U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed a twenty-point peace plan to end the war in Gaza, which calls for the release of all remaining living and deceased hostages, the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and an interim governance plan for the Strip involving Palestinian and international actors with no Hamas presence. As Trump has presented it, the plan was not negotiated with Hamas and does not require Hamas’ approval, but it does assume Hamas’ cooperation; once Israel agrees, Hamas is expected to lay down its arms and release the hostages within 72 hours. 

The plan covers a wide range of issues, including the future government of Gaza (a reformed Palestinian Authority), the replacement of Israeli military presence with Arab security forces, and proposes a “credible pathway to Palestinian blairstatehood”. The interim government will include a “Board of Peace” to be chaired by Trump and including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. 

In a significant development, Hamas has issued its first official response stating that they are prepared to release all Israeli hostages—both living and deceased—according to the exchange formula contained in Trump’s plan, provided “field conditions” for the exchange are met. This would mean the release of all surviving hostages within 72 hours in exchange for hundreds of detained Palestinians. While Hamas also signaled openness to the proposal that Gaza’s governance be handed to Palestinian technocrats, it omitted any commitment to disarmament—one of the plan’s most contentious demands. Israeli officials are now scrutinizing Hamas’s statement, weighing whether it reflects genuine engagement or a tactical move to buy time.

The response to the plan from the Arab side has been generally positive; Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Egypt all expressed support. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has also supported the plan, although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has maintained that the PA should not control the Strip. 

Critics have pointed out that while some aspects of the plan are clear, like the release of the hostages, several important components are cloudy. For instance, the plan calls for a pathway to statehood, but Netanyahu and the majority of the Knesset have publicly disavowed this option for years. Additionally, the plan foresees the PA playing an important role in the Strip, but it offers little clarity on what reforms are needed and whether Israel will be compelled to allow it to have real influence in Gaza. 

To understand more about the nuances of the plan and its prognosis, the Cairo Review asked its contributors for their brief thoughts on the viability of Trump’s most recent peace venture. 

Ramzy Baroud

Journalist, author, and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle

To begin with, Palestinians have no reason to trust U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal, especially since it has already been amended by Israel and endorsed by such untrustworthy figures as Jared Kushner and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Essentially, this plan is a rehash of ideas put forth by the previous Biden administration. Its goal is to secure an Israeli victory in exchange for slowing down the pace of the genocide, without offering a single guarantee that Israel would honor its commitments.

Hamas and other resistance groups have the right to maneuver and negotiate on matters directly related to captives and other specific issues. However, they have no right to make decisions concerning the national cause of the Palestinian people. Allowing international forces into Gaza, agreeing to a ceasefire that enables the United States and Israel to administer Gaza as if it were separate from the West Bank, and other critical matters lie beyond the mandate of any single Palestinian group, regardless of their sacrifices and credibility among a large sector of Palestinian society.

Grace Wermenbol

Former Middle East specialist at the Department of State, and adjunct professor at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service

Almost two years after the Hamas-led attack on Israel’s southern communities and Israel’s devastating retaliatory military offensive in Gaza, it is high time for the Israel-Hamas war to come to an end. Without outside pressure, this will not happen. Under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Gaza war has become an end in itself, devoid of real objectives or clear off-ramps. Indeed, despite the near-total destruction of Gaza and with unfathomable disregard for Palestinian civilian life there, Israel has failed to secure the release of all Israeli-held hostages through military pressure. Meanwhile, Hamas’ embrace of low-level guerilla tactics and military persistence demonstrates that any military eradication is unlikely.

In this context, U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan is a welcome endeavor to halt the fighting and to present a more pragmatic vision for Gaza’s future—one that avoids the forced displacement of its people or U.S. support for Israeli resettlement and annexation of the strip. Among its more lucid features, the plan foresees a military decommissioning of Hamas and the establishment of a transitional technocratic governance structure inside Gaza. In the shorter term, the plan calls for the release of Israeli hostages, alive and deceased, within 72 hours and the entry of critically-needed aid in the Gaza Strip that affirms the importance of the United Nations as a facilitation and distribution mechanism.

