Put the Nobel Peace Prize on hold for just a bit.

[planosteve]

President Donald Trump came into office promising a swift end to two wars in Gaza and Ukraine. He has taken a radically different approach to both conflicts than Joe Biden, and in some cases produced results.

What he has not done is end either war. In fact, this week, resolution to both conflicts seemed farther off than ever.

The fragile ceasefire in Gaza, which came into effect shortly before Trump took office, shattered after Israel launched airstrikes that killed more than 400 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and resumed large-scale ground operations. Hamas has also resumed firing rockets into central Israel, and the situation is rapidly sliding back into full-scale war.

Also this week, during a phone call with Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin effectively rejected a proposed 30-day ceasefire — which Ukraine had earlier, under US pressure, agreed to. Russia and Ukraine did agree to a mutual halt in attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure, but this has not stopped mass drone attacks from both sides, including a Russian attack on a hospital that took place just hours after the pause was announced.

The two sides will hold talks — via US intermediaries — in Saudi Arabia next week, and the Trump team is reportedly hoping to rapidly move toward a full ceasefire, but stark differences remain between the two sides’ negotiating positions. So, barring a miracle at the negotiating table, the war in Ukraine doesn’t seem any closer to a resolution now than it did in January. The war in Gaza seems farther from one.

What does this tell us? First, an obvious but important point: Ending wars is harder than starting them. Hamas and Israel still have essentially incompatible demands for a final ceasefire. Putin has given no indication, either in his public statements or in US intelligence assessments, that he is interested in ending the war with anything other than complete Ukrainian capitulation.

It would be unrealistic to expect any American administration to end two intractable foreign wars in its first two months. If Trump is being held to that standard, it’s only because he himself suggested during his campaign that he could end the war in Ukraine in “24 hours,” a promise he said this week may have been “a little bit sarcastic.” It also shows the limits to Trump’s unpredictable style of diplomacy.

The state of affairs in Gaza and Ukraine, briefly explained
On Gaza, Trump started strong in January, when the incoming president’s team worked with the outgoing Biden administration to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Both Biden administration officials and regional governments credited Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, with applying the kind of pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to compromise that had been missing from the Biden team’s approach for months.

But that deal was just “phase one” of a ceasefire, intended to last six weeks, during which Israel and Hamas were supposed to negotiate a permanent end to hostilities. Phase one saw the release of 33 Israeli hostages and nearly 1,800 Palestinian prisoners, but it expired at the beginning of March with no deal in sight.

Fundamentally, Israel is still unwilling to agree to any permanent settlement that leaves Hamas in place, and is also unwilling to countenance the Palestinian Authority taking over governance of the strip, as the Biden administration wanted. Hamas is unwilling to disarm, unlikely to give up the remaining hostages that are its main remaining source of leverage, and probably won’t be swayed by the prospect of more Palestinian civilians being killed.

Trump, of course, had other ideas of how to resolve the conflict, suggesting that the US should take ownership of Gaza, “clean out” its civilian population, and redevelop it as a beachfront resort.

And so the ceasefire has now been effectively taken off life support. Restarting the war has allowed Netanyahu to reconstitute his right-wing government, avoiding early elections. For the moment at least, he has the full support of the Trump administration. Meanwhile, a brief respite in the suffering of the people of Gaza has ended and hope is dimming for the remaining hostages.