Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who decommission their weapons would be given amnesty.
Notably, the proposal says nothing concrete about a pathway to Palestinian statehood. While it recognises statehood “as the aspiration of the Palestinian people”, it says only that while Gaza is rebuilt and when an overhaul program by the authority “is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway” to statehood.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves outside the West Wing of the White House on Monday.Credit: Bloomberg
Hamas would have to agree to play no role in governing Gaza in the future. And while Israel would pull back its forces by degrees within the Gaza Strip, it would maintain a sizable buffer zone inside Gaza’s borders “for the foreseeable future”, Netanyahu said.
Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations who worked for three Republican presidents, including Trump, said the Israel military campaign had put Hamas in such a weakened position that its leaders might have to accept the deal to save their own lives.
“It would have been a reasonable calculation for Hamas to say, ‘Look at the increasing isolation and condemnation of Israel. They will have to stop soon,‘” Abrams said. “But Trump eliminated that possibility today. Now they won’t have to stop. This really corners them.”
Loading
Netanyahu proclaimed that the proposal “achieves our war aims”. And he said he would determine whether or not Hamas was complying with the agreement.
“If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr President, or if they supposedly accepted and then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself,” Netanyahu said.
“This can be done the easy way, or it can be done the hard way.”
The two leaders originally had planned to take questions from reporters, but in the end they did not. The moment was reminiscent of Trump’s appearance with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August in Alaska, where he sought a peace deal in the war in Ukraine. Trump and Putin appeared before reporters without an agreement and declined to take questions.
Loading
While the US plan gives Netanyahu much of what he wants, it also shows that Trump has moved away from his proposal this year to force Palestinians out of Gaza as part of a redevelopment plan.
Under the latest proposal, Trump said, Palestinians would be encouraged to stay in the Gaza Strip and offered “the opportunity to build a better Gaza”.
“No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return,” the proposal states.
“We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”
Still, the plan – even if Hamas were to agree to it – leaves many question marks and would deeply involve the US.
Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike on a high-rise building in Gaza City, on Sunday.Credit: AP
Gaza would be governed by a committee called the “Board of Peace”, of which Trump would be the chair and which would undertake its redevelopment.
Such an arrangement would constitute “some extra work to do”, Trump said, “but it’s so important that I’m willing to do it”.
Trump has long remarked on the potential value of the waterfront property of Gaza, and he did so again Monday, lamenting the fact that Israel allowed the Palestinians to have control of the land.
“As a real estate person, I mean, they gave up the ocean,” he said “They gave up the ocean. I said, ‘Who would do this deal?’”
The “Board of Peace” would include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It would govern Gaza until it determined that the Palestinian Authority had reformed itself enough to take over, the plan states.
“He has created a peace plan that, if in fact Hamas accepted it in principle, would require an extraordinary lift by the United States,” said Aaron David Miller, a former longtime State Department official who is now a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Every single point is going to be negotiated to death.”
Miller said he was struck by how the peace proposal seemed to hinge so much on the president personally playing a role.
“Trump signed up for something that I think is going to require an extraordinary amount of American involvement and monitoring, and he’s made himself the key monitor,” Miller said.
“This is not a throwaway ceasefire agreement,” he said. “This is the full monty here, and at the top of this full monty sits one Donald Trump.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
