Hamas announced it will disarm only after Israel honors previous ceasefire commitments. Trump claims he brokered a breakthrough disarmament deal. One of these statements acknowledges that ceasefires typically require both sides to stop shooting.
The logic here is f*cking bulletproof. We'll agree to disarm after you do the thing you already agreed to do but didn't do. It's like watching someone negotiate a prenup during the divorce proceedings. The commitment to honor commitments hinges entirely on whether previous commitments to commitment-honoring were themselves honored.
Trump called it a breakthrough. Hamas called it conditional on things that already didn't happen. Retail traders are currently scanning their portfolios for defense contractor exposure and typing "is Raytheon a buy" into Reddit.
The disarmament framework relies on a ceasefire framework that relied on a previous framework that also featured the word framework. Each layer of framework depends on the structural integrity of frameworks that collapsed before the ink dried. This is what passes for diplomacy. A series of nested promises, each one contingent on the failure of the last one somehow not mattering this time.
Somewhere in Tel Aviv and Gaza City, people are reading the same press release and arriving at opposite conclusions about who agreed to what. This is called strategic ambiguity. It's also called lying, but that term doesn't poll well with focus groups.
The breakthrough exists exclusively in the press conference. The disarmament exists exclusively in the hypothetical. The commitments exist exclusively in the conditional tense. None of this stopped the headlines from going out.
But sure, load up on Lockheed Martin because a guy who routinely fails to honor his own contractors just solved the Middle East with a handshake and a clause that begins with "provided that."
Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash
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