by Irina Tsukerman

A few days ago, Vernas Hafzy, writing for “Egypt Times”, published an important interview with Bishara Bahbah, an informal liaison to the White House on the Middle East diplomatic matters.

Vernas Hefzy

Here is an English language translation:

Urgent.. Bishara Bahbah to “Egypt Times”: Any talk about the future of Gaza without Palestinian participation is “empty talk,” and the Arab plan proposed by Egypt is the most realistic | Interview

 Interview – Farnas Hafzi Friday, September 5, 2025 – 7:08 PM

Since US President Donald Trump’s recent statements regarding a ceasefire proposal for Gaza, the debate has been ongoing over whether we are on the cusp of a comprehensive deal that will halt the bloodshed in the Strip, or whether what is being proposed is merely a fleeting political bargaining chip.

Amid Hamas’s refusal to accept any dictates, displacement plans, or its withdrawal from the scene, and Israel’s silence, the situation is becoming increasingly opaque. The name of Palestinian-American businessman Bishara Bahbah has emerged as the unofficial mediator between Hamas and the White House regarding ceasefire negotiations, operating in the most dangerous areas between Washington and the movement.

In this regard, the Egypt Times website conducted a press interview with Bishara Bahbah, to put him in front of difficult questions: Trump’s control over Netanyahu, the chances of an Arab initiative succeeding in light of international tensions, the future of two million Palestinians living on the brink of extinction in Gaza, and many other questions that occupy the minds of those interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here is the text of the interview.

Following Trump’s recent statements and Hamas’s response, do you see a potential deal on the horizon to end the conflict in Gaza? 

Following President Trump’s statements, hope for a comprehensive agreement has emerged, given that the only factor capable of influencing Israel is American pressure. Without this pressure, no deal will be concluded, especially given Netanyahu’s lack of urgency to conclude an agreement. The Palestinians hope that American intervention, specifically from the president, will lead to a comprehensive agreement that will end the war.

Netanyahu’s statements expressing his desire to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza and his willingness to open the Rafah crossing for this purpose… Do you think he’s moving forward with this under American guidance and sponsorship?

Netanyahu’s recent statements reflect his intentions to displace Palestinians, but these are merely illusions. The Palestinian people are attached to their land and will not leave it no matter the circumstances. The situation in Gaza is tragic, where people live lives unworthy of human beings, but their love of their homeland is deeply rooted in their souls, and there will be no displacement. If Netanyahu wants to open the crossings, let them be the crossings of historic Palestine: Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, the Negev, and Beersheba. Egypt, however, does not bear responsibility for the displacement of Palestinians; that responsibility lies solely with the occupation.

Recent leaks about Trump’s vision for Gaza after the war reveal what’s going on inside the White House the day after the war ends. What’s your comment on that? 

Regarding the recent leaks attributed to the White House, it is not certain that they represent Trump’s vision; they may simply be scenarios being discussed.

However, the Arab plan proposed by Egypt remains the most realistic, because any talk about the future of Gaza without Palestinian participation is empty talk that will lead to no results.

Upcoming scenarios: Could there be pressure from President Trump on Netanyahu to stop the bloodshed?

Trump, for his part, wants to end the war in Gaza and appears prepared to exert pressure on all parties to achieve this goal.

How do you assess the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip in light of the ongoing Israeli aggression?

The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip has surpassed the level of tragedy. After nearly two years, residents have lived without access to health services or basic infrastructure, enduring harsh conditions lacking even the most basic necessities of life. Even more serious is the spread of disease and the widespread effects of psychological trauma. For 22 months, people have lived under the constant threat of losing their lives at any moment, leaving profound mental and psychological scars that are difficult to treat.

What are the most prominent challenges facing efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to civilians there?

The biggest challenge to humanitarian access is Israeli restrictions. Israel uses food and medicine as a weapon of war against civilians in Gaza, a clear violation of international law. The world has not witnessed a war in which famine has been used to such an extent as a weapon in the past two centuries.

What are the main obstacles to reaching a comprehensive truce?

