Aha. So in other words, literally nobody wants a violent terrorist hellhole except maybe...the Iranians, who were also de-balled by the IDF and Trump early this year.

Right. But also nobody wants to use their troops in a running gun battle against 15K Hamas soldiers in urban warfare in Gaza, where air or artillery support is fraught with repercussions.

I mean, Netanyahu and the right-wing portion of the Israeli government wanted to do that, but their motivations were very specific to them, and were supported by the presence of the hostages. None of the other ME folks face those incentives.

That's why there's some uncertainty as to what might happen. Everyone has said that they've agreed to a new occupation of Gaza...except that Hamas hasn't exactly agreed to lay down their guns and give up their presence in Gazan "politics," so we don't have a lot of certainty around that.

And that's a bad thing because...?

Because they might accomplish that goal through mass deprivation of human rights. You might still think it's worth it in order to keep a lid on Gaza, but it's still a bad thing if the new "Board of Peace" ends up instituting a repressive authoritarian regime in order to keep Hamas and the PFLP from gaining a foothold.

Again, that's pure speculation. It will come down to whether or not the new entity can generate enough of a standard of living for the Palestinians.

I agree we can only speculate at this point, but I disagree that it will come down to anything having to do with Palestinian standard of living. It entirely comes down to whether Hamas - the people with the guns - are either willing to stand down and cede power to the new regime and/or whether the new regime is willing to fight and kill Hamas if they don't.

The ordinary Palestinian people have almost no agency in what's going to happen in Gaza. That's the problem. It's always been the problem. Absent a strong democratic system where elections can be held and the outcomes of those elections can be enforced, the ability to determine who will be in the government often comes down to who has the guns, not who has the majority. Hamas has all the guns, they've spent the last ~20 years killing all the Palestinian people who might oppose them before 10/7, and it looks like they're already starting to kill all the Palestinians who might try to oppose them during this ceasefire period.

The Palestinian people (writ large) are not going to get to choose the future of Gaza. That's the whole point of the Peace Plan structure. The future of Gaza is going to be decided by the choices of Hamas and the various ME countries who are contemplated to contribute the security forces (I assume the U.S. will not be sending material troops, though I suppose that could be wrong). Not the Palestinian people, and long before there's any "standard of living" to be measured.