As heartening and hopeful as the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas seems, the process used to reach this accord should leaves a sense of unease. A lasting peace requires an atmosphere of mutual respect, and that’s still in short supply in the relationships among the negotiating parties, the U.S. included.
First, media reports characterize the settlement as a peace agreement, but it isn’t quite. On Sept. 28, following a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told reporters that if Hamas refused to accept the 20-point agreement he and Netanyahu agreed to, “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas.”
That threat has not gone away; as recently as Oct. 14, Trump indicated that if Hamas failed to disarm, “we will disarm them, and it’ll happen quickly and perhaps violently. But they will disarm.” Threatening violence is not a path to peace; nor is peace attained by getting one side of a conflict to agree to a set of conditions “or else.”
U.S. President Donald Trump, right, speaks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ben Gurion International Airport before boarding his plane to Sharm El-Sheikh, on Oct. 13, 2025, in Tel Aviv, Israel. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/TNS)
Second, the 20-point agreement Netanyahu and Trump imposed on Hamas lacks specificity. It is unclear what constitutes a violation of the agreement, who will determine if a violation takes place, and what the consequences of a violation will be.
We’ve already witnessed one example of how this is problematic. Netanyahu contended Hamas violated the agreement because they were unable to deliver the remains of all the hostages, and Hamas contended Israel’s destruction of cities in Gaza and their withholding of heavy machinery required to clear the rubble in those cities made the recovery of those remains impossible. Given those circumstances, who will determine if Palestine violated the treaty? Similarly, Palestine contended that Israel failed to allow the agreed upon flow of aid. In that case, who will determine if Israel violated the agreement?
Third, Presidents Trump and Netanyahu and the Hamas government have all had problems keeping their word. Trump has failed to follow through with threats or promises on multiple occasions and there are several instances where both Netanyahu and Hamas reneged on cease-fires. Moreover, given that President Trump is a convicted felon, that Netanyahu is facing an ongoing corruption trial in Israel and has been issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes in Gaza, and that the Hamas government is beholden to a terrorist group, it seems foolhardy to think that commitment to peace is honorable.
Finally, the Republican Party has wholeheartedly accepted Trump’s “take it or else” approach in dealing with immigration, “woke-ness” and free trade. No one in the party has expressed concerns about Trump’s unilateral imposition of martial law on cities that don’t support his immigration policies. Nor has his party objected to his imposition of an “anti-woke” warrior ethos on the armed forces, his unilateral cuts to research funds to universities that support diversity, equity and inclusion, or his unilateral cuts to “woke” environmental programs passed by legislatures that were led by Democrats. No one in his party has objected to his unilateral imposition of tariffs, which was previously determined by Congress.
U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, on Oct. 13, 2025, in Jerusalem. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/Getty Images/TNS)
The bottom line question that troubles those who value democracy is this: Will the Republican Party find it acceptable to have police and the National Guard monitor voting sites to protect against the “fraud” that happened in 2020?
The president’s extortionist approach is playing out locally and regionally. Dartmouth College is wrestling with the question of whether it should sign on to Trump’s higher education compact. State education departments in Vermont and New Hampshire are facing an analogous decision on whether to adopt the Trump administration’s civics curriculum in exchange for access to federal grants. State and local police forces continue to debate if and how they will collaborate with ICE. And the Republican governors of New Hampshire and Vermont are making decisions on whether they will send their National Guard troops to the “clean-up of urban hellscapes” in cities that did not vote for Trump.
At some point the public will realize the peril implicit in Trump’s “take-it-or-else” method, which is rooted in authoritarianism. If American voters continue to support legislators who see the “my-way-or-the-highway” model Trump used in the Middle East as the best way to solve problems and vote accordingly, they will be voting to trade freedom of thought for freedom from thought. The Republican Party has so far been willing to accept that trade. Those of us who value open-mindedness hope voters think differently in the coming years.
Wayne Gersen is a retired public school administrator. He lives in Etna.