The main obstacles to a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire are the Israeli demands for Hamas’s surrender, which are unrealistic. However, a compromise solution may be the declaration of a comprehensive ceasefire, followed by the entry of Arab forces into Gaza for a temporary period until the situation stabilizes.

Do you think the conditions are now ripe for a permanent ceasefire agreement?

Let me tell you, Israel is capable of ending the war tomorrow if it wanted to, but that won’t happen without direct American pressure.

In your opinion, what guarantees are required for any ceasefire to succeed and prevent recurrence of escalation?

If a comprehensive ceasefire agreement is reached, the only effective guarantee of Israel’s commitment to it is the American guarantee, as no other party has the power to bind it.

Amid this complex landscape, Gaza appears to be the epicenter of a crisis that transcends its geographical borders, encapsulating the conflict of wills between Washington, Tel Aviv, and Hamas, and between political calculations and human rights. Yet, amid American pressure and Arab initiatives, the most obvious truth remains that the fate of the Strip’s two million people cannot tolerate further compromise.

Efforts to impose a truce or formulate an agreement may succeed, but the fundamental question will remain: Will international guarantees be sufficient to free Gaza from the cycle of bloodshed and siege, or will its people remain suspended between promises on the brink of annihilation?”

The interview brings up several items that are worth dissecting in detail.

The premise that we are inches from a comprehensive Gaza deal because President Trump voiced support for a ceasefire is seductive and misleading. The core variables that determine whether bloodshed stops or simply pauses are not presidential soundbites or corridor rumors but incentives, verifiable sequencing, and the legitimacy of who enforces terms on the ground. Against that yardstick, the current dynamic is structurally weak: Hamas refuses dictates or displacement and has no incentive to self-liquidate; Israel’s leadership signals redlines but remains strategically ambiguous; and Washington is experimenting with informal emissaries like Bishara Bahbah who can shuttle messages but cannot deliver coercive guarantees. The result is a negotiation space heavy on theater and light on enforceable tradeoffs.

Trump’s “Gaza takeover” talk (leaked or trial-ballooned) is part of the problem because it centers control in Washington’s hands without building the local consent architecture any sustainable arrangement requires. A takeover narrative invites three counter-reactions at once: Hamas will frame it as an external occupation by proxy and use it to harden recruitment; Israel’s hardliners will see it as political cover to delay their own difficult choices on rules of engagement and timelines; Arab capitals will perceive it as undercutting their initiative and demand a price for participating. Add Trump’s transactional style—rapid escalations, personalized channels, headline-driven timelines—and you get a process that spikes expectations then underdelivers, which is lethal for civilian compliance and humanitarian access. Private go-betweens can carry messages, but when the price of non-compliance is unclear and the sequence of steps is fuzzy, spoilers win the day.

Bahbah’s emergence as an unofficial mediator is a double-edged signal. On the positive side, non-governmental interlocutors can test ideas with plausible deniability and reduce political cost for first moves. On the negative side, they create ambiguity about who owns the process and what, exactly, is being promised. For Hamas, an unofficial channel is useful for extracting concessions without reputational cost; for the White House, it is a way to probe feasibility without committing the full faith and credit of U.S. power. Neither posture substitutes for an enforceable framework. When diplomacy operates in the shadows, battlefield actors default to maximalism because they do not believe the next message will be backed by credible sticks or durable carrots.

If there is a real path to a durable cessation of hostilities, it runs through Cairo. Egypt’s plan—an Arab-anchored stabilization architecture with sequenced ceasefire, phased withdrawals, supervised prisoner exchanges, and a temporary multi-national Arab presence—has the only chance of gaining minimal acceptance on all sides. But “Egypt’s plan” succeeds only if it is upgraded from a set of talking points to a detailed operations order. That means five concrete pillars: first, an unequivocal end state that all parties sign on to in writing (no displacement, no permanent foreign rule, no rearmament sanctuary); second, a day-by-day sequence with inspection windows, not vague phases; third, a joint operations room in Sinai staffed by Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, UAE, and a small U.S./EU technical cell to coordinate crossings, air deconfliction, and aid convoys; fourth, a financing package with escrowed reconstruction funds released against benchmarks so that bulldozers, not militias, capture early rents; fifth, a border regime at Rafah and Kerem Shalom with integrated scanners, biometric enrollment for aid distribution, and independent auditors to verify that cement and fuel reach civilian projects, not tunnels.

