U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a plan to end the war in the Gaza Strip, giving a 72-hour deadline for Hamas to return the hostages. The clock begins ticking the moment that Israel accepts the agreement.
During a press conference on Monday at the White House, Trump said Hamas hadn’t yet agreed, but that Muslim countries were negotiating with the terror group.
According to the main points of the plan, which the White House posted to X, Hamas will disarm, and the coastal enclave will become a “deradicalized terror-free zone” governed by a “technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” overseen by an international body dubbed the “Board of Peace,” and led by the United