The world is still waiting for the Hamas response to the Gaza ceasefire plan, outlined by US president Donald Trump at a White House press conference on Monday night.
The 20-point document, drawn up after intensive contacts with Israel officials and Arab mediators, is purposely vague, allowing the different parties to interpret the clauses in a manner acceptable to their own domestic constituencies.
But the policy of deliberate ambiguity could create pitfalls moving forward, assuming that Hamas eventually agrees to the framework. Here are some of the potentially problematic clauses.
1. Hostages
The plan says that “within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned”.
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But what will happen if some of the 20 hostages believed to be alive (among the total of 48 hostages) are no longer alive? What will happen if Hamas claims it cannot locate all the bodies of the deceased hostages due to the destruction caused by Israeli attacks? Last week Hamas stated that it had lost contact with two of the hostages being held in Gaza City. The release of the hostages is Israel’s top priority and anything but a full implementation of this clause could potentially derail the entire process.
2. Prisoner releases
The plan states that “once all hostages are released, Israel will release 250 life-sentence prisoners plus 1,700 Gazans who were detained after October 7th, 2023, including all women and children detained”.
The return of Palestinian prisoners is of critical importance to Hamas. Although the numbers are specified in the agreement, disagreements over the identities of the prisoners to be released are inevitable. Hamas will seek the release of veteran, well-known militants who are regarded as heroes on the Palestinian street.
Israel will try to keep to a minimum those who participated in attacks that resulted in mass civilian fatalities or particularly gruesome incidents- still a raw nerve in Israel, years after the event. Hamas will insist that Nukhba militants from its military wing be among the Gazans to be released. Israel will resist freeing militants who participated in the October 7th attack. Who will decide on the names of the Palestinians to be released? What happens if the two sides cannot reach an agreement?
3. ‘Terror-free areas’
The plans says the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will progressively hand over the Gaza territory it occupies to an “International Stabilisation Force” in “terror-free areas”.
Who will determine if an area is “terror-free”? Who will make up the ISF force, when will it be deployed in Gaza, and what will be the relationship between its deployment and the disarmament of Hamas? What will happen if Israel receives intelligence information that Hamas is constructing new tunnels or bomb-making workshops in areas transferred to ISF control and the new force fails to act to thwart such activity?
4. Palestinian statehood
The plan refers to providing a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”, subject to reforms being “faithfully” implemented by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The words “pathway” and “statehood” were carefully chosen so that Binyamin Netanyahu could deny he agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state. But what does pathway and statehood actually mean? And who will determine whether the PA reforms “faithfully”?
If reforms take place, will they be enough to warrant a role for the PA in Gaza’s postwar governance? Israel will demand altering PA school textbooks that it claims incite anti-Israel hatred and ending PA stipends to the families of militants who were killed or imprisoned.
The devil is in the detail and details in the Gaza ceasefire framework are conspicuous by their absence.
