It is the same with details of the agreed release of the 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and 1700 Gazans jailed by Israel during the war. It has yet to be revealed whether Hamas or Israel get to decide the names of the released prisoners.
Most closely watched will be whether Israel agrees to Hamas’ demand to release Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian leader who has been imprisoned since 2002 over his involvement in the Second Intifada.
Marwan Barghouti appears in court in Jerusalem in 2012.Credit: AP
Nicknamed the “Palestinian Nelson Mandela”, Barghouti has long been seen as a potentially unifying leader and plausible successor to the ageing and widely despised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Polling shows he is easily the most popular political figure among the Palestinian public, and his release could be a game-changer for the long-term peace process.
We’ve seen previous ceasefire agreements fall apart – most recently in March when Netanyahu resumed bombing Gaza rather than negotiate an end to the war. Trump let him get away with it then. This time, the president appears more determined to apply pressure and secure the peace.
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Trump’s tough-guy persona, which often wilts in the face of strongmen like Vladimir Putin, appears to be holding with Netanyahu – for now. “He’s got to be fine with it. He has no choice. With me, you got to be fine,” Trump told the Axios website, explaining how he had encouraged Netanyahu to agree to the deal. And he has form in following through. In June, Trump forced Netanyahu to call off planned Israeli strikes on Iran that threatened to destroy a ceasefire deal he had proudly brokered.
In another important difference from the previous ceasefires, crucial Arab countries like Qatar, Egypt and Jordan have rallied together to pressure Hamas to stop fighting and give up power in Gaza. The militant group is weary and depleted after two years of war.
This, of course, is only phase one of a planned potential peace deal. The agreement announced on Thursday makes no mention of the process for Hamas to lay down its arms or for Israel to hand over power to an international peacekeeping force. These issues will be even more difficult to resolve than the components of the first phase of the deal.
The Jenga tower of Trump’s 20-point peace plan will certainly wobble and could fall apart, propelling the war into its third year. But we could maybe, just maybe, be on the precipice of a historic breakthrough: the beginning of the end of the war. It is hard to imagine an achievement more worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, even if Trump is not the winner when this year’s award is announced on Friday.
Blind faith would be irrational, but so would despair. Hope can be a dangerous thing, especially in the Middle East, but an essential one too.
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