The announcement of entering Phase II of US President Donald Trump's Gaza ceasefire plan, while weeks or months later than planned depending on who you ask, is still the first serious moment of potential progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since October 2025.
But where will it all go from here now that Trump has finally decided to try to roll the dice and push all the sides forward on the thorny irreconcilable issues which had deterred all the parties from trying to move forward until this point?
The first most important point is not to get lost in all of the seemingly unending committees and acronyms of different groups who are designated to manage one set of issues or another.
This extensive list includes the: Board of Peace (BOP), the Executive Committee, the Palestinian Technocratic Committee, the almost forgotten International Stabilization Force (ISF), the Palestinian police force, and the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC.)
Basically, the only progress so far is the start of the formation of the Palestinian Technocratic Committee.
Trump's hope is that by the Davos meeting of world leaders next week, the BOP will hold its first meeting and the technocrats will be up and running.
But these are the easiest pieces of the formula and probably the least relevant.
The IDF and the Palestinian police are the key aspects of the formula
The key pieces remain the executive committee and either the IDF or the Palestinian police.
That is because the critical questions for the future of Gaza are: who will run it politically – with the thorny issues being decided by the executive committee run by Nickolay Mladenov, former British prime minister Tony Blair, and Trump aides Jared Kusher and Steve Witkoff - and to what extent Hamas will disarm and allow anyone else to manage public order issues?
All along the assumption of Israeli defense officials has been that no third party would manage to disarm Hamas because they had not been disarmed by the end of the war and no third party would be ready to get into a gunfight with them.
There has been more optimism that Hamas would step aside from a variety of political functions, such as running schools, trash collection, and building new infrastructure, since its main reason for existing has always been more about violent "resistance."
Yet, even if everything goes exactly as planned according to the latest version of Trump's road map, there will be major issues.
The most important issue from Israel's perspective is who will disarm Hamas and replace it in terms of public order and security.
On that issue, the ISF, which was the big hope of Trump, seems to have either fallen apart or been heavily demoted to a less critical role.
The great hopes of Azerbaijan, Italy, Pakistan, the UAE, Egypt, and others appear to have smoldered into ruins or to much lower goals.
US officials are now discussing the ISF being limited to border security and other roles which do not involve having to deal with Hamas.
This is likely a direct result of the Trump administration failing to convince anyone other than Turkey and the Palestinian Authority to participate in the ISF, or that others will only participate if they know their forces will be nowhere near Hamas.
Israel has vetoed Turkey and the PA, and will not be satisfied with an ISF that does not deal with Hamas, somewhat the way UNIFIL refused to do its main job of dealing with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
From time to time, this returns the idea of US and regional officials to bring in a new security force of 5,000-8,000 Palestinians, trained by US and other Western defense experts, to maintain public order in Gaza. The Biden administration started pushing versions of this idea in early 2024.
This would make some Israeli defense officials and opposition officials happy, but not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the government.
Many Israeli defense officials and opposition officials support this because it allows for the possibility of the IDF not being permanently stuck in the Gaza quagmire.
Making sure other countries pay the bill
If the IDF is not stuck in Gaza for security issues, it can also make sure that other countries, and not Israel, pay the bill for rebuilding Gaza.
Former IDF intelligence chief Tamir Hayman and others have pushed for greater PA involvement to balance out Hamas. This is something which former IDF chief Herzi Halevi and former defense minister Yoav Gallant had pushed for at earlier stages of the war before Netanyahu forced them out.
And even though this force will not officially be linked to the PA, like many of the Palestinians being placed on the technocrats committee, the majority of them will have roots with the PA.
Netanyahu either does not trust the PA to succeed against Hamas or does not want it involved in Gaza because he ideologically wants to thwart any post-October 7 return to the idea of a Palestinian state.
Although Netanyahu does not generally say it so explicitly, he has made it clear that he would prefer an extended IDF occupation of Gaza, with all of the military, diplomatic, and economic costs that would entail, over a third party or any variation of the Palestinian running the show.
The only reason he is consenting to any of the above ideas is to maintain support for Israel from Trump, given that all of Israel's other traditional support in the West are even more pro-PA than Trump and more anti-the IDF remaining in Gaza.
So will Trump force Netanyahu to accept a Palestinian force? If so, will Hamas accept it?
If that issue is postponed for six or more months, and all that is brought into Gaza is the technocrats and the ISF on the border, what significance will there be to any disarmament of Hamas?
US officials are increasingly talking about Hamas getting to keep its small arms which enable it to control Gaza de facto, no matter who is running civilian functions, while storing their larger weapons like rockets.
This would make Israel less threatened than pre-October 7, but it would be far cry from ending the threat of Hamas.
And if Hamas is not ended as Gaza's strongest force, how long will it wait until it decides Trump or a later US president is distracted and then do away with the technocrats?
There are few answers to the major existential questions which have held the "Day After" in Gaza hostage all along. But the answers, good or bad, will likely start to become clearer in the coming months.