And yet, the choreographed, sequential nature of the published plan—promoting ‘peaceful and prosperous co-existence’—belies a complicated reality that has too often faltered under the weight of ambiguity and the stark asymmetry of Israeli and Palestinian power. U.S. official recognition of Palestinian statehood aspirations, for one, is not tantamount to credible steps toward their realization. Even ‘PA reform’, as past efforts have shown, depends largely on the eye of the beholder. Future reform attempts also cannot be disentangled from Israeli actions that seek to undermine the Palestinian Authority’s governance and influence in the West Bank; meaningful reform under continued occupation is a tall order.

The full and successful execution of the Trump plan—even if accepted by both Hamas and Israel—will hinge on making sure that fulfillment mechanisms are clear to all parties, agreed upon by them, and monitored and enforced by third-party guarantors. The acceptance of this plan would merely constitute the first step toward creating a ‘Day After’, but it is a necessary one. 

Kourosh Ziabari

Journalist and media studies researcher

The contours of the White House plan aren’t unrealistic, and the announcement of its conditional acceptance by Hamas could herald a new beginning in the region, starting with the discontinuation of the mass killing of Palestinians. But what matters is not what the Trump administration, the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, or experts think. Instead, the traumatized and dehumanized people of Gaza are the ones who should be given the agency to determine their future. They must have the chance to decide on a future in which their current authorities don’t play a role, and one in which they can live in safety and dignity without fear of occupation and daily bombardments.

Throwing around words like peace in press conferences while inordinate amounts of American taxpayer money have been squandered to energize Israel’s war machinery isn’t a consistent, honest approach to statecraft. It is positive that the plan has been premised on the cessation of hostilities, provides for the release of Israeli and Palestinian captives, and commits to humanitarian rehabilitation and economic recovery in the Gaza Strip. Still, it is more than fair to ask why six UN-mandated ceasefire resolutions had to be vetoed over the past two years before an almost similar initiative was put forward by the U.S. president. 

The ideal of regional stability shouldn’t be pursued solely for the sake of having the name of the current U.S. president marketed as a historic dealmaker. The personal element of the deal is much more pronounced than its specifics and durability. Also, to save the basis of international law from eroding further, the Trump administration must outline how it will facilitate the judicial proceedings that will lead to the arrest and indictment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the International Criminal Court for the commission of crimes against humanity. 

Sean Lee

Assistant professor of political science at The American University in Cairo

If the British colonial conquest and rule of Palestine under a League of Nations Mandate was history as tragedy, a colonial government of Gaza presided over by U.S. President Donald Trump and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is history as farce. Besides the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already publicly stated (in Hebrew) that Israel plans to remain in the Gaza Strip, the so-called peace plan is essentially an internationalization of Israel’s occupation of Gaza and an inversion of the values that the so-called international community claims to represent. 

Instead of punishing Israel for committing genocide, the plan rewards Israel with more territory in the form of a “buffer zone” that entirely surrounds the Gaza Strip. Instead of an international force whose purpose is to protect Palestinians from Israeli mass violence, Palestinians are being offered a force whose purpose is to legitimize and subcontract Israel’s brutal occupation. Instead of insisting that those who are currently committing genocide in Gaza be disarmed and deradicalized, it is rather the victims of that genocide who are meant to be disarmed and deradicalized. In short, instead of self-determination for the people of Palestine after a century of colonial rule, Palestinians in Gaza are being forced to choose between further indefinite colonial subjugation or continued, unrelenting genocidal violence. That is no choice at all.

Ola El-Taliawi

Tenured assistant professor of public administration and policy science at the University of Twente, The Netherlands

U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan reads less like a pathway to justice than a return to colonial trusteeship. The proposal to install a technocratic authority under international supervision, with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at its helm, evokes the long and painful history of Western overseers in the Middle East. Blair’s record in Iraq, deeply tarnished by his role in legitimizing the 2003 invasion and its devastating aftermath, makes his nomination especially provocative. 

The plan also contains a troubling loophole: while it promises that no one will be “forced” to leave Gaza, it simultaneously opens the door for those who “wish” to depart. In contexts of blockade, bombardment, and livelihood collapse, the line between choice and coercion is meaningless, effectively rebranding forced displacement as voluntary exit and normalizing coerced departure under the guise of voluntariness. Most troubling of all, the plan is silent on accountability for Israel’s genocide, illegal settlement expansion, and decades of violations of Palestinian rights and international law. By externalizing Palestinian self-determination to yet another foreign overseer, disguising coerced displacement as voluntariness, and absolving Israel of responsibility, the plan entrenches a system that privileges Israeli control while marginalizing Palestinian rights; recasting imperial management as peacebuilding.

