You may have missed it due to the firehose of international news over the last week. But in between the CIA director traveling to Venezuela to meet deposed dictator Nicolás Maduro’s replacement and President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again flirtation with bombing Iran, the White House made a pretty big announcement on Gaza: The 20-point peace plan negotiated with Israel and Hamas last October is moving to the next phase.

The Trump administration is understandably giddy at the developments. U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s point person on the Gaza file, delivered a declaratory statement through social media on Wednesday celebrating the conclusion of Phase 1, which resulted in some tangible achievements — the release of all living Israeli and foreign hostages from Gaza, an acceleration of humanitarian aid into the territory, a partial pullback of Israeli troops and a significant reduction in the violence.

“For the first time in Gaza in almost a long time, there’s no Palestinian Authority, and there’s no Hamas governing it,” another Trump administration official told reporters. “This really has the potential to be the beginning of a new era.”

The key word here is “potential.” Because as much as the White House would like to proclaim its policy on Gaza as a clear accomplishment, Trump’s entire peace plan still rests on a weak foundation.

First, we need to put something in perspective: What the Trump administration insisted was a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza was in reality anything but. There was still plenty of shooting and bombing going on, just at a lower level. This was probably inevitable — for instance, when Phase 1 of the deal was signed in October, hundreds of Hamas militants underground found themselves on the Israeli side of the so-called Yellow Line, which was the point where Israeli forces deployed until other aspects of the peace plan were settled. The Israel Defense Forces continued targeting Hamas commanders in the interim, and IDF patrols, particularly near the Gazan city of Rafah, were at times being ambushed by Hamas gunmen who either didn’t get the memo or didn’t agree with the decision to stop firing to begin with.

On Thursday, the IDF killed 10 Palestinians in Gaza, including a senior Islamic Jihad commander. Eventually, the casualties piled up: More than 400 Palestinians have been killed since the supposed ceasefire was agreed to.

The continued violence, however, is only half the story. The other half is the nature and structure of the agreement Trump pushed through. None of the systemic disputes that have divided Israel and the Palestinians have been addressed yet. While this might seem like an oversight, it was actually by design. The Trump administration made the conclusion that bundling everything together into one package — in other words, solving all the problems at once — was untenable. It was highly unlikely Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority would come to terms on how Gaza should be governed, when (or even if) the IDF should withdraw and when (or even if) a comprehensive peace process should be initiated. Linking the resolution of all these issues simultaneously to a ceasefire meant that large-scale fighting would persist for the foreseeable future.

There was logic in not being too pie-in-the-sky. But there was a cost to the decision as well. What the Trump administration effectively did was defer the hard issues to a later date, hoping that with time, Israel and Hamas would be able to piggyback on the positive momentum formed by the reduction in violence and prisoner releases into Phase 2. But there’s no sign of this happening.

Israel, for example, seems to be treating the Yellow Line as a new de facto border with Gaza when, in reality, it’s meant to be a temporary placeholder until a viable Palestinian security force is developed. Hamas, which is supposed to demilitarize, disarm and demobilize as a military force, is no closer to doing so today than it was last year. And if Hamas refuses to disarm, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated unequivocally that Israel will resume the war.

There are other problems as well. While the Trump-chaired Board of Peace and members of the technocratic Palestinian administration in Gaza have supposedly been stood up, we still don’t know which countries will be participating in the International Stabilization Force or what its mandate is. The answer to the second question will determine the answer to the first; countries such as Azerbaijan, Indonesia and Egypt that were originally interested in participating have since registered objections because they don’t want their soldiers involved in forcefully disarming Hamas.

If those objections persist and Hamas refuses to hand over its weapons voluntarily, then the Trump administration will have to spend even more time searching for, training and equipping Palestinian police officers who are willing to do the job themselves. This, of course, would be a whole lot easier if the Palestinian Authority’s security forces could be tapped for the duty, but Netanyahu is adamantly opposed to giving the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority any role in the process.

None of this even begins to account for the longer-term problems that have plagued the Israeli-Palestinian peace process since the dawn of the historical conflict. Assuming everything falls into place, Gaza becomes a Middle East version of Cancun and Hamas is erased from the map — all of which sounds fanciful at the moment — we still have the age-old dilemma of squaring an independent Palestinian state into the round hole that is Israeli domestic politics. The latter views the former as a clear and direct threat to Israel’s national security, if not to its very existence.

Trump can celebrate now. But the road to an actual peace is littered with the kinds of deep potholes that can overturn the peace train.

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Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

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