Will the Gaza Ceasefire Last? Bruce W. Jentleson on What History Tells Us About Making Peace Stick

After two years of devastating conflict, Hamas and Israel have agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire and peace plan. As part of the historic agreement, Hamas released 20 living Israeli hostages and Israel freed an estimated 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. “It’s peace in the Middle East,” President Trump said on Monday at a Gaza “peace summit” in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Yet issues have already arisen with Hamas withholding the bodies of Israeli hostages and Israel threatening to keep the Rafah border crossing closed.

Nonresident Senior Fellow Bruce W. Jentleson offers insight into this moment and shares what history reveals about the leadership, strategy, and political will required to sustain peace.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Many past ceasefires have broken down quickly. What, if anything, makes this moment and this plan more promising than those before it?

One of the things about this plan is the prominence that it's been given, not only from President Trump but a hastily convened summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt with more than 20 international leaders. The previous significant ceasefire and exchange of prisoners and hostages was January to March 2025. But it didn't get the same kind of prominence—so it has created probably unrealistic expectations in the world, but also a slight degree of accountability.

The three crucial things are going to be: Number one, does the United States, or particularly President Trump, have the genuine determination to see this through. Is there a real commitment of the United States to prioritize this and make it a serious negotiation? I think President Trump is more interested in this event than whether we'll see it through.

Second is for the Israeli government and Hamas. Sometimes when you get a peace agreement or a ceasefire, the two parties generally are ready to really try to make it work. Another scenario is, they agree because they didn't want to be blamed for not agreeing and then they kind of look for opportunities to say; ‘You see the other side didn't live up to it. I'm ready to counter.’ I have real concerns about that on both the Israeli government's part and Hamas's part.

The third is, even if the Israeli government and Hamas leadership are committed, you have what's often called spoilers: Groups on both sides that, as they say, want to blow the train tracks up if the train is headed to peace. So even if Hamas's leadership and the Israeli government are committed, that risk is there.

All of those mean that what's happened is very significant, particularly at a human level. But the question of whether it becomes more than just a piece of peace—whether it becomes more pieces of peace—a lot of doubts about that.

The United States has played a central role in brokering this deal, but its influence in the region isn’t what it once was. How much leverage does Washington really have now, and how should it be using it?

It's very interesting because I think President Trump has a couple of characteristics that are criticized in other settings. One is, to be frank, he can be a bully. He can use his prestige and power to push people around. The other is that he's a large egotist. Those have created enormous problems in other situations. In this situation, it actually helped with a positive outcome. He put pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu that no other American leader could, partly because if it came from a Democrat, Netanyahu—as he's done since at least 2015 when he tried to block President Obama's Iran nuclear nonproliferation deal—would go to the Republicans. This time it was the Republican president who has pretty tight control over his party. So, in that sense, I think some of those qualities that President Trump has that play out differently in other situations—they've been counterproductive with Russia and Ukraine, with China, etc.—have been positive here.

The other point I think your question brings up is a really important one, which is if you go look at the history of Middle East peacekeeping, in the early 1970s, after the 1973 war, the Yom Kippur War, it was really Henry Kissinger who did shuttle diplomacy all around the Middle East—to Syria, to Jordan, to Egypt, to Israel.

In 1978-1979, the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt had the American President Jimmy Carter as the principal negotiator. In 1993, when we get the Oslo Accords, I was in the State Department then, and I can say that we actually didn't really know much about what was happening in this hunting lodge outside of Oslo; these were very quiet talks. The Norwegians played that role, but after that, they pretty much handed it over to the United States to run, and I was part of the negotiating team for some of that.

This time around, the entire period of talks has been the United States, Qatar, and Egypt working together. On the one hand, we have more influence than any other single actor, but it is no longer a region in which the United States is the sole diplomatic actor. You could even point to a couple of years ago a different issue where some of the rapprochement that's happened between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023 was actually through Chinese diplomacy. So yes, we're still the most important actor, but we're not the only ones out there that are looked to for the diplomacy.

In your book The Peacemakers, you write about leaders who made breakthroughs possible. What traits or choices distinguished them, and do you see those qualities in any of today’s leaders, whether in Israel, Palestine, the US, or the broader region?

Sadly, I do not. In addition to the roles of Egypt and Qatar, many of the points in the Trump peace plan came out of the French Saudi proposal. There's nothing wrong with that. But this is one case where President Trump actually worked with other countries. That was positive. But I think the commitment to see things through—like what Nelson Mandela, who's talked about in my book, did to bring about a peaceful transition to black African majority democracy or Mikhael Gorbachev did working with Ronald Reagan to end the Cold War—Prime Minister Netanyahu is not committed. In fact, for many years, he helped channel Qatari funding, didn't stop it, to Hamas so that he could say, 'You see, I can't make a two-state solution deal. Look at Hamas.' And there's been huge criticism when Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner spoke at a rally in Tel Aviv the other night, and they thanked Netanyahu. They got booed by the Israeli public.

Hamas's leadership, it's very unclear who the leaders are now, because many of them have been killed in the war by the Israelis. Palestinians right now in Gaza, obviously, are anti-Israel. But many of them are also anti-Hamas because they believe that Hamas put them in a position because of their own revolutionary ideology where the Palestinian people have paid the price.

I would love to see those leadership qualities come forward. But right now, it's my concern that this piece that we've achieved—this p-i-e-c-e that we've achieved, may fall apart and may not be built on.

How have the Abraham Accords, Iran’s regional influence, and divisions within the Arab world changed the calculus for both sides and for the US?