Omar Shaban

Founder and director of the Gaza-based PalThink for Strategic Studies

A quick review of social media indicates that a majority of Gazans, who have for two years suffered Israel’s onslaught, now support the Trump plan for many reasons, but primarily because it promises to end the horrible war.  

They realize that Trump’s plan may not be the best; however, they also understand that negotiations and agreements are the result of the balance of power between negotiating parties, and that there is a difference between what is most desirable to achieve and what is most possible to achieve. 

The current 20-point Trump plan, which came on the heels of the United Nations General Assembly, actually walks back from his initial Gaza Riviera initiative, which lacked any political dimensions, would have ignored the rights of the Palestinian residents and “voluntarily” displaced them. Most disturbingly, it realized Israeli right-wing aims of resolving the conflict through displacement, and then permanent Jewish settlement, and turning the Strip into an empty plot of land intended for investment.

Not surprisingly, the Riviera Gaza plan was praised by the Israeli right-wing, especially Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who demanded that it be the Israeli government’s action plan.

But the Gaza Riviera plan was strongly opposed by many around the world, who even committed—through an unprecedented demonstration of international will at the United Nations—to the two-state solution by recognizing Palestinian statehood.

From a Palestinian perspective, the plan has the potential to stabilize and strengthen their presence on their own land. For their part, Hamas realizes that the plan is supported by key Arab and Muslim countries, namely Qatar and Turkey, which have hosted its leadership over the years. 

Hamas can’t reject the plan. Although it stated it didn’t receive an official document of the plan, it pledged to study it in good faith.

An affirmative response from Hamas was to be expected. In Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority (PA) welcomed Trump’s plan as it breaches Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s red line not to work with the PA to govern Gaza. 

Both  Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions are aware of the magnitude of the people’s tragedy in Gaza, and at the same time, they understand the strategic trap that Trump set for them: that their rejection of the plan would make the Palestinian people lose their most important achievement in this war, which is gaining official and popular international sympathy and exposing Israel as a colonial, settler-occupation entity led by a group of extremists. 

Therefore, they are required to think rationally about the balance of power and not be driven solely by the emotions of national aspirations, even if these are legitimate and just. Consequently, Hamas will be accepting the general principles called for by the plan: namely, halting the war, arranging Gaza’s reconstruction and keeping its residents there, and establishing stability in the region, which does not conflict with Palestinian interests. This should be accompanied by a regional push to quickly negotiate the plan’s details, its timeline, and practical next steps, while maintaining international support for ending the war.

Richard Silverstein

Freelance journalist and independent researcher

The recent “peace plan” devised by U.S. President Donald Trump has offered Israel a golden opportunity to further advance its interests regarding Gaza. It envisions an end to the war on Israel’s terms, with Hamas achieving almost nothing.  

Originally, the U.S. president presented the plan to a group of Arab leaders who responded positively to its provisions. Unfortunately, he then presented the document to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who spent six hours ‘revising’ it. He removed or softened many of the points to which he objected and added demands that he had voiced for the past two years (and which Hamas had already summarily rejected). The Arab leaders, when they approved the original document, were not aware that Netanyahu had been given effective veto power. When they later learned of the substantial revisions, they were furious. This, in turn, has colored the largely skeptical response to the plan.

Nevertheless, the prime minister returned home trumpeting his success in “turning the tables” against Hamas, by achieving all his own objectives and denying the Palestinian side their own aspirations.

Ibrahim Awad

Research professor in global affairs and director of the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies in the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo

The Trump plan saves Israel from pursuing the genocidal war it has been waging for the last two years without reaching its declared goals. The plan also aims to save Israel from its increasing isolation in the international system and from the pariah status in which it is now. The plan is blatantly pro-Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu introduced significant edits in the version that was announced publicly by President Trump; this version differed from the one presented to the Arab and Islamic partners, who are supposed to ensure that Hamas complies with its obligations, and who were not informed of these last-minute edits. The Foreign Minister of Pakistan, one of the partners, has called it a unilateral plan.   

