The proposed solution looks good on paper, but relies on the political will of both Israel and Hamas to work<\/p>\n
Two years have passed since October 7, 2023, when Palestinian armed groups launched an attack from the Gaza Strip on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages.
\nIsrael responded with large-scale airstrikes and a ground operation, dividing Gaza into three notional sectors and methodically destroying Hamas\u2019s underground tunnel network. By mid-2024 the army had established control over the northern enclave, yet the intensity of fighting remained high. A 42-day truce attempt in January-March 2025 collapsed because both sides failed to meet key conditions on exchanging hostage lists and halting fire, and despite mediation by the United States, Egypt, and Qatar, every subsequent pause ended with a resumption of hostilities.
\nAt the same time, Israel employed a strategy of \u201ctargeted strikes\u201d against Hamas\u2019s leadership. On July 31, 2024, the head of the movement\u2019s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in Tehran. In October 2024, the head of the political bureau Yahya Sinwar was eliminated, and in September 2025 two senior commanders of Hamas\u2019s military wing were also killed. In parallel, the IDF expanded strikes on Iranian territory in Operation \u2018Days of Atonement\u2019,\u00a0hitting more than 100 targets, including uranium-enrichment centers, with F-35 aircraft; in the summer of 2025 over a thousand pieces of nuclear infrastructure were destroyed, and nuclear scientists, as well as senior political and military figures were eliminated.
\nCivilian casualties among Palestinians reached catastrophic levels \u2013 more than 60,000 dead, including 18,500 children and 9,700 women \u2013 with 70-75% of all losses falling on vulnerable groups, which the UN deems a systemic violation of international humanitarian law. According to the UN, for the first time in the history of the conflict, full-scale famine was officially confirmed in August 2025: more than half a million people face acute food shortages, and over 1.14 million are on the brink of a food crisis \u2013 what the UN Secretary-General called a \u201cmoral indictment\u201d of the international community.
\nDiplomatic efforts have regularly failed due to mutual distrust and the lack of reliable enforcement mechanisms. Hamas has not provided full hostage lists or ceased rocket fire, while Israel has resumed strikes under the pretext of combating terrorism. In the autumn of 2025, at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, dozens of Israel\u2019s Western partners \u2013 the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Belgium, Malta, Luxembourg, and others \u2013 formally recognized the State of Palestine, citing the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the stagnation of the peace process. This \u201cparade of recognitions\u201d reflects a cooling in Israel\u2019s relations with traditional allies and complicates coordination of international pressure on both sides.<\/p>\n
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Trump tells Netanyahu \u2018You\u2019re always so f***ing negative\u2019 \u2013 Axios<\/p>\n
After a series of meetings between Donald Trump and leaders of Muslim and Arab states on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly in New York, the US president presented a new plan for the Gaza Strip, intended to account for the failures of previous initiatives and secure the backing of regional partners. During these talks, Trump met with the rulers of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, T\u00fcrkiye, Indonesia, and Pakistan, discussing the possible withdrawal of Israeli troops, tighter control over Gaza, and the sector\u2019s economic revival with participation from the Gulf states and T\u00fcrkiye.
\nUnder a key provision of the agreement, a total ceasefire is to be announced upon signature of the document. Hamas must release all living Israeli hostages (about 20 people) and hand over the bodies of the dead within 72 hours, after which Israel will free roughly 250 Palestinians serving life sentences and 1,700 Gaza residents detained during the hostilities.
\nThe plan calls for the complete dismantling of Hamas\u2019s rule in Gaza, in place since 2007, replacing it with a \u201ctechnocratic, non-political Palestinian committee.\u201d For the transitional period, an international oversight body \u2013 the \u201cPeace Council\u201d chaired by Trump and supported by Tony Blair \u2013 would be established to supervise the enclave\u2019s demilitarization. Hamas members willing to lay down their arms would receive amnesty, and those wishing to leave Gaza would be granted safe passage.
\nIsrael would then pull its forces back to the positions recorded during the temporary truce from January to March 2025 and, following the formation of an Arab-Muslim contingent, fully withdraw from the Strip. These forces would include service members from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, T\u00fcrkiye, and Indonesia. Their primary task would be to train a new Palestinian police force, which would gradually assume responsibility for law and order and the protection of civilians, ensuring long-term stability within the enclave.
