Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
We should know better than to take any so-called peace proposal presented by U.S. President Donald Trump along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at face value. But as the world awaits Hamas’ response to Trump’s 20-point plan for ending the war in Gaza, published in conjunction with the pair’s White House press conference on Monday, it is possible to begin drawing some early conclusions about what this all means for Israel and the Palestinians.
Before any discussion of who “won” or “lost” over the past two years, however, we must not forget the simple fact that if this agreement is implemented to the letter, the genocide will end, the razing of Gaza will stop, humanitarian aid will flow in preventing further starvation, all of the remaining Israeli hostages will be released along with thousands of Palestinians held with and without charge in Israeli prisons, and Israeli soldiers will no longer be killed in service of a senseless and criminal war.
There is plenty that is confusing and contradictory in both Trump’s speech and the written proposal, while some of the countries that initially endorsed the text are already distancing themselves from it following last-minute alterations by Netanyahu. But the fundamentals are much the same as they have been throughout the ceasefire negotiations going all the way back to October 2023: the release of the Israeli hostages in exchange for an end to the war and the release of Palestinian prisoners, a phased Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the relinquishing of power by Hamas, and the entry of a multinational security force with the involvement of several Arab states.
After an estimated 100,000 Palestinian deaths and the flattening of most of Gaza’s cities, any talk of “victory” for Hamas would be plainly absurd. But this proposal is no victory for Israel either — certainly not for Netanyahu and his partners in government, whose ambitions of cleansing Gaza of its Palestinian population have long been clear.
Not even a week had passed since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7 when Israel’s (somewhat impotent) Intelligence Ministry, led by Gila Gamliel of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, published an official plan calling for the “evacuation” of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents. The army began implementing a policy of destroying entire neighborhoods to prevent the return of the displaced not long after, and this became its primary mode of operation starting with the so-called “Generals’ Plan” in late 2024.
The result is that Rafah and much of Khan Younis in the south along with Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya, and now parts of Gaza City in the north no longer exist, having been entirely razed to the ground and their populations squeezed into an area comprising just 13 percent of the Strip’s land.
An aerial view of destroyed residential buildings in the Tel Al-Sultan neighborhood, following the withdrawal of the Israeli army during a ceasefire, Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, January 19, 2025. (Ali Hassan/Flash90)
From the moment Trump presented his “Gaza Riviera” plan in February of this year, ethnic cleansing — whether framed as “voluntary immigration” or simply expulsion — became the Israeli government’s central plan of action. Netanyahu
The army presented “driving out the population” as one of the goals of “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” launched in May, and boasted about the convoys of hundreds of thousands of people forced out of Gaza City in recent weeks as a result of “Gideon’s Chariots II.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich claimed he was already dividing up real estate in Gaza with the Trump administration, as what he has described as a “decisive victory”over the Palestinians appeared within reach. For the Israeli right, it was, as Settlement and National Missions Minister Orit Strook put it last year, “a time of miracles.”
Much has been left ambiguous in the White House’s 20-point plan, but when it comes to the question of migration, the language is unequivocal. “No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return,” Article 12 states. “We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”
The “time of miracles,” that once-in-a-century opportunity to eliminate the Palestinians from Gaza once and for all, is over. Battered and bruised, the Gazans remain.
Article 16 further states that “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza.” Together with Trump’s comments last week implying that West Bank annexation is also off the table for the time being, the government’s wish list is fast slipping away.
Moreover, the dizzying U-turn of Netanyahu’s spokespeople in the right-wing media — from euphoric excitement about the impending expulsion to fervent support for Trump’s anti-transfer deal — stems not only from a desire to glorify the prime minister ahead of what many are anticipating will be an early election next year; it may also stem from the belated recognition that mass deportation is simply not feasible.
The facts are that Egypt will not allow any forced displacement into Sinai, and not a single country has agreed to accept hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. Even if Israel succeeds in destroying Gaza City and pushing out every remaining resident to Al-Mawasi in the south, it will still be “stuck” with 2 million Palestinians, and with a level of international isolation once considered impossible.
It seems that many in Israel, even among Netanyahu’s supporters, are now realizing that it is better to close the chapter in Gaza and declare victory than to continue waging a military campaign with no clear endpoint and with objectives that can never be achieved.
Blockade out, statehood in?
Hamas, and the Palestinians in general, are certainly not happy with the new proposal, and for good reason. With the exception of an initial, limited withdrawal of Israeli forces, there are no dates or guarantees for subsequent pullbacks. This leaves the door open for Israel to say that its conditions have not been met, and that it will therefore continue occupying large chunks of Gaza. The proposal also includes the “demilitarization” of the Strip and the destruction of all military infrastructure, meaning no armed Palestinian groups will be able to repel Israeli aggression.
On the political level, the Palestinian Authority (PA) will not return to Gaza until it has undergone a “reform program” whose duration is left undefined. The longstanding disconnect between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank will thus continue indefinitely, and Gaza itself will be placed under a kind of American-British trusteeship. Hamas will give up all governance powers, and its leaders “who commit to peaceful co-existence” will be given amnesty and provided safe passage should they wish to leave the Strip.
