Lasting peace in the Middle East will hinge on this ONE thing

On September 29, 2025, President Donald Trump, alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unveiled the 20-point Gaza peace plan to end the Israel-Hamas war.

Israel accepted the plan, and Hamas agreed to phase one on October 13, completing a 72-hour ceasefire, exchanging 20 living hostages for 250 life-sentence prisoners and 1,700 detainees (plus remains), and enabling an aid surge. Phase two — encompassing full Israeli withdrawal, Hamas disarmament and amnesties, technocratic governance, and reconstruction — is still in negotiation.

The question everyone is asking is: Is true peace really a possibility? Reactions to Trump's plan are deeply polarized. Many in the U.S. and Israel are hailing it as a Nobel-worthy breakthrough and are already celebrating the beginnings of a "terror-free" Middle East. Others argue that this “peace” is bound to unravel.

Steve Deace, BlazeTV host of the “Steve Deace Show,” says what we’ve seen so far is indeed what Secretary of State Marco Rubio says it is: “the greatest world peace moment in 50 years.”

“Now here's the key, though,” he says. “Is it a moment, or will it become a paradigm shift?”

Steve says the answer to that question will be determined by one thing: what the Arab world does next.

“[President Trump] is saying to the Arab world now, ‘The ball is in your court now. You guys permitted Israel to handle its business. I am forbidding Israel from populating the West Bank, but something has to inhabit this region. … You guys are going to decide who that is. This is your last chance,”’ says Steve, translating President Trump’s remarks in speeches delivered in Cairo and Jerusalem.

If the pragmatic Arab world takes the reins in Gaza and the West Bank and builds some kind of cultural hub, like “Istanbul, Dubai,” or Trump’s proposed “West Bank Riviera,” lasting peace is on the table, he says. But if the future of the region is up to the Islamic world, which will forever be dedicated to dominion and the religion of Islam, true peace is an impossibility.

Steve compares Arab leaders to many of America’s own conservative politicians. Both will “talk a good game about their faith; don't really mean it in the end” because they’re nothing more than opportunists, he explains.

Like U.S. politicians who “use God in the Bible for their own cynical means of getting elected,” Arab leaders may be more dedicated to opportunity than to being good Muslims.

Steve says we should all “want this to be true.”

“Pray that we find out there are a long cache of the equivalent of RINO politicians in the Arab world, because that's what we're counting on right now,” he laughs.

Arab leaders would be remiss to pass up the opportunity to allow Israel to do “the dirty work that they don't want to be seen having done themselves so they don't look like they have turned on their own kind,” Steve adds.

And once that’s done, they can “swoop in” and build a luxurious, prosperous coastal economic hub that looks Muslim but appeals to people of all backgrounds.

“What we're counting on is a lot of people who talk a good game and end it with ‘as-salamu alaykum’ [‘peace be upon you’] but in the end don't want to wait to the afterlife to get their virgins,” Steve says candidly.

“The next 50 years of human existence may be counting on this.”

To hear more of Steve’s analysis and commentary, watch the episode above.

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