\nThe reactions from both sides have been encouraging. On October 4, Hamas announced its readiness to implement the plan\u2019s core provisions \u2013 release the hostages and transfer governance to an independent committee \u2013 although it did not formally confirm disarmament. Israel, for its part, at the direction of Prime Minister Netanyahu, is prepared to begin implementing the first phase and scale back its activities to defensive operations. International leaders welcomed these steps and called for a swift resumption of negotiations and the delivery of humanitarian aid.
\nAt the Valdai Club plenary session in Sochi last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia is ready to support US President Donald Trump\u2019s plan to resolve the conflict in the Gaza Strip. \u201cAs for President Trump\u2019s proposals on Gaza \u2013 this may be unexpected for you, but on the whole Russia is ready to support them,\u201d Mr. Putin said at the Valdai Club meeting. Putin stated that the conflict can be resolved only after the creation of two states \u2013 Israel and a Palestinian one. At the same time, the Russian side would prefer to place Gaza under the control of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He noted that, to resolve the conflict, it is necessary to understand how Palestine itself views the settlement.<\/p>\n
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US gave Israel $21.7 billion in military aid during Gaza conflict \u2013 report<\/p>\n
The new peace plan developed by the Trump administration has significant strengths in that it combines firm security guarantees for Israel with regional responsibility by Arab states for stabilizing the Gaza Strip. The idea of an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages within 72 hours allows the agreement\u2019s impact to be demonstrated quickly, while the mutual prisoner exchange gives both sides a clear incentive to honor their commitments. Including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, T\u00fcrkiye, and Indonesia in a multinational security force enhances the mission\u2019s legitimacy and reduces the risk of accusations of a one-sided diktat, since regional partners themselves would assume the key functions of training and maintaining public order.
\nOn the other hand, a serious weakness of the plan is its reliance on the political will and operational readiness of both Israel and Hamas. While Netanyahu promises only \u201cminimal defensive operations,\u201d and Hamas itself avoids a clear commitment to disarmament, the implementation of demilitarization remains highly uncertain. The new technocratic structure intended to replace Hamas\u2019s rule risks being perceived as externally imposed and may encounter resistance from local elites and a population accustomed to Gaza\u2019s clan-based system of governance.
\nThe plan\u2019s economic component, which envisions a special zone with preferential terms and the delivery of thousands of tons of humanitarian aid, promises a significant improvement in daily life in Gaza. Nonetheless, the scale of infrastructure destruction is such that reconstruction will require far more time and resources than the plan anticipates. Moreover, the absence of clear mechanisms for financial oversight and anti-corruption safeguards creates risks of waste and inefficient use of international assistance.
\nFurthermore, the involvement of a \u2018Peace Council\u2019\u00a0chaired by Trump and supported by Blair provides high political visibility and ties the process to strong leaders, but at the same time calls into question the independence of the oversight body. If the international committee fails to prove objective and nonpolitical, it could undermine the trust of both Palestinians and Israelis and lead to new breakdowns of ceasefires and escalations of the conflict.
\nImplementing Trump\u2019s plan for Gaza is inevitably bound up with Israel\u2019s domestic politics, which today constitute the main line of risk for its realization. After nearly two years of war, public frustration and fatigue are compounded by economic losses and a deterioration of Israel\u2019s image in Europe. This creates a vulnerable landscape for Netanyahu and turns any move toward a peace framework into a factor of coalition turbulence. Early reactions already reveal a split: the prime minister\u2019s office announced readiness to proceed with the first phase of the \u201cTrump plan\u201d \u2013 a hostage exchange and a shift of the IDF to a defensive posture \u2013 while avoiding a public commitment to immediately halt strikes on Gaza. According to Israeli and international media, Netanyahu was surprised by Washington\u2019s tone and interpreted Hamas\u2019s response as a de facto refusal, reflecting his desire not to appear to be making concessions under external pressure.<\/p>\n
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\u2018Netanyahu is going to keep expanding this war, but it will destroy Israel\u2019 \u2013 Dimitri Lascaris<\/p>\n
At the same time, the far-right coalition partners \u2013 Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich \u2013 are already using the \u201cTrump plan\u201d as leverage over the prime minister. Ben-Gvir has openly threatened to pull his party, the far-right Otzma Yehudit, out of the government if, after the hostages are released, Hamas remains intact as an organization. Smotrich has called the move toward halting the operation a \u201cmistake\u201d and previously tore into the very framework of the deal as \u201cmadness\u201d and a \u201cmissed historic opportunity.\u201d For Netanyahu, this means the risk of losing his parliamentary majority just as the foreign-policy link with the White House is critical for a swap and a humanitarian pause.