As an organization built on the idea of “resistance,” it will be exceedingly difficult for Hamas to accept what will inevitably be perceived as surrender. It may reject the agreement precisely for this reason.
Members of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas and mourners attend the funeral of Al-Qassam fighters who were killed during the war between Israel and Hamas in the Al-Shati camp, in Gaza City, February 28, 2025. (Khalil Kahlout/Flash90)
But here, too, things are a little more complicated. The International Stabilization Force (ISF) outlined in the text broadly resembles something that PA President Mahmoud Abbas and even some European governments called for two decades ago to protect the Palestinians from Israel. Israel never bothered to comment on those proposals; now, Netanyahu is presenting the idea as a historic achievement.
It is not yet clear what exactly the ISF will look like, what powers it will possess, and how its coordination with the Israeli military will function. But it is clear that it will comprise foreign soldiers — from Pakistan, Indonesia, and perhaps Egypt — alongside local Palestinian police.
It is not for nothing that Netanyahu preferred Hamas to rule in Gaza: he knew it had no international backing, so he could rain down bombs on the Strip whenever he liked. It will be much more difficult to act forcefully against Pakistani soldiers who are backed by a nuclear power. Israel’s Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs can continue to boast that Israel will maintain overall security control over Gaza, but the text says otherwise. There is no suggestion in any of the clauses that Israeli forces will be able to operate in areas under ISF control.
Moreover, the Gaza Strip has been under Israeli siege for almost two decades. If implemented, Trump’s plan will involve the establishment of a so-called “Board of Peace” headed by the U.S. president himself and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, meaning the blockade will effectively end. According to the proposal, not only will aid flow into Gaza at least to the extent agreed upon in the ceasefire in January of this year (600 trucks a day), but “the entry and distribution of aid will proceed without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent” — spelling the end of the extremely deadly Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) mechanism.
While many observers have pointed out that the “Board of Peace” has more than a whiff of colonial rule about it, all of its mechanisms — from security forces to the local administration and, most importantly, funding — involve Palestinians alongside personnel from other Arab and Muslim states. If those countries are unhappy with what they see, this transitional administration will fall apart.
And Blair may rightly be blamed for the deadly war in Iraq and its disastrous aftermath, but it is hard to imagine him with his shiny new image agreeing to the Israeli army dictating whether or not to allow vegetables or flour into his small emirate in Gaza. Likewise, prior to 2023, Israel’s blockade made it virtually impossible for Palestinians to leave the Strip, sometimes even demanding that they renounce their residency as a condition for receiving an exit permit or commit not to return for at least a year. According to the new proposal, entry and exit will be unhindered.
Palestinians protest in front of the fence encaging the Gaza Strip, August 21, 2021. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills)
And then there is the issue of Palestinian statehood. On this, the text could hardly be vaguer: “While Gaza re-development advances and when the PA reform programme is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood,” the penultimate clause states.
The reform program, it says, will be based on proposals already published in Trump’s 2020 “Deal of the Century” and the more recent Saudi-French initiative, which include references to stopping the PA’s payments to prisoners’ families (which has already been done), changing the curriculum in PA schools under European supervision (which has also been done in the past), and holding free elections — something Palestinians have been demanding for many years.
If decisions regarding how “faithfully” this reform program is carried out, and at what point “conditions may finally be in place” to move toward statehood, are left in Israel’s hands, the road to a Palestinian state will doubtless remain blocked forever. Indeed, Netanyahu has already begun pushing the narrative to his supporters that this agreement will in no way lead to independence for Palestinians.
But if that decision rests with Blair and Trump’s “Board of Peace,” along with the multinational security force, things may look rather different. And if they decide the PA has met the relevant conditions, Netanyahu will have to deal with the fact that he signed an agreement committing to a “credible path” toward a Palestinian state.
Paradigm shift
Netanyahu will try to present the agreement as a kind of return to Oct. 6, 2023, to the policy of “managing the conflict” that was championed no less by opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett. But this policy was based on the idea that the international community, and especially the Gulf states, would agree to deepen ties with Israel while bypassing and isolating the Palestinians.
Today, it seems the situation is entirely different. After Israel’s bombing of Qatar, the Arab states, including in the Gulf, appear to have reached the conclusion that Israel is a constant threat to their stability, and that the only way to stabilize the Middle East is through the creation of a Palestinian state — not out of solidarity with the Palestinians, but out of concern for themselves. The recent wave of diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state shows that the international community is overwhelmingly of the same view.
Global solidarity with Palestine is not expected to disappear anytime soon, as evidenced again this week by the eruption of protests in solidarity with the Sumud Flotilla attempting to break the naval blockade. As such, Netanyahu — or whoever succeeds him if he loses the election — may be about to discover that what worked before October 2023 is no longer viable.
It is too early to tell whether this thwarting of the Israeli right’s longstanding agenda will create the same kind of crisis as the one engendered by the 2005 “disengagement” from Gaza, but it is certainly a possibility. It remains to be seen what kind of paradigm will replace it.
Meron Rapoport
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