There’s a cease-fire in the Israel–Gaza war, brought about by President Trump’s 20-point plan. Will it hold? On today’s edition of The Editors, Noah is cautiously optimistic.
“So this one feels different from previous cease-fires. I still think we should be pretty skeptical of the plan in so far as we haven’t even gotten to step one. . . . So it could all fall apart at any point, but I don’t have any reason to believe that we’re not going to progress fully into step one. And we may even get to step two. . . .”
Noah agrees that “There are plenty of risks here. And my biggest fear is that if this starts to come apart, Trump could become more protective of the deal by virtue of it being a deal that he negotiated.” He reminds listeners that, “Much like the JCPOA, when it started to look like the terms were no longer being observed, the Obama administration would not give his critics the satisfaction of saying that this deal had failed. So sometimes, securing a success requires acknowledging setbacks and correcting for them. Obama didn’t, and I hope the Trump administration will.”
“But for now,” Noah continues, “we’re looking at a durable cease-fire and a sequence of events that I don’t see why couldn’t result in the fruition of at least the first several steps of this peace plan, which would result in a pretty sustained cease-fire and additional diplomatic pressure on the terrorist elements in Hamas to disband and fold back into the population — if not submit to exile.”
The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.