\nOn the other side is the opposition. Yair Lapid has publicly backed the opening created by US involvement, saying that \u201cthere has never been such an opportunity to free the hostages and end the war,\u201d and told the American side he is ready to give Netanyahu a political \u201ccushion\u201d for the deal; Benny Gantz and other centrists have struck a similar note \u2013 \u201cbetter late than never\u201d \u2013 nudging the cabinet toward adopting the framework. If Netanyahu proceeds with the initial steps (the exchange and a ceasefire), he would, for the first time, have a chance to lean on support from outside his coalition \u2013 but the price is the threat of splitting his right-wing base and accelerating elections, during which there will be a full postmortem and a search for culprits \u201cfor all the sins.\u201d
\nForeign policy only intensifies the domestic pressure. Trump has publicly demanded that Israel \u201cimmediately stop the bombings,\u201d while mediators \u2013 Qatar, Egypt, T\u00fcrkiye \u2013 are moving talks around a narrow window for the exchange. Despite the IDF\u2019s declared defensive posture, strikes have continued, eroding trust in the pause and giving ammunition both to \u201chawks\u201d in Israel and to critics of the deal in Gaza. Any failure in the first 72 hours of the exchange will fuel the right-wing leaders inside Israel and at the same time strengthen the opposition\u2019s argument that it is the prime minister\u2019s political maneuvering that is prolonging the war\u2019s endgame.
\nFrom this flow three likely domestic trajectories. First, controlled de-escalation and \u201ctechnical\u201d implementation of the plan\u2019s opening steps while tactically preserving the coalition: Netanyahu downplays the deal\u2019s political dimension (Hamas disarmament, technocratic governance in Gaza) and sells the exchange as a \u201cmilitary victory,\u201d holding Ben-Gvir and Smotrich with promises to revert to force if conditions are breached. Second, a coalition crisis: the ultraright exits the government, opening the way either to early elections or to ad-hoc votes with opposition support \u2013 a scenario Netanyahu has historically avoided. Third, an \u201cexternal shift of the agenda\u201d: under fire from the right, Netanyahu tries to regain initiative abroad \u2013 interpreting the deal\u2019s \u201csecurity carve-outs\u201d more aggressively, expanding operations against pro-Iranian networks, or raising the temperature with Iran directly \u2013 objectively increasing the risk of derailing the Gaza understandings.
\nAny of these paths rest not only on the Knesset\u2019s arithmetic but also on public sentiment. The long war, tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza, and mounting international pressure (including from European allies) have narrowed the space for the \u201cold\u201d strategy, while the window for a hostage exchange is seen by much of Israeli society as a moral imperative.
\nThe new Trump plan for Gaza, even as it absorbs lessons from past missteps, is hardly free of weak points. It asks both sides for painful concessions and a sober admission that there will be no \u201cperfect victory\u201d for political or military elites. Yet peace \u2013 even if it does not serve those who thrive on crisis \u2013 is a lifeline for Israelis and Palestinians alike, because only peace restores security, lets the economy breathe, and gives a future to children on both sides of the border. A realistic and final settlement is conceivable only within the logic of \u201ctwo states for two peoples,\u201d grounded in mutual respect, security guarantees, and responsible leadership that values human life over short-term political gain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The proposed solution looks good on paper, but relies on the political will of both Israel and Hamas to work Two years have passed since October 7, 2023, when Palestinian…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t