Next Monday, President Donald Trump is expected to present the “Board of Peace” for Gaza—an international governance framework meant to launch the next phase of a fragile ceasefire. If it materializes, it will close one chapter of the war and open another: less kinetic, more political, and—ironically—less controlled by the country that fought it.
The first real glimpse of Gaza’s endgame did not come from Jerusalem. It came from choreography.
After Trump’s speech at the United Nations, he met with Arab leaders and discussed Gaza’s future. That meeting—attended by Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia—was the first moment the outline of a multi-point plan began to surface as a regional project rather than an Israeli one. Days later, Trump invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House. In the joint press appearance that followed, the optics suggested something else entirely: Netanyahu had prevailed; Israel’s war aims had been validated; the war would end on Israel’s terms.
But as the plan developed, the terms began to drift.
The framework now taking shape looks less like the Israeli government’s stated war goals and more like a US-authored “day after” package: an international board chaired by Trump; an executive layer meant to manage the process; a Palestinian technocratic committee; and an envisioned stabilization force whose mandate and troop contributors remain uncertain. Its political momentum was reinforced at a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh where Israel was not present, while Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was—an unmistakable signal about whose standing this architecture is meant to rehabilitate, and whose veto power is not assumed.
Here is the core problem. Israel did not sell the Gaza war as an open-ended campaign of punishment. It sold it as a war with conditions—benchmarks that would justify the cost and define victory. Stripped to essentials, Israel’s political echelon framed the end-state around five requirements: the return of all hostages; the dismantling of Hamas as a governing power; Hamas’s disarmament and Gaza’s demilitarization; a postwar security regime that prevents Gaza from again becoming a launchpad (often described as Israel’s freedom of action); and an alternative civil administration—“not Hamas,” and often, in the government’s rhetoric, not the Palestinian Authority either.
Those were not rhetorical ornaments. They were the moral and political justification for continuing the war: for rejecting earlier ceasefire proposals, for delaying an exit, for insisting that only sustained pressure could deliver a durable outcome.
And yet phase two is being prepared even though two additional thresholds Israel demanded are not met: Hamas has not been disarmed, and the body of the last remaining deceased hostage, Ran Gvili, has not been returned. Worse still for Israel’s claim to authorship, US officials have signaled they may proceed without conditioning the transition on either demand—promising to pursue them later rather than treating them as prerequisites.
This is what “winning” means in international politics: not how much damage you inflict, but whether you can convert force into enforceable compliance. If you cannot impose and verify the conditions you defined as victory, you may have won battles—but you have not secured the political outcome that makes war more than violence.
Turkey’s involvement underlines the point. Ankara is not being treated as a distant observer. It is being placed among the guarantors and key stakeholders shaping Gaza’s postwar pathway. For Israel, that is strategically jarring: Turkey has leverage with Hamas, regional legitimacy, and an agenda of its own—none of which aligns neatly with Israel’s vision of disarmament first, reconstruction later, and no meaningful Palestinian Authority return. The deeper Turkey’s role becomes in the mechanism, the less plausible it is to claim Israel is “setting the terms.”
This is where the Tony Blair episode becomes revealing—not as gossip, but as a case study in what Israel could not secure.
Haaretz reported that Blair became a frequent visitor to Netanyahu’s office throughout the war and was seen as a key figure in shaping international “day after” plans—at one point floated as a potential head of a temporary Gaza administration. Trump even referenced Blair publicly as part of the peace council ecosystem. And then, according to multiple sources cited in that reporting, Blair’s candidacy was pushed aside amid Egyptian—and broader Muslim-world—opposition. The plan corrected toward figures perceived as more acceptable to Arab capitals, including Nickolay Mladenov, a former UN envoy positioned to do the operational bridge-building.
The point is not whether Blair is qualified. It is what his sidelining demonstrates: even when Trump was willing to lend Israel a preferred symbol at the top of the project, Israel could not carry it through the region’s legitimacy test. If Israel cannot secure the face of the postwar administration, it is not “imposing conditions.” It is negotiating for influence inside a framework authored elsewhere.
And the cost of this strategic vacuum is written in blood. Because the war did not end earlier—because conditions were treated as prerequisites rather than outcomes to be negotiated and enforced—hostages died, soldiers died, and vast numbers of Palestinians died, including children. Extending the war in the name of conditions that were never realistically enforceable is not only a strategic failure; it is an ethical and political one. Democracies do not get to shrug at that ledger.
So Israel now faces the question it delayed for two years: what was achieved by prolonging the war if the ending terms are being written elsewhere—and if even Israel’s minimum conditions are not being met?
And because accountability must have an address, the question lands where it has been evaded since October 7: on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—still the only central decision-maker who has not paid a personal political price for failure.
If you can’t set the terms, you didn’t win. You just fought.
Jonathan moved to Israel in 2018 (and so became Yoni). He is passionate about Justice, Democracy, and Human Rights, which has been a driving force behind his career path. Jonathan is an international criminal lawyer and Managing Partner at Metaiuris Law Offices. He holds a J.D. from Buenos Aires University (2017) and an M.A in Diplomacy Studies from Tel Aviv University (2021). Also, he is the host of the Spanish speaking radio show of Kan, Israel’s Public Broadcasting Corporation.