Trump’s Gaza plan is a significant step – but faces fundamental obstacles

US President Donald Trump said his plan for ending the war in Gaza was potentially one of the greatest days in the history of civilisation, and one that could bring “eternal peace in the Middle East”.

The hyperbole was characteristic. However, the substance of this 20-point proposal, revealed at the White House on Monday as Trump met the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is still a significant diplomatic moment – if not quite matching his exotic overstatement.

The plan amounts to a shift in the Trump administration’s position on a post-war future for Gaza, and adds more pressure than Washington has applied this year on Netanyahu to accept a deal.

Whether it can become a reality in the coming weeks will depend heavily on the same issues that have always been fundamental: whether both Netanyahu and the leadership of Hamas now see greater gains in ending the war than in continuing it.

Hamas’ response to this proposal is not yet clear. A pessimistic assessment came from one Hamas figure, who earlier hinted to the BBC that the terms largely failed to safeguard Palestinian interests and the group would not accept any plan that did not guarantee Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.

Netanyahu, standing next to the US president, said Israel accepted Trump’s 20 principles, even though a leader in the far-right flank of his coalition had already rejected some of them.

But acceptance of Trump’s principles alone is not the same as actually ending the war. And while Netanyahu rejects this accusation, his domestic opponents say he has form for spiking an emerging deal if it endangers his political survival at home.

In that sense, the proposal may not be enough to get the breakthrough Trump clearly wants. It still contains significant obstacles for the political constituencies of both Israel and Hamas that could prevent them ultimately reaching a deal.

There is also enough ambiguity in the plan that either side can appear to accept it while using the course of further negotiations to sabotage it, blaming the other side for its failure.

This has been a pattern over months of negotiations. And if that happens, it is clear where the Trump administration will stand – on the side of Israel.

Trump made this clear to Netanyahu, telling him on Monday that if Hamas did not agree to the proposal then he would have America’s “full backing to do what you would have to do”.

Although Trump presented this as a deal, it is in reality a framework for further negotiations – or as he put it at one point, a series of “principles”. This is far from the kind of detailed plan that would need to be agreed to end the war.

It is more akin to the “framework” his predecessor Joe Biden announced in May 2024 to try to get a phased ceasefire and agreement to end the war. In that case, it was another eight months before Israel and Hamas implemented a truce and hostage and prisoner exchange.

Trump had been hoping for an “all in one” peace deal that would map out detailed Israeli withdrawal lines, specific details around the freeing of hostages, the identities of Palestinian prisoners to be released, and the specific conditions for post-war governance among many other issues.

None of these are detailed in his 20-point plan, and all have the potential to derail a peace agreement.

This framework borrows from previous proposals including the Saudi-French plan from July, and recent work done by former UK Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair who would sit on the Trump-chaired “Board of Peace” that would temporarily oversee the running of Gaza under this plan.

It was drawn up by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner after consulting with Israel, European and Arab countries including mediators Qatar and Egypt. It calls for a stop to the fighting, the limited withdrawal of Israeli forces, and Hamas to release all remaining hostages followed by the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

It then envisages the establishment of a local, technocratic administration in Gaza to run day-to-day services, overseen by the “Board of Peace” who would be based in Egypt.

Remaining Hamas members who “commit to peaceful co-existence” and to decommission their weapons would be given amnesty and others would be exiled. An international “stabilisation” force created by the US and Arab countries would take over security in Gaza, ensuring the demilitarisation of Palestinian armed factions.

Palestinian statehood is mentioned, but only in the vaguest of terms. The plan suggests that if the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority is reformed, conditions “may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.

The Arab countries see Trump’s proposals as a significant breakthrough for them. In part because they have disposed of his February Gaza “Riviera” plan which would have involved the forced displacement of Palestinians.

They also have at least the mention of Palestinian statehood, even if there is no commitment to it.

And the US plan says “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza” – albeit with no similar pledge for the occupied West Bank. This a vital clause for the Arab nations, even if it is contradicted by another line in the plan which says Israel will still maintain its forces in the “security perimeter” of Gaza.

On the Israeli side, Netanyahu says the entire framework is consistent with his objectives for ending the war. That is, to see Hamas disarmed, Gaza demilitarised and no future Palestinian state being established.

But it is still unclear whether the clauses on disarmament and Palestinian statehood will be accepted by parts of his government, or whether he might use this pressure to add or “refine” clauses.

Much now depends on the response from Hamas.

As my colleague Rushdi Abu Alouf wrote earlier, this could be another “Yes, but” moment in which Hamas appears to accept the proposals while also calling for clarifications. So the same occupational hazard comes into play for the White House as for the authors of the previous “frameworks” and “principles” for ending the war.

In another significant moment today, moments before their joint announcement, Trump got Netanyahu to say sorry to Qatar.

They had demanded an apology over Israel’s airstrike targeting the Hamas leadership team in Doha earlier this month. It means Qatar should now be able to come back onboard as a mediator between Israel and Hamas.

In the hours before Trump and Netanyahu met, Israeli shelling and airstrikes intensified in Gaza City, where the IDF has deployed a third armoured division. Israel’s widening assault has been part of its self-declared plan to try to pressure Hamas, but it has brought further devastation for civilians.

Much of the rest of the world have condemned Israel’s actions. Meanwhile, the commander in charge of Hamas in Gaza, Ez al-Din al-Haddad, is preparing for what one Hamas field commander described to the BBC as a “final decisive battle” involving about 5,000 fighters.

European and Arab countries, led by France and Saudi Arabia, had spent the summer trying to resurrect the diplomatic track, appalled by Israel’s conduct on the ground. This has only added to the sense of Israel’s international isolation, with Netanyahu still the subject of an international arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The Europeans saw a conflict escalating out of control with the extremes on both sides empowered, and they believed they could appeal to remaining moderates for a two-state solution – their desired long-term shared future for Israelis and Palestinians.

And while that is not explicitly in this plan, they saw getting Trump onboard with a moderated proposal for Gaza as key.

The US framework is supposed to shift the momentum back to negotiation. But it will still likely require many weeks or longer of painstaking work to develop it into anything close to what Trump says it can deliver: a full end to the war.