It’s taken only 24 hours, but Trump’s fairytale of peace in the Middle East seems doomed

As Donald Trump heralded a “new dawn” for the Middle East at his Gaza peace summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Facebook reminded me that exactly eleven years ago to the day, I was also in the Egyptian resort city, covering another Gaza peace summit, after another bloody war between Hamas and Israel.

The 2014 Gaza conference in Sharm was also packed with world leaders, discussing who was going to foot the bill. It too was focused on the “day after”. And it also, bizarrely, featured Tony Blair.

At the time, the former British prime minister was adroitly dodging my questions in favour of waxing lyrical about the ex-military chief recently turned Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi - who is still mediating and hosting today.

Over a decade later, even Blair himself has returned, this time at Trump’s behest, to head up so-called “Board of Peace” to oversee the ruling of Gaza.

The same powerful men are having similar vague conversations and offering the similarly hollow promises - only now the situation is even more urgent and dire, and the violence has been unprecedented.

Once again, everyone is speaking in almost entirely contradictory terms about a present that doesn’t reflect reality and a magical future that, given the enormous issues that need to be (and haven’t been) addressed, seem impossible to reach.

And less than 24 hours after Donald announced this “everlasting peace”, Palestinians were still being killed in Gaza, aid trucks stopped from going into Gaza and a row broke out about the failure of Hamas to return the bodes of dead Israeli hostage.

All of these grim, and sadly all too predictable factors, threaten to topple the whole ceasefire process.

Palestinian health officials reported that seven people inspecting their homes in east Gaza were killed by Israeli drones, violating the fragile ceasefire.

The Israeli military denied this, telling The Independent that the individuals had passed through a “yellow line” to which they had withdrawn. Israeli journalists, however, suggest that the military has “invisible lines” that Palestinians unknowingly cross.

Inside Gaza, internal violence erupted, with gruesome videos being shared online, reportedly showing Hamas militants conducting summary executions of men, that it has since accused of being “criminals and collaborators with Israel” in the middle of a public square.

In Israel, the largest group representing the hostages called on their government to immediately suspend all ceasefire implementations, as it accused Hamas of violating the terms of the deal by handing back only four of the 28 remaining bodies of deceased hostages.

In response, Israel has decided not to open the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt - one of the key crossing points for aid delivery, and will reduce the amount of supplies going in until all the remains are returned.

And so, even the initial and basic phase of the deal - a cessation of hostilities, the exchange of citizens from both sides, the start of a safe staged withdrawal, and the delivery of more aid - has already shown major cracks.

It seems it is even impossible to get through this simple and tiny starting point in the galling - even Herculean - task of trying to find a fair, just, and crucially practicable peace agreement for Israel and Palestine. A Gordian knot of a problem people have been striving to resolve for literally generations.

And so yesterday, as the Facebook notification popped up, presenting a weird time-lapse coincidence of two post-war Gaza summits occurring exactly eleven years apart, I realised Israel, Palestine, and the wider region will remain trapped in a dystopian ever violent Groundhog Day.

That is, until there is an honest international commitment to addressing head-on the fundamental questions and problems that have gone unaddressed for generations.

These include: Palestinian self-determination and Israeli occupation; accountability for violations of international law; and a path to end the never-ending layers of trauma and violence, to allow for peace and security that is fair for all.

Otherwise, we may find ourselves back in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2030-something, if there is anything left to discuss after the coming slaughter.