The End of the Myth: Gaza After Trump
Since the announcement of the American plan that led to the release of the hostages held by Hamas and the gradual withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza, a profound shift has occurred in the war of narratives. Without using many words or diplomatic bluster, Donald Trump succeeded where the European governments failed: forcing Hamas to become a rational actor again, and not a sacrificial icon. The American administration has changed the conflict’s moral focal point.
Washington imposed a direct negotiation. By forcing Hamas to deal as an equal with America, this plan has brought about a silent transformation: it has moved the Palestinian movement from the register of “myth” to that of calculation.
For years, Hamas’s communication has been based on a victim-like posture: besieged Gaza, oppressive Israel, and the complicit West. By agreeing to a negotiation with Trump, Hamas broke one of the pillars of its legend. He is no longer the symbol of absolute resistance but a political actor capable of compromise. This simple semantic shift amounts to a symbolic defeat.
Regional impacts are immediate. Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and also Turkey hailed the release of the hostages as a victory for pragmatic diplomacy.
Even Qatar, long the financial godfather of Hamas, has tempered its critics so as not to compromise its partnership with Washington. In this sense, the Trump administration plan has provoked a dissociation of the Sunni world from Hamas, now perceived as a burden rather than a hero.
This shift establishes a new hierarchy of Arab priorities: political Islam is retreating from economic imperatives, internal modernization, and the fear of chaos. The “Palestinian cause” does not disappear, but it loses its “sacred character.”
It is in Europe that Hamas still retains part of its moral credit. The movement remains, in some militant circles, the ultimate symbol of the resistance of the oppressed. This binary reading—oppressor against oppressed—still structures the European political thought inherited from Third-Worldism.
The American plan was welcomed in Europe with suspicion because, regardless of whether the hostages have been released, part of public opinion believes it is essential to maintain the moral narrative of the weak versus the strong.
Europe, in this context, appears as the last refuge of the victim’s narrative. As the Middle East moves away from it, Some European capitals continue to think geopolitics through moral schemas. On one side, the realists; on the other, the consciences.
One of the most unexpected effects of the American plan is the reclassification of Israel in the narrative. The partial withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza, even if conditioned, temporarily erases the image of an occupation. By releasing the hostages, the Israeli government regains political and moral stature, that of a state capable of negotiation.
Israeli diplomacy, long defensive, thus benefits from a symbolic reversal: faced with a weakened Hamas and disavowed by its Arab sponsors, it suddenly appears as a responsible power. The image of Israel, often portrayed in the West as an unrestrained aggressor, is being nuanced. The logic of force, framed by a compromise, becomes the very condition of peace.
Trump managed to change the framework of perception of the conflict but not to erase its root causes: ideological rivalry, the question of territory, and the symbolism of sacrifice.
With this plan, Donald Trump has accomplished a triple change:
This situation compels Hamas to abandon the realm of sacred resistance in favor of political calculation. He isolates the movement in the Arab world, now more concerned with stability than ideology, and he presents back to Israel a posture of rational de-escalation.
President Trump may have signed the end of the morality of victims that dominated the Western perspective for half a century.
