After Hamas approval, what’s next?

Author: Abdel Majid Sweilem

To answer this important question, I think we must examine the motives behind the movement’s approval and the objectives it seeks.
Regardless of the views that see these motives and objectives as either a stunt that will produce no decisive result, a clever move within a foolish context, or a belated effort that is now pointless after the “battle” has already ended — leaving only some marginal touches — we should, at least temporarily, set those assessments aside. They are low in intellectual and political value, are “fundamentalist” in essence, and reflect a distorted mentality left over from patriarchal societies that remains trapped in pre-made tribal contexts and categories, in anxiety and perhaps fear, and at times trembling with the shock of “disappointment” at the total collapse of the edifice on which those opinions were built over two full years of venerating the status quo and persistently calling for a solitary approach anchored in its realities — a conspicuous tendency to accept living and praying, if necessary, at the altar of its subservience.
We return now to our question: what changed, how will it change, and what is the difference between continuing the struggle — including the continuation of a war of annihilation even if in new and different forms and rhythms — and the continuation of plans of displacement and uprooting by new, possibly “innovative,” means?
Here lies the crux of the matter.
Why does the difference matter so much here?
The reason that should be clear is that Hamas’s approval of Trump’s plan, as expressed in its reply — a plan that morphed into Netanyahu’s plan after Trump abandoned the version he presented during his meeting with the Arab and Islamic delegations at the White House — actually means that Hamas rejects Netanyahu’s plan but agrees to the original proposal, subject, of course, to negotiation over implementation mechanisms and timetables.
This means Hamas has responded to the plan that the Arab and Islamic delegations approved, thereby securing their support if it declared acceptance.
If this has indeed been achieved to the extent that some information, based on reliable Arab and Islamic sources, suggests, then the battle has moved into the arena of the Trump administration. He must decide whether to stick with Netanyahu’s version of the plan or to treat Hamas’s approval as an opportunity to reinvigorate the initiative — especially since he well knew that Netanyahu’s version had been drafted in a way that Hamas could not accept.
The unambiguous evidence for all this is that Trump considered the movement’s response positive. Immediately following that came praise from Arab and Islamic quarters and from the international community, including Europe, for Hamas’s reply.
This shifted the issue into the US-Israeli camp, and the requirement became that they either accept what Hamas accepted or reject it outright. But why did Trump treat Hamas’s acceptance as positive and as something that could be built upon?
I argue that answering this last question is the key to decoding the American position once the phase of the prisoner exchange is complete.
Imagine if Trump had rejected Hamas’s response as a maneuver meant to buy time and evade the plan’s obligations. What would things look like now if that had been his position?
Netanyahu would have been in raptures, and the Arab and Islamic delegations and their leadership would have felt betrayed, believing Trump had sold them out and turned his back on them. The plan would have ended up imposing Netanyahu’s conditions on Hamas, and its full surrender would have been seen as the only “exit” — with implicit Arab and Islamic approval, or with a complete inability to restrain Netanyahu.
They would have had to anticipate that a war of annihilation and displacement would be the immediate alternative to Hamas’s rejection or evasion of the plan.
If Trump had reacted negatively to Hamas’s approval, he would have lost all the momentum he claimed to have created, forfeited his “chance” at the Nobel Prize, and largely lost Arab and Islamic support for the plan. He would have isolated himself and deepened the isolation of the Israeli state, which was already reeling after the abuses against the Freedom Flotilla in international waters and the shame brought by Itamar Ben-Gvir.
But above all this, and more importantly, Trump would have suffered a greater loss at home at a time when the American society is undergoing shifts that cannot be ignored — shifts that favor Palestine and its freedom not only in general but within the Republican Party itself and among its core electoral base that still protects him and remains his surest bulwark in the upcoming midterm elections.
We should remember the votes he received from Arab and Muslim communities, many cast in reaction to what they saw as Joe Biden’s pro-Israel stances. We should also recall that if Trump had rejected Hamas’s approval, he would not have guaranteed the backing of pro-Israel lobbies in the United States, as some assume. A significant portion of the far right considers the American plan in the version Netanyahu effectively authored — as noted in my previous article — to pose major risks related to regional political solutions that would obstruct their aims of decisively concluding the conflict and realize a project of a “Greater Israel” or a “New Middle East” under Israeli hegemony.
Is it conceivable that Trump would follow Netanyahu down the path of continued annihilation and proceed with plans of displacement? What would he or the United States gain by following Netanyahu?\br />
Therefore, if Trump’s real goal was to “retrieve” the hostages only to renege on the plan later, he would only be deceiving himself; he would be isolating himself and suffering losses from his own pocket, not Netanyahu’s. Trying to please Netanyahu here seems futile and unrelated to American interests, or even to Trump’s own interests. In any case, he will never be able to impose trusteeship, guardianship, or annexation without exposing himself to new, intractable risks, and doing so would be costly and pointless. For these reasons, Hamas’s response — which Trump saw as a renewed boost to the plan — was carefully calculated, timely, and will shift the conflict into new forms that are not fundamentally different from the reality in the West Bank or, at most extremes, southern Lebanon. It is a reality that will halt mass displacement, stop the war of annihilation, curb Israeli fascist ambitions, move the battle into Israeli society within a few weeks, and open the region to new prospects for political solutions.
If Netanyahu insists on the route of annihilation and displacement in new forms, he will find himself without a genuine, direct backer in the world or the region, while Hamas — having achieved what it deems a turning of the tables, having placed Palestine at the center of global attention, and having generated growing international recognition and special focus on Palestinian rights — may also have helped restore Palestinian unity on new foundations that have become more necessary than ever for all parties.
Seeing that it has achieved all this, Hamas can now engage with the national reality to the extent that this new reality is prepared to face what comes next, and to the extent that it has absorbed the fact that the sacrifices of the Palestinian people were not in vain. No matter how great and costly they were, they represent the real beginning, not a counterfeit start, of Palestinian freedom.