territory or to guarantee that the Israeli government won’t resume bombing Gaza. As for Palestinian statehood, it remains as elusive after this hostage exchange as it has been for years.

Palestinians are no closer to determining their own future. Gaza lies in ruins. The West Bank is being gobbled up by Israeli settlers. Whether it’s the Israeli government, an international peacekeeping force, or a post-conflict reconstruction authority for Gaza chaired (grotesquely) by Donald Trump, the fate of Palestine still rests in the hands of outsiders.

Although Trump, in his triumphalist address to the Israeli Knesset, took the peace deal for granted—and spoke grandly of a peace deal for the entire region—Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have not agreed on the next steps for Gaza. Hamas, not surprisingly, wants to continue being politically relevant. To that end, it has refused to give up its weapons, which is all that’s left of its much-diminished power. Israel wants complete disarmament and no political future for Hamas, which would reduce it to the status of a Boy Scout troop. Trump has threatened to disarm Hamas by force, which sounds a lot like the return of armed conflict.

But then who will administer Gaza? Trump’s plan calls for “a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza.” In other words, Trump wants to install a group of functionaries who don’t aspire to do anything other than take out the trash and keep the hospitals running. Israel doesn’t want anything that looks like an actual state that could unite with Palestinians in the West Bank, develop a truly sustainable economy, or (god forbid) develop a foreign policy.

With Tony Blair running the reconstruction authority, it will all start to look like the aftermath of the Iraq war—and that didn’t work out so well for Iraqis.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is maneuvering to play a role in the new Gaza administration even though Israel wants it sidelined. The Trump administration has such contempt for the PA and the associated Palestinian Liberation Organization that it revoked the visas of their representatives to attend the United Nations General Assembly last month in New York. Marwan Barghouti, a dynamic figure who could take the reins of the PA and unify Palestinians, remains in Israeli prison. According to the peace deal, the PA is expected to “complete its reform program,” which basically means that it must become even more subservient to Israeli and American interests before it will be invited back to the table. Behind the scenes, however, a compromise is emerging whereby the PA will likely play a role in choosing the functionaries in charge in Gaza and supplying guards for the border crossing to Egypt.

In any case, the real power in Gaza will be held by an international authority, the “Board of Peace,” chaired by Donald Trump and run (probably) by the UK’s Tony Blair. This authority will preside over the economic reconstruction of Gaza. Trump’s plan speaks of “convening a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East.” He probably has the cities of the Gulf States in mind—Dubai, Doha—but they of........

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