For months, US president Donald Trump’s pledges to end the two-year war in Gaza have carried a hollow ring.
While he repeatedly raged against Hamas, warning there would be “all hell to pay” if they didn’t release the hostages they held in the besieged strip, he essentially gave Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu carte blanche to continue Israel’s relentless assault on the Palestinian enclave.
Until now. Finally, Trump has displayed a willingness to use the US’s heft to pressure Israel, as well as Hamas, to agree to the terms of a ceasefire and hostage release. This is the first phase of his 20-point plan laying out the conditions for the eventual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, a new governance structure for the strip and the massive task of reconstruction.
After the warring parties accepted the hostage-for-prisoner exchange deal on Wednesday, the Israeli captives, held in hellish conditions for two years, should be freed in days, finally ending the ordeal endured by them and their families.
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Israeli guns should fall silent in Gaza and the beginnings of a surge of aid into the devastated strip should start, bringing some respite to a population that has endured unfathomable suffering.
If the deal holds and moves to its next stage, it would prove to be a hugely significant foreign policy success. It may even dampen the mirth that greets Trump’s boasts of being the most worthy candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
But it remains a big if. The real challenge is for Trump to ensure the agreement moves beyond a hostage deal and leads to a more permanent settlement in Gaza, with the thornier issues still to be negotiated.
The US president deserves credit for cajoling Netanyahu to accept a deal with a militant group he has repeatedly vowed to “totally destroy” since Hamas’s October 7th, 2023, attack, during which 1,200 people were killed, according to Israel.
But Israel’s far-right government has made clear that so far it has only signed up to the first phase of the agreement. That delivers what Netanyahu has long sought: the immediate release of all the remaining 48 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to still be alive, while Israel keeps its forces in Gaza.
He has not yet committed to other elements in the second phase of the deal, which would include a Palestinian technocratic committee taking over Gaza’s administration, overseen by an international supervisory body.
Netanyahu also insists that Israel will retain overall security control over the strip. And he will staunchly resist any moves to increase the role of the Palestinian Authority, which administers limited parts of the occupied West Bank, in Gaza, something Arab and Muslim states are pressing for.
The Israeli premier is also expected to face resistance to the deal from the far-right politicians he depends on to hold his coalition together.
A first stumbling block will be whether Israel and Hamas can agree on a list of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for the hostages, particularly among the 250 who are serving life sentences.
In the other corner, Hamas – its military capability decimated, many of its leaders killed and under pressure from Arab nations that have backed the deal – has accepted that it will not govern Gaza, which it has controlled since 2007.
But it has yet to agree to disarm, which is a core part of the second phase of Trump’s plan and would in effect signal its military surrender.
The fear for Gazans – and Hamas – will be that they endure a repeat of the last US-brokered ceasefire-and-hostage deal. Netanyahu broke that agreement in March, just as the second phase – intended to pave the way for a permanent end to the war and Israel’s withdrawal from the strip – was to kick in.
At the time, there were dozens of hostages still trapped in Gaza, and the Palestinian death toll was nearing 50,000. Today, it is more than 67,000, according to Palestinian officials.
The fact that Israel and Hamas have at least agreed to the first phase of Trump’s plan underlines the difference an engaged US president can make when willing to exert pressure on both sides. The tragedy, for Gazans, the hostages and their families, is that it took so long to get to this first step.
Trump was silent when Netanyahu first breached the ceasefire in March – even though his team helped broker it – and resumed Israel’s offensive and imposed an 11-week siege on Gaza that led to the famine in the strip’s north.
The Biden administration was equally meek in deploying the US’s leverage to pressure Israel.
The critical test now is whether Trump takes a quick win when, and if, the hostages are released, or continues to take ownership of the deal and compels Netanyahu, as well as Hamas, to follow through with the full implementation of the plan.
If it proves to be another false dawn, it would be a catastrophe for the Palestinians, a disaster for an increasingly isolated Israel and a body blow to hopes of Middle East peace. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