None of this works without a Palestinian governance solution that people on the ground will tolerate. The blunt reality is that both Hamas and the PA have forfeited trust among key stakeholders—Israel for security reasons, Arab donors for governance failure, and Gazans for the ruin of daily life. The conversation cannot be “PA or Hamas”; it has to be: who can deliver municipal services, policing, and fiscal honesty for 18–24 months while the political horizon is rebuilt? That requires a caretaker “Palestinian Recovery Authority” with three components: technocratic administrators drawn from the existing civil service and diaspora professionals; a vetted internal security cadre recruited locally but trained and monitored by Arab partners; and an independent fiscal board with the power to publish monthly, line-item budgets for donors and citizens. You do not need unanimity to start; you need enough legitimacy to prevent extortion economies from returning.

There is a bench of pragmatic Palestinian figures who meet those criteria, even if they are not currently at the table. Think in profiles, not factions: experienced technocrats with a record of clean books and service delivery (for example, ex-prime ministers and finance heads who balanced budgets and paid salaries on time); municipal leaders and utility managers from Gaza and the West Bank who kept water, power, and sanitation running under fire; business and professional syndicate figures with credibility among unions and chambers of commerce; respected civil society organizers from medical and legal associations who can staff complaint mechanisms and ombuds offices. Names that often surface in this context include technocrats like Salam Fayyad and Rami Hamdallah, security professionals with coordination experience, and Gaza-born administrators tied to local clans but not embedded in militant command structures. None is a silver bullet; together, with Arab sponsorship and enforceable vetting, they can form a minimally trusted interim slate.

For Egypt’s plan to succeed, Cairo also needs tools Trump’s approach sidelines: predictable leverage, not rhetorical spikes. That means a calibrated package of sticks and carrots synchronized with the sequence. Sticks: a clear menu of consequences—visa bans, asset freezes, interdictions—triggered automatically if any party violates ceasefire timing or diverts aid. Carrots: phased openings—industrial permits, corridor access for exports, work visas—released when benchmarks are verified. Egypt should secure from Washington and Brussels a written sanctions snap-back that targets individual spoilers rather than collective punishment, and from Gulf partners a reconstruction escrow that cannot be raided by militias. The lesson of every failed Gaza truce is the same: if money and movement flow before guns go silent and tunnels are mapped, armed groups capture the rents and the cycle restarts.

Trump’s leverage over Netanyahu is real but uneven. On paper, a U.S. president can condition munitions deliveries, intelligence sharing, and diplomatic shield at the Security Council. In practice, a president who frames Gaza as a “takeover” opportunity undercuts his own leverage by handing Israel a domestic political alibi to stall—why concede now if Washington plans to impose a solution favorable to Israeli security asks later? The more Washington centers itself as the arbiter, the less urgency Israel feels to compromise with Arab partners; the more the process revolves around private envoys and unilateral “visions,” the easier it is for Hamas to claim it was not consulted and disavow difficult steps. Trump can end this war faster by recognizing that an Egyptian-anchored framework creates more enforceable pressure on Jerusalem than a White House blueprint floated through unofficial channels.

Humanitarian access cannot be an afterthought wrapped into photo-op corridors. The operating model should look like this: pre-cleared aid manifests logged on a shared platform; convoying with mixed teams (UN logistics, Egyptian military police, vetted local contractors); a two-key system for fuel and cement depots; and third-party field monitors with camera coverage whose daily feeds are public. If a truck goes missing, the next tranche pauses automatically; if convoys arrive intact, the pipeline accelerates within 24 hours. Aid predictability breaks black markets, and transparency undercuts propaganda claims on both sides. To make that real, Egypt will need U.S. lift assets for a 60–90 day surge, Gulf financing for warehousing on the Sinai side, and European scanners and cold-chain capacity. These are mundane details; they are also the difference between a ceasefire that reduces mortality and one that feeds militias.

