US President Donald Trump is pitching a peace plan for Gaza — it appears to be a new version of existing proposals to end the conflict.
It was rewritten by key advisor Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner (the president's former Middle East envoy) to be more palatable to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It echoes the February 2024 Biden plan and much of the French-Saudi plan endorsed at the United Nations earlier this month, prioritising an end to the war and the full release of Israeli hostages as soon as both Israel and Hamas accept the deal.
Where the plan considers Gaza's future, its key elements can be distilled to far fewer than its stated 20 points:
- Gazans can stay in Gaza and those who left (or still want to leave) will be allowed to return.
- The Palestinian Authority (PA) — the agency with limited government of a small part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank — will be the eventual governing body of the strip, if it meets required reforms.
- Hamas will have to disarm and an amnesty will be granted to those members who accept "peaceful coexistence" with Israel.
- Israeli troops will be replaced by an international stabilisation force, which will then be replaced by a new Palestinian police force.
- There will be (eventually) a pathway to an independent Palestinian state.
Several key elements of this plan directly contradict Israel's stated aims and "red lines".
- Israel says Hamas must be destroyed (not granted amnesty and/or safe passage out of the strip)
- Israel says the Palestinian Authority can have no role in Gaza
- Israel says it must retain "security control" of Gaza, not an international force
- Israel says there will never be a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River (ie, in the land once known as Palestine)
That said, Israel's prime minister could simply agree to the plan and then say key elements are not being met to Israel's satisfaction, giving a pretext for prolonged Israeli presence in Gaza and the delay of steps towards a Palestinian state.
The likely ones Israel would use are Hamas disarmament (the group has not agreed to disarm, even if it accepts a ceasefire) and PA reform.
The plan also has some strange elements, notably the proposed return of former British prime minister Tony Blair to the Middle East as coordinator of the "Board of Peace", Mr Trump's name for the transitional authority in charge of funding and managing the recovery.
Mr Blair had a leading role in "the Quartet" (the UN, EU, US and Russia), a group established in 2002 to steer the peace process, but which instead became another item on the long list of failed international initiatives to resolve the conflict.
He is broadly hated around the Middle East for his role in pushing the Western invasion of Iraq.
The Palestinian Authority rated Mr Blair's — and the Quartet's — performance as "useless, useless, useless" back in 2012, saying he should "pack up his desk … and go home".
That said, there are many positive elements in the plan that will be welcomed by Palestinians, not least the acknowledgement that they will not be forced out of the territory, or can return if they leave.
The deployment of an international force in Gaza could also bring the chance Palestinians need to break free of Hamas.
The group retains significant influence, not least because Israel's conduct of the war — killing tens of thousands of civilians, blocking the entry of food and destroying their homes and infrastructure — has ensured its forces are the biggest threat to Palestinian civilians.
"They [the Israelis] tend to overlook that their own approach to the war failed the fundamental test of dealing with a guerilla conflict: to protect the population," former ambassador and peace negotiator Dennis Ross wrote in the Washington Post.
"Hamas retains the power to intimidate the population because the IDF's mission has not been to protect them."
Hamas already accepted a US ceasefire proposal in August — but Israel then demanded the group release all the hostages at once and bombed the Hamas negotiators when they met to discuss the amended offer in Doha in early September.
The group has indicated it wants to sign a deal, but its key requirements haven't really changed since it first agreed to a ceasefire in July 2024 — it demands Israel withdraw from most of Gaza and agree to end the war.
The Trump plan contains elements that run counter to the goals of both Hamas (survival and continued armed struggle from within the Palestinian territories) and Israel (control of Gaza, destruction of Hamas, prevention of the Palestinian Authority taking over, prevention of a Palestinian state), but it delivers many things the rest of the world wants.
Israel has outwardly agreed to the plan, while Hamas will face intense pressure from Qatar and Egypt to accept it.
The test will be whether both sides allow it to be implemented.
