Donald Trump reaches for “eternal peace” in Gaza

The 20 points of the Trump plan still lacks details, maps and timetables, which will have to be worked out in laborious mediation between the sides.

Speaking from the White House on September 29th Donald Trump said it was “potentially one of the great days ever in civilisation”, a day which could lead to “eternal peace”. Even putting aside the hyperbole, a surprisingly substantial milestone towards ending the two-year war in Gaza has been reached. Mr Trump had summoned the prevaricating Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to the Oval Office and got him finally to commit to a ceasefire plan that has been endorsed by the leaders of many Arab and Muslim countries. The plan offers a surprisingly sophisticated and balanced approach to Gaza. The big questions now are whether the nihilists of Hamas will agree to a proposal that requires them to cede power and their weapons, whether Mr Netanyahu can face down his extremist allies, and whether Mr Trump, who would be chairman of Gaza’s reconstruction board, is really ready to commit to the world’s hardest turnaround.

US President Donald Trump.(Bloomberg)

The 20 points of the Trump plan still lacks details, maps and timetables, which will have to be worked out in laborious mediation between the sides. Nonetheless the basics are clear enough. The deal’s first stage calls for the release, within 72 hours of a ceasefire going into effect, of all the remaining 48 Israeli hostages—both those alive and the bodies of the dead—who have been held in Gaza for nearly two years. In exchange, Israel will release 1,950 Palestinian prisoners, including 250 who are serving life sentences for murdering Israelis, a bitter pill.

A later stage sets out the disarmament of Hamas. Then Israeli troops will proceed with a phased withdrawal. Israel has insisted until now that it will retain responsibility for security in Gaza. Under the plan it will eventually control only the strip’s perimeter, including the border with Egypt, “until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat”. Security inside Gaza will be the job of an “International Stabilisation Force” deployed there. A “technocratic apolitical Palestinian committee” will take over the civil government, including public services. Aid will be delivered. Mr Trump has abandoned his fantasy of removing the Gazans and building a riviera resort. Instead he will lead a “Board of Peace”, on which such luminaries as Tony Blair, Britain’s former prime minister, will sit. The board will oversee reconstruction, for the benefit of Gazans, who will enjoy “preferred” tariff rates.

The first barrier to this plan is whether the remnants of Hamas inside Gaza, and the remaining leaders outside it, agree to a deal. The release of the hostages at the start of the sequence is a difficult concession since they are Hamas’s main bargaining chip. The group is already claiming it cannot locate all of them. It is unclear what, if any, guarantees Hamas will receive that Israel will not resume its attack after it receives the hostages. The Islamist group sees its weapons as an integral part of its identity as a “resistance” movement and is unlikely to relinquish all its stockpiles voluntarily, especially while Israel still has a presence in Gaza.

Assuming that Israel withdraws and Hamas at least partly disarms, much then depends on the new stabilisation force. So far no country has categorically committed to sending troops. Egypt, which borders Gaza, will be involved; other countries are being mentioned, including far away Indonesia. This force will rely on the tacit co-operation of Hamas. While Israel has killed most of the militia’s leadership and many thousands of its fighters, there are thousands more still carrying out guerrilla attacks and hiding in the tunnel network under Gaza. The territory’s “technocratic” civilian government will supposedly have no Hamas involvement. But what about civil servants who worked for Hamas since it took control of Gaza in 2007? Under the plan Hamas’s leaders in Gaza are free to take exile abroad. But if they refuse to leave will they really eschew trying to influence politics and intimidate their opponents in the strip?

The second big barrier is Israel. On paper the plan achieves Israel’s official war aims—to dismantle Hamas’s military and governing structures in Gaza and get back the hostages. But despite his presence in the White House, Mr Netanyahu has opposed a return of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) to Gaza, accusing it of supporting terror. Even if the new Gaza administration is officially non-aligned with any of the existing Palestinian factions, the new deal includes, at the demand of Arab countries, the return of the PA after it “has completed its reform programme” and a nod to a future peace process which could lead to Palestinian statehood. Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly ruled these out.

At the press conference he expressed scepticism that “the PA leopard can change its spots” as well as his opposition to a Palestinian state. That hurdle is in the distant future. The more immediate problem is that the plan runs against the wishes of the ultra-nationalists in Mr Netanyahu’s coalition, who have made no secret of their plans to perpetually occupy Gaza, displace its population and build Israeli settlements there. Mr Netanyahu may still try to backtrack, given half a chance, to keep his radical partners on board. If, on the other hand, they bail, he is likely to face a general election with little clear prospect of victory.

What happens next depends on how much pressure can be applied to both sides. Hamas’s patrons, Qatar and Turkey, will press it to accept, but the group may be split between the more pragmatic political wing, based in Doha, and the hardline military commanders in Gaza. In the press conference, Mr Trump said that if Hamas rejects the deal, “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas.” Yet that goal is likely to prove elusive and, without an agreement, the more likely scenario is that the war drags on and the colossal death count soars even higher.

In order for any deal to happen Mr Trump will also have to keep up relentless pressure on Mr Netanyahu, who has avoided committing to similar deals for over a year. There are some signs that the president is prepared to do so. On the same day as the press conference he brokered a call between Mr Netanyahu and the prime minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, in which Israel’s prime minister apologised for its recent botched air strike on Hamas leaders in Doha, that had enraged all of America’s Gulf allies.

The Trump plan has many elements of one presented by the previous president, Joe Biden, in May 2024. It is also similar to the second phase of the ceasefire agreement that Israel abandoned earlier this year, with Mr Trump appearing indifferent at the time. Yet the president has now succeeded in pushing Mr Netanyhau further than anyone else. He has got Israel’s leader to accept the plan in principle and in public, and, crucially, to accept that there will be no Israeli annexation of Gaza. Hamas has brought death and destruction to Gaza, while Israel has brought itself isolation and condemnation. It seems hard to imagine that Hamas will now embrace Mr Trump’s pragmatic vision, or that Mr Netanyahu will abandon his forever war. But even if Mr Trump’s “eternal peace” ends up being out of reach, he has created the best chance so far for ending this war.