It's interesting. There have been reports recently in the American press that even with all this going on—while Saudi Arabia backed away from any possible normalization of relations with Israel—there had been quiet cooperation between the militaries of Saudi, the United Arab Emirates, the Qataris and their intelligence with the Israelis on shared concerns. Some of those are about Iran and some are other issues. So, there is some basis there for what could become a regional security effort.

Back in 1991 when George H.W. Bush was president, after the Gulf War, President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker and their team convened what was called the Madrid Peace Conference, and they brought together in October 1991 many Arab world countries in Israel. Iran didn't participate, nor did Syria. Probably about 15 countries did. And at the time, they said, 'We're going to have it in Madrid because what the Arabs and Israelis have in common is Muslims and Jews were both kicked out of Catholic Spain in 1492—so let's start with something they have in common historically.' Out of that meeting, were set up a series of talks. One of the ones which I was involved in in the Clinton administration, were called the Arms Control and Regional Security Negotiations, and these were efforts to deal with broad regional security—not just Israel-Palestine issues.

I think what you see now is the possibility of coming together on regional security, and not just totally anti-Iran. As I said some of the Gulf countries, the Saudis and the UAE, have been improving their relations with Iran. For example, in June, after the US bombed the Iranian nuclear complex, the Saudi Crown Prince sent his Foreign Minister to Tehran as an act of Sunni-Shia solidarity. So, there's some things to work with on a regional basis along with the direct Israel-Palestine issues, which is the exciting part.

The frustrating part is that this would take the kind of sustained diplomatic commitment that the George H.W. Bush administration initiated and the Clinton administration showed. I just don't see that happening from the Trump administration.

Looking at past peace processes—from Bosnia to Northern Ireland—what do you see as the essential ingredients for turning a ceasefire into a sustainable peace?

There was a very famous political scientist named William Zartman who taught much of his career at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and he coined the phrase, ‘hurting stalemate,’ when both sides to a conflict feel the pain and costs and sense that the stalemate is not breakable to a win. We’ve been seeing signs of this on both sides. In Israel there have been weeks of protests in the streets about getting the hostages home, not about obliterating Hamas. And on the Gaza side, you had Palestinians saying, we want this war to end. We've suffered too much. So, the hurting stalemate has contributed to what's been achieved thus far. That gives you a ceasefire, and the essence of a ceasefire is the time and the opportunity to build on it. And if you don't, then it's not sustainable.

We had a ceasefire from the middle of January—when the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration actually worked together—until the middle of March. Principal responsibility for breaking that ceasefire was on the Israeli side. So, if we have a situation where both sides are saying, 'I didn't really want to do this, President Trump pressured me, I don't want to be the ones that said no,' they look for an opportunity.

Some positive steps have happened. The United Nations has confirmed that humanitarian aid is moving in. But already there were reports of Hamas action against some of its own people, some public executions of those they considered to be working for the Israelis, whether or not that was true, or if they just were rivals to Hamas.

There are so many moving parts here and I really wish I could be more optimistic. What has been achieved is important. The Israeli hostages are home. Some Palestinian prisoners have been released. Humanitarian aid is flowing. But what happens next is going to take the kind of commitment we've been talking about by all the relevant parties.

When you look ahead to the region and to US leadership, what gives you the most hope, and what worries you most?

I think realism starts with the realization that the Israeli people are not leaving the region. Leaving the occupied territories is a different question and an important thing to be achieved. Nor are the Palestinians. The notion that President Trump had back in February of Palestinians leaving and this fantasy that you'd build up Gaza like ‘Mar-a-Gaza,’ that's not going to happen. It's incredibly striking to see how the people—the Palestinians in Gaza—talk about going home, even though the homes aren't there anymore. They've been destroyed.

So, the hope, I think, is a sense of looking into the abyss and knowing that if this happens again, as bad as this was, it's going to be worse for all sides—for the Palestinians, for the Israelis, for the surrounding countries.

My fear is from those groups that still believe that they can totally defeat the other side: the far-right wing in Israel and the West Bank, which isn't part of the deal, and all the violence there perpetrated by the settlers and the push for steps for annexation, and some in Hamas and no doubt other extremist Palestinian groups who are feeling even more vengeful towards Israel’s existence. And part of it is understandable. Both sides have their narrative. For the Israelis, October 7th played very much into the Holocaust. This was the most violence against Jews since the Holocaust. One has to really understand that. 

On the Palestinian side, this played into the “Nakhba,” the period of 1947-1948, when the UN plan for partition of two states never really happened and Palestinians within what was now Israel were pushed out of their homes and worse. And the younger generations socialized into the latest violence and hate is all very dangerous.

So, my fears are greater than my hopes, but you can't be in this business unless you have some hopes.

What else do you think would be important for our audience to know or understand about this moment?

 I have a colleague at Duke University, a medical school doctor named David Hasan, who has been going into Gaza for most of this period on humanitarian missions. He has been working with José Andrés of World Central Kitchen. This summer, they created a Gaza Children's Village, and they've been providing food and healthcare, and some education to many of the orphaned children in the refugee camps. I texted with David over the weekend, and he actually was in Israel for the return of the hostages, hoping to see that this would make possible the work that he is doing there.

On the Israeli side, I have friends and colleagues whose 40-year-old children have spent probably 20 of the last 24 months on reserve duty—away from their homes, away from their families, away from their jobs. Not morally equating the two, but both are costly and have a real effect on real people.

I think that while we have our concerns and we can criticize parts of the deal, I think it's important that people from the outside, like all of us, understand that people on the ground are getting some tangible benefit. Dr. Hasan's Gaza Children's Village is going to get more aid. Israelis are going to get a greater degree of normalcy in their life. Those things really matter, even though full peace isn't being achieved.

We can't lose sight of the human element.