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Ami Ayalon took over as head of the Shin Bet security service following the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, although he had declined the position a few months earlier. He is credited with revitalizing and modernizing an organization that had been demoralized at the time. Under his leadership, the security service—known to Israelis by its acronym Shabak—achieved a high success rate in preventing militant attacks.

In the 2012 documentary “The Gatekeepers,” Ayalon explained that much of this success was due to close cooperation with his counterparts in the Palestinian Authority. They told him, “We are not your agents. We do this only because our people believe that, in the end, we will have a state alongside Israel.”

This background is key to understanding why Ayalon is pessimistic about the future of the Trump plan. He told Politico that the plan “has more holes than Swiss cheese.”

The biggest hole, according to Ayalon, is the lack of a clear commitment to a two-state solution. He said this is the only way to reach an agreement through negotiations. Without a defined political horizon for a Palestinian state, the kind of cooperation once achieved with the Palestinian Authority would collapse. “Peace will become unattainable,” he added.

He believes that, as envisioned in the French-Saudi and Egyptian initiatives, there is virtually no chance of Hamas being disarmed unless Palestinians themselves directly govern Gaza in the meantime.

This is also the position of Palestinian groups, including the Palestinian Authority. The future structure of Gaza’s post-war interim government has been a point of contention in discussions about the Trump plan. Israel insists that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority should play any role in Gaza’s post-war administration. However, Muslim countries and Palestinian leaders want the Palestinian Authority to manage civil affairs in the region.