According to Donald Trump, he has single-handedly sorted out the century-old conflict between Jews and Palestinians in the Holy Land and now everything will be just fine. Bring on the Nobel Peace Prize. Really?

Not so fast. The hostages are back and a bunch of Palestinians have been freed from Israeli jails. This is great and something of an achievement by Trump, so props where props are due. But:

• The Gaza strip is still a moonscape of destruction and will be for quite some time. There are two million people there who need food, water, medical support, places to live, jobs, etc.
• It is entirely unclear exactly who will be in charge of rebuilding Gaza, who will pay for it, and generally what will happen when. The idea that this can be decided and put into effect mostly without involving actual Palestinians is silly and counterproductive.
• It is equally unclear what will happen in the West Bank.
• The Israeli government is still violently opposed to the idea of a Palestinian state.
• The Hamas terrorism group has no apparent intention to dissolve itself and give up its arms voluntarily. (OTOH, given the conduct of the Israeli military over the last two years and the general outlook for Palestinians under Israeli rule, there will probably be a long queue at the door of the Hamas recruiting office.) Especially since, Trump's and Netanyahu's claims to the contrary notwithstanding, they have effectively won – certainly not lost – the war because (a) they're still there, and (b) they're apparently now the ones one needs to negotiate with about Palestinian affairs, rather than the official Palestinian authorities. (If there are losers in this war it is the non-Hamas people of Gaza.)
• The fact that the same folks who either facilitated Israel's campaign of destruction by providing arms and ordnance or else allowed it to go forward by political inaction in the first place are now the ones patting each other on the back for having “brokered peace” – which could have happened many months ago given sufficient dedication – is an irony unto itself.

IOW, anybody who thinks that the situation in and around Gaza is now done and dusted should go and have their head examined. Right now we are down from “active war zone” and back to “powder keg that will explode at the slightest spark” – no more and no less. This is good but it isn't paradise (yet).

Similarly, anybody who thinks that it is possible to get rid of Hamas by killing all Hamas fighters (and incidentally tens of thousands of innocent civilians, too) is dangerously naive. Even if it were theoretically possible for the Israeli government to kill every single member of Hamas, this would infuriate otherwise peaceful people to a point where six weeks later there would be a Hamas 2.0 which would be just as rabidly anti-Israel as the original or more so.

The only way to sort out the situation for good and prevent further Hamas terrorism and Israeli backlash is to improve the situation of the Palestinian people to a point where armed insurrection against Israel is no longer perceived to be a necessity. This means that terrorist groups like Hamas will lose their popular appeal and can be prosecuted as common criminals, ideally by the Palestinians themselves in their own state.

I'm not holding my breath.