Security sector design is the other cornerstone. A temporary Arab stabilization mission should be strictly limited in mandate and duration, with rules of engagement confined to protection of aid, infrastructure, and civic administration—not counter-insurgency or border incursions. Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and the UAE have interoperable units and intelligence links; they also have different equities in Gaza. The mission should recruit and train a vetted local police force, rotate Arab contingents every 90 days to avoid entanglement, and report to a civilian Palestinian administrator rather than commanding civil affairs. Success here is measured in mundane outputs: response times to 911-style calls, reopenings of schools and clinics, electricity uptime, and crime rates—not in speeches or summits.

What about Hamas’s refusal to “withdraw from the scene”? That is precisely why sequencing matters. Do not demand theological surrender; demand verifiable behaviors that degrade coercive capacity: mapped tunnel segments handed over, serial numbers on mortars inventoried, specific commanders relocated under third-country supervision, tax checkpoints dismantled, radio nets monitored by the Arab mission. Tie every economic opening to those micro-behaviors. If the group balks, the consequence is not collective strangulation but targeted pain for identifiable commanders and financiers. If it complies piecemeal, the public sees tangible benefits, and the political economy shifts away from extortion.

On Israel’s side, opacity has become a strategy. Silence about end states keeps coalition partners aligned and international partners guessing. Egypt’s framework should smoke that out with scheduled deliverables: border hours expanded on fixed dates, no-strike lists locked in with audit trails, specific neighborhoods deconflicted to permit school reopening, and a phased drawdown calendar linked to Arab mission milestones. Israel does not have to trust Hamas; it has to trust Egypt and the Arab partners enough to test a structured de-escalation. That is where U.S. power helps—by underwriting Egyptian guarantees, not by supplanting them.

The elephant in the room is leadership legitimacy for Gaza’s civilians. If PA and Hamas are disqualified in the near term, someone must sign paychecks, adjudicate disputes, and collect trash. Start with municipal competence and scale upward. Identify and empower mayors, utility directors, hospital administrators, and school principals with clean reputations and a record of service. Give them budget authority under strict audit, a hotline to the joint operations room, and protection from retribution. Build a public grievance mechanism overseen by Palestinian legal associations and Arab ombuds officers. Let citizens see that complaints trigger real investigations and real corrections. Legitimacy grows when the trash is collected on schedule and water flows through pipes—not when communiqués promise a “new dawn.”

As for Bahbah and other unofficial envoys, fold them into a formal advisory channel that informs but does not negotiate. Their access is valuable for sensing signals; their freelancing is dangerous for discipline. Make clear that only the joint operations room issues binding timelines and only signatories can unlock money and movement. That clarity deprives spoilers of the oxygen of rumor.

Finally, address displacement fears head-on. Egypt cannot and will not absorb Gaza’s population. Include in the written end state: no forced displacement; a ban on “temporary relocation” that becomes permanent; and a cross-border restitution mechanism for civilians who suffered property loss, paid from reconstruction escrow and adjudicated by mixed Palestinian-Arab panels. When people believe they will not be erased, they cooperate with stabilization; when they fear they are bargaining chips, they resist every step that looks like compliance.

