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No One Knows How to Pull Off the Gaza Peace Deal
(Atlantic) Graeme Wood - The Oct. 13 peace summit in Sharm al-Sheikh - where Donald Trump assembled more than 30 world leaders - achieved, for about two hours, general agreement on a 20-point plan for Gaza. It immediately freed the remaining 20 living Israeli hostages, in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, plus assurances of an Israeli military withdrawal. Yet the remaining steps of the plan - disarming Hamas, fielding an international security force - will be a challenge since no one knows how to do them. "It's not going to happen," a former Israeli intelligence official told me. Disarming Hamas is a task that only the Israeli military can handle, he said. The plan's 13th point calls for the permanent destruction of the 500 miles of tunnels built by Hamas under Gaza. Israel has destroyed 200 miles of tunnels. Who will destroy the rest? And how, if Hamas shoots at the engineers who are destroying them? The countries currently being considered for the International Stabilization Force have no relevant experience. And many of them - Indonesia, Pakistan - don't know a word of Arabic. What will happen the first time an Indonesian or Pakistani military contingent gets hit by a rocket, or sees Hamas preparing for an attack and fails to prevent it?