- Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan promises ceasefire, hostage exchanges, Israeli withdrawal, and “New Gaza.”
- Netanyahu backs the plan but rejects Palestinian statehood, keeping core tensions unresolved.
- Hamas remains absent from negotiations, raising doubts over disarmament and acceptance.
- History shows peace cannot be imposed — without Palestinian agency, the plan risks collapse.
President Donald Trump stood beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House this week, declaring they were “beyond very close” to ending the Gaza war. The optics were strong, the handshake deliberate, and the promise dramatic: a 20-point plan to stop nearly two years of bloodshed. Yet, for all the grandeur of the East Room, one critical player was missing — Hamas.
The plan, drafted by Trump’s team with the familiar imprint of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, calls for an immediate ceasefire, hostage exchanges, Israeli withdrawal in stages, Hamas disarmament, and an international transitional government to oversee Gaza. Tony Blair is being resurrected as a Middle East troubleshooter, and Trump himself proposes to chair a “Board of Peace.” Gaza, he promises, will be transformed into “New Gaza” — deradicalized, redeveloped, and safe.
The promise sounds neat on paper, but Gaza’s recent history tells us peace is never neat.
The Past: Shadows of Oslo and Camp David
We have seen this movie before. Oslo in the 1990s promised land for peace. Camp David in 2000 tried to bridge the chasm between Israel and Palestine. Both efforts collapsed under the weight of distrust, shifting politics, and violence. Trump’s plan, too, risks being another episode in this long cycle of promises that generate headlines but fall apart on the ground.
Netanyahu, while smiling for cameras, has categorically rejected Palestinian statehood. His coalition rests on far-right parties that view compromise as betrayal. Hamas, for its part, was not even at the table. The very demand that it disarm, surrender its political role, and trust Trump and Blair to govern Gaza in transition, makes acceptance improbable.
The Present: Gaza in Ruins
The brutal reality is that Gaza today is not a laboratory for ambitious statecraft — it is a humanitarian graveyard. More than 66,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health authorities. Israel says Hamas still holds 48 hostages, of whom 20 are alive. Entire neighborhoods have been flattened. Families scavenge for food amid the rubble.
READ MORE: Trump secures Netanyahu’s agreement to Gaza deal but Hamas support in question
Trump’s plan speaks of reconstruction, aid corridors, and economic miracles modeled after Gulf cities. But the trust deficit is cavernous. Why would a Gazan mother, who buried her children under Israeli bombs, believe that the same coalition of Trump, Netanyahu, and Blair will deliver her justice, dignity, and peace?
The Future: Pathway or Dead End?
The question is not whether Trump’s plan will be signed. It is whether it can survive the battlefield and the street. Hamas has said it will review the plan “in good faith.” Yet history shows that demands for its total dismantling are seen not as compromise but as capitulation.
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If Hamas rejects the plan, Trump has promised full U.S. support for Israel to “finish the job.” That line alone reveals the trap: the peace plan doubles as a green light for more war. Netanyahu gains cover for further offensives, while Trump positions himself as both peacemaker and enabler.
The plan also dangles the possibility of Palestinian statehood — vague, undefined, and conditional. Netanyahu’s government will never permit it. The Palestinian Authority, sidelined and weak, welcomes the talk but lacks leverage. Arab states like Qatar and Egypt can shuttle messages, but they cannot erase the fundamental contradictions built into Trump’s proposal.
A Journalist’s Judgement
What we witnessed at the White House was not so much diplomacy as political theater. Trump needs a foreign policy victory after failed efforts in Ukraine and North Korea. Netanyahu needs U.S. backing as his domestic critics intensify. Both leaders gain in the short term by announcing a pathway to peace. But Palestinians, who have carried the heaviest burden of this war, remain voiceless in the plan.
The past warns us that peace cannot be imposed from podiums. The present reminds us that human suffering is real and urgent. The future suggests that unless Palestinians are given genuine agency, any “New Gaza” will only be an old story repackaged for television.
Trump’s Gaza gamble may buy him headlines and Netanyahu breathing space. But unless it delivers justice alongside security, it will join the long list of failed plans that promised peace — and delivered only more war.