The throughline is simple: Trump’s centralized, personality-driven “takeover” idea treats Gaza as a board to be seized rather than a society to be stabilized. Egypt’s approach, if properly resourced and disciplined, treats Gaza as a system—with borders, utilities, payrolls, and municipal grievances—that must be rebooted under Arab guardrails and Palestinian technocratic management. Success hinges on specificity and sequencing, not slogans. If Washington wants a real ceasefire, it should stop freelancing, lean into Egypt’s framework, and commit to the boring work of verification, escrow, audits, and municipal competence. That is how you halt bloodshed and keep it halted.

he information space both shapes and is shaped by ceasefire diplomacy. In the context of Gaza, perception is currency. Every leak, every statement, and every viral image recalibrates what negotiators can realistically achieve on the ground. The Trump “takeover” vision illustrates this perfectly. By framing Gaza as something Washington can seize, even indirectly, the White House inadvertently feeds into Hamas’s narrative of foreign occupation, which it then amplifies through satellite channels, encrypted Telegram groups, and diaspora social media. What was perhaps intended as a show of strength becomes proof, in militant messaging, that the U.S. and Israel aim not at de-escalation but at permanent domination. This shapes recruitment, hardens public resistance, and reduces the space for pragmatic compromise. In other words, rhetoric in Washington becomes fodder for propaganda in Rafah, which in turn constrains Cairo’s ability to sell its plan as a sovereign Arab-led initiative.

The flow also runs in reverse: what circulates in Gaza’s streets and digital forums pressures external policymakers. Graphic images of malnourished children or destroyed hospitals—shared millions of times—reach Western publics, where they fuel protest movements and force officials into defensive postures. U.S. and European leaders find themselves pressed to act by their own citizens, even if their strategic priorities diverge. Israel, too, is constrained: silence about its endgame is a deliberate tactic to keep coalition politics stable, but in the absence of clarity, the information void fills with speculation and hostile narratives. Hamas, recognizing this, weaponizes imagery of suffering civilians to portray itself as defender rather than aggressor, even when its actions trigger Israeli retaliation. The asymmetry is glaring: Israel operates under global scrutiny; Hamas thrives in the shadows of plausible deniability. The information space thus tilts the diplomatic board, shaping which proposals are seen as legitimate and which are dismissed as cover for repression.

Egypt’s plan, to be viable, must address this battlefield of perception as directly as it addresses aid convoys and border management. That means embedding transparency mechanisms into the process—not as afterthoughts but as core guarantees. Daily updates on aid delivery, live feeds from Rafah crossings, and publicly released audits of reconstruction funds are not just technocratic exercises; they are information weapons that blunt propaganda. If Cairo and its Arab partners can show, in real time, that food reaches families and clinics reopen, they reclaim narrative ground from Hamas and reassure skeptical Palestinians that compliance brings tangible benefits. At the same time, they undercut Israeli arguments that aid inevitably empowers militants, because third-party monitoring proves otherwise. In this way, visibility becomes verification, and verification becomes legitimacy.

Trump’s approach, conversely, risks feeding disinformation loops. His transactional style and reliance on unofficial emissaries like Bahbah leave space for rumor and distortion. Every unverified leak is amplified into a narrative of betrayal or secret deals. Hamas exploits this ambiguity to stall or extract concessions, while Arab publics interpret it as proof that Washington sidelines their governments. In the digital space, opacity is weakness; it fuels conspiracies faster than they can be debunked. A sustainable plan requires not only sequencing of tanks and aid but sequencing of narratives: preemptive communication that tells publics what will happen, when, and how violations will be exposed. Without that, even the best-structured ceasefire collapses under the weight of rumor and propaganda.

In short, the information space is not parallel to the battlefield—it is the battlefield. Trump’s Gaza takeover rhetoric empowers adversarial narratives and delegitimizes allies. Hamas thrives by weaponizing imagery and rumor, while Israel suffers from silence and Egypt risks being drowned out. For Cairo’s plan to succeed, it must build narrative architecture alongside logistical architecture. Verification must be public, rumors must be preempted, and the voices of pragmatic Palestinian technocrats must be amplified until they become visible alternatives to militants and discredited elites. Without control of the information space, even the most carefully constructed ceasefire will remain hostage to perception—and perception, in this conflict, is often more powerful than the facts themselves.

