The Abraham Accords were built on a premise: Arab states could normalise with Israel in exchange for security guarantees and American backing. The US-Israel war on Iran shattered that premise. The Accords still exist on paper. The logic that held them together does not.
The October ceasefire was signed in good faith by nobody. Both sides entered it with reservations, competing interpretations and no agreed enforcement mechanism. Violations began almost immediately. What was called a ceasefire was, from the start, a temporary reduction in killing.
Aid flotillas are not humanitarian operations — they are political acts. They challenge blockades, generate confrontations and force governments to respond. Civil society has learned to use the tools of conflict to expose it. The flotilla model is not going away. It is spreading.
Some have proposed internationally administered governance for Gaza as an alternative to Hamas or Israeli occupation. The idea is serious — and seriously complicated. International administration has a poor track record. But the alternatives being proposed are no more promising.
The Trump administration floated Israeli-Iranian normalisation as part of a regional realignment. The proposal misreads both states. Iran and Israel are not estranged partners — they are ideological adversaries whose hostility is structural, not diplomatic.
Every administration produces a Gaza plan. Every plan arrives with optimism and departs without implementation. The people who know this best are Palestinians — who have watched the same cycle repeat for thirty years. Celebrations are premature. They always are.
Hamas was supposed to be destroyed. It has not been. Its survival — not as a governing force, but as a political and military reality — reshapes every calculation in the Middle East. The war’s original objective has failed. What comes next is being improvised.
While diplomats negotiated and envoys shuttled, conditions in Gaza continued to deteriorate. The gap between what was being discussed at the diplomatic level and what was happening on the ground was not a failure of information. It was a failure of will.