That plan also puts its implementation in Israel’s hands. Once Israel agrees to it, Hamas must release the captives and the remains it holds, regardless of whether Hamas accepts the plan or not. In negotiations between the Israeli army, the International Stabilization Force (ISF), the Arab and Islamic partners, and the United States, Israel will practically decide whether Gaza has become secure or not. A secure Gaza, as determined by Israel, is a condition for Israel to progressively hand over the territory it occupies to the ISF. The ISF will be established as a long-term security force in Gaza. Israel will also determine whether the conditions for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood are met or not.  In the plan, the Palestinian state is not a given, agreed-upon outcome.

In the meantime, if the plan gets implemented, a new two-level mandate system, reminiscent of the League of Nations’ mandate, will be put in place. Some “apolitical” Palestinians will be appointed to the lower-level organs. But they will not be alone. Several international experts will accompany them in this organization.  The higher body is the ultimate supervisory body. This is the Board of Peace that will be chaired by the President and obviously managed by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In 1922, the League of Nations mandate for Palestine was a class A mandate, meaning that the country was close to independence and its population qualified to govern it. Over a century later, the Trump plan downgrades Gaza’s status to that of a territory needing close control and guidance. The plan does not make any mention of the West Bank. 

Additionally, doubt may be cast on the implementation of the plan. Hamas’ obligations are to put down their arms and to give up all forms of participation in Gaza’s governance. It is hard to imagine how the regional partners will ensure and guarantee that Hamas has been disarmed. The plan pits Arabs against Arabs. It seeks to transfer the problem Israel created for itself to the Arab countries. Despite their declared support for the plan, when it comes to its implementation, they are not likely to fall into this pitfall.

Michael Reimer

Professor of history in the Sultan Al-Qasimi Department of History at the American University in Cairo

U.S. President Donald Trump seems to prefer to negotiate peace deals with aggressors rather than their victims. When he wanted to end Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine, he met first with the Russians. Now, to end the Israeli occupation of Gaza, he formulates a plan in coordination with the Israelis, without consulting Palestinians (though there was consultation with several Arab and Muslim states). This is a backward approach to peacemaking and doubts about implementing the plan are intensified when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has in theory agreed to it, tells us that he interprets the agreement to mean that IDF forces will not withdraw fully from Gaza, and that establishment of a Palestinian state is not the goal of the peace process. And where in this plan is Israel required to accept responsibility for the genocide it has committed in Gaza? So it’s a virtual certainty that implementation of the plan will stall, sooner rather than later, even if it’s accepted, rhetorically, by both sides. At the same time, I see two overriding reasons for Hamas to accept the plan, despite its many shortcomings. One, it may give the Palestinian people in Gaza a respite after two years of relentless bombardment and multiple forced displacements. Two, the creation of a transitional governing body with internationally recognized authority, would prevent, or at least deter, a renewed invasion or annexation of Gaza, and the plan seems to guarantee the Palestinian people a right to remain in Gaza. These are, in my view, the most constructive features of the plan.

Gedaliah Afterman

Head of the Asia Policy Program at Reichman University’s Abba Eban Institute and Fellow at the University of Bonn’s CASSIS; former Australian diplomat in Beijing

U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan, while far from perfect, has nonetheless shifted the regional equation. Its endorsement by Israel, alongside Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, and Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, places the pressure squarely on Hamas. The plan offers the clearest opening yet to end the war, secure the release of hostages, and begin not only the rebuilding of Gaza and Israel but also the shaping of a broader regional vision. It will inevitably face attempts at alteration or spoiling in the days and weeks ahead, yet even in its imperfect form, it creates a framework to move the parties from conflict toward a fragile but real political pathway. To seize this moment, the United States and the key Arab states must press ahead with determination, linking ceasefire and hostage release to a credible process of reconstruction and a clear pathway toward Palestinian statehood and regional cooperation. More broadly, this could be the moment for Asian and European powers, from Delhi to Berlin, to step in and help materialise cross-regional connectivity initiatives such as the India—Middle East—Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), incorporating both Israel and the Palestinians into the region and anchoring an economic base for the future of regional stability and integration.