One of the most immediate arenas is TikTok. The app has become a frontline weapon in the Gaza conflict because it compresses narratives into highly emotional, visually striking short videos. Trump’s decision to “save TikTok” despite bipartisan pressure in Washington has had unintended strategic consequences: it preserved one of Beijing’s most powerful soft-power vectors while allowing Hamas-linked sympathizers to push curated footage of suffering children, collapsed buildings, and funerals directly to Western audiences. These clips gain millions of views within hours, creating a groundswell of outrage that dwarfs official press conferences or fact sheets. The effect is that Western governments, including Trump’s own administration, find their policy space narrowed by an app they chose to shield. In practical terms, this means that every delay in aid convoys or every rumor of displacement becomes magnified into a viral crisis that forces hurried, reactive diplomacy.

Al Jazeera plays a different but equally potent role. Its Arabic-language coverage frames Trump’s “takeover” talk as proof of U.S. neo-colonial ambitions, reinforcing Hamas’s messaging that Palestinians are pawns in a foreign scheme. Its English-language coverage, targeted at Western audiences, emphasizes humanitarian collapse and presents Egyptian mediation as the only plausible Arab-led solution. This dual-track communication both boosts Arab diplomatic credibility and fuels global pressure on Israel. It also boxes in Cairo: if Egypt fails to deliver on its plan quickly, the same coverage that elevated it as the only realistic option will pivot to portraying it as complicit in prolonging suffering. In this way, Al Jazeera is not just reporting on diplomacy; it is shaping the incentive structures by raising or lowering the reputational stakes for each actor.

Diaspora lobbying networks amplify this dynamic further. In Washington, pro-Israel organizations highlight Hamas’s use of human shields and push against any deal that leaves the group intact, while Palestinian and progressive networks frame Trump’s leaks and Netanyahu’s silence as evidence of displacement schemes. In Europe, NGOs and activist groups mobilize street protests that pressure governments to distance themselves from Trump’s initiatives and call for direct humanitarian corridors overseen by the EU. These lobbying efforts feed back into the media cycle, which then feeds back into the policy cycle, creating a loop where perception often outweighs battlefield realities. The result is paralysis: leaders hesitate to commit to specific frameworks because they fear the blowback not from armies but from hashtags and demonstrations.

The disinformation dimension cannot be overlooked. Iranian, Russian, and Turkish media ecosystems are exploiting the Gaza conflict to push narratives that discredit U.S. mediation and amplify divisions among allies. Russian state media frame Trump’s Gaza vision as a “colonial plot” designed to protect Israel while sacrificing Arab sovereignty, while simultaneously painting Egypt as weak and subservient. Iranian outlets emphasize the suffering of civilians while erasing Hamas’s role in prolonging the conflict, using this to inflame diaspora anger and justify Tehran’s own proxies. Turkish platforms highlight displacement fears to argue that only Ankara can safeguard Palestinian rights. These narratives spill into Western social media spaces, where they merge with grassroots activism, making it nearly impossible for U.S. or Egyptian officials to control the story.

To counter this, Cairo’s plan would have to embed a parallel information campaign as structured as its security plan. For example, every aid convoy could be livestreamed from Sinai to Gaza with timestamps, drone footage, and independent monitors narrating progress. A dedicated Arabic- and English-language media center could publish daily bulletins, not only to donors and diplomats but to ordinary Palestinians and international audiences. Partnerships with diaspora community leaders could create trusted nodes that preempt rumors with verified updates. This would flip the script: instead of Hamas dominating the information space with emotive footage, the Arab stabilization mission would control the daily narrative, showing that compliance brings visible, verifiable benefits.

Trump’s style, however, is antithetical to this. He thrives on unpredictability and personal branding, which may deliver headlines but feeds rumor mills. Every time a phrase like “takeover” leaks, it generates a storm of viral content that Hamas and its allies weaponize. The effect is that Trump is not simply failing to control the information space—he is supplying ammunition to adversaries. Cairo’s challenge is therefore twofold: to impose discipline not only on Gaza’s borders and convoys but also on the messaging of its own supposed partners. Without narrative discipline, the stabilization plan risks being drowned out by noise and distortion, leaving perceptions of betrayal or manipulation to poison the atmosphere before the first aid truck rolls.