The Qatari Minister of Foreign Affairs, in a pivotal announcement on Wednesday evening, confirmed that Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) have finalized a deal designed to halt Israel’s genocidal and destructive war in the Gaza Strip for at least 42 days. This accord is essentially a reworking of the previously proposed ceasefire arrangement in May by the Biden administration, when Hamas declared its acceptance of the ceasefire agreement, while Israel reneged on it and continued with the war. It turned out Israel wanted time to both bring out more destruction in Gaza, more death, and use its mix of cards to subdue Hezbollah in Lebanon. Within this context, Qatar emerges once again as one of the biggest winners in this agreement, solidifying its role as a critical node in the architecture of regional diplomacy. The small Gulf state has mastered the art of maneuvering between adversaries, leveraging its relationships with seemingly irreconcilable actors to mediate where others falter. In doing so, Doha reaffirms its place as the capital of dealmaking, able to turn to Trump with a simple pitch: if deals are your game, this is where they happen.

For Donald Trump, the agreement is less a diplomatic breakthrough than a carefully wrapped narrative gift. It hands him a clean storyline of triumph—the return of Israeli captives, the cessation of conflict—crafted perfectly to match his populist brand of politics. It slots seamlessly into the mythology of his presidency: the consummate dealmaker, the leader who succeeds where others fail, the disruptor who shakes the foundations of entrenched stalemates and deadly status quos.

As for Joe Biden and his foreign policy team, however, the agreement serves as a grim epilogue to their tenure—a fading shadow at the helm of power, lingering but powerless. They leave as faithful sons of a political legacy that demands unyielding allegiance to Israel, a history that exacted their loyalty even as it unraveled them. They are tragic liberals, not merely complicit but tragically compelled, witnesses and participants in a machinery of destruction that predates their time and will outlive it. Their defense, when it comes, will rest not on agency but on necessity, as though they were bound by forces beyond their control. And yet, there was a choice. They chose monstrosity and they leave office knowing full well that it could have been otherwise.

Israel’s fractured narrative

In Israel, the agreement marks the unraveling of one narrative and the tentative construction of another—a precarious attempt to shift from the fantasy of total victory to the pragmatism of sufficient victory. Israel now confronts the limits of its aspirations, compelled to take solace in its geopolitical accomplishments. These include its intelligence apparatus’s success in infiltrating the Lebanese resistance and its capacity to wield immense destructive power in Gaza and Lebanon. However, these celebrated achievements remain overshadowed by unresolved contradictions. Beneath the triumphalist rhetoric lies a fundamental question: what, in tangible terms, has Israel achieved?

Despite claims of strategic success—a weakened Hezbollah, a diminished Iran, and a battered Hamas—Israel has not secured the total victory it seeks. Hezbollah remains a capable force, Iran’s regional influence endures, and Hamas persists as a reminder of the limits of Israel’s military campaigns, while Yemen proved its capacity to disrupt global shipping. The mainstream media amplifies claims of strategic triumph, yet the reality is far more sobering: the once-mythologized Israeli military now appears both brutal and highly ineffective, its aura of invincibility shattered on the global stage.

This reckoning extends beyond the battlefield. The military’s failures—its inability to anticipate threats, or deliver decisive outcomes—will slowly ripple through Israeli society, exposing long-simmering tensions. Delays in finalizing a ceasefire, prioritization of settlement expansion over recovering prisoners for many rightwing forces, and the Haredim’s refusal to enlist have deepened internal fractures. These tensions are further compounded by attempts to redraw the state’s legal framework and the economic and social fallout of the war. For a state that ties its survival to military dominance, these cracks reveal the limits of unity after the war. As Israeli society will now have to reckon both with its crimes, its successes, and its new image in the world.

Israel’s most exceptional achievement lies not in securing victory but in showcasing unrelenting devastation—a capacity to destroy on an immense scale. This persistence in destruction, rather than achieving security, underscores the lengths to which Israel is willing—and permitted—to go. In this paradox lies its most profound failure: the collapse of its ethical narrative and the erosion of its moral legitimacy in the eyes of the world.

The ceasefire further exposes a growing distrust in the promise of safety along Israel’s militarized frontiers, both in the North and South. The illusion of an impenetrable fortress is eroding, as borders remain volatile and adversaries endure. Israelis living on the frontier are forced to confront the unsettling truth that the mechanisms designed to ensure their security are no longer sufficient, their efficacy undermined by the enduring realities of resistance and occupation.

Unable to extinguish the Palestinians or their political claims, and unwilling to engage in a grammar of recognition, Israel has condemned itself to perpetual war. This condition, far from reflecting strength, highlights Israel’s acute dependency on its imperial patron, whose unwavering support has become more essential than ever to its continued supremacy fused with racialized discourse in the region. The addiction to war leaves Israel navigating a path that offers neither resolution nor reconciliation—only the persistence of its contradictions and its role in defining the frontiers of monstrosity in the twenty-first century. Israel comes out of this war with a changed strategic environment, some of these changes will play for its benefit, and will enable it to buy time. But it also comes having lost much morally, politically and indeed in its own social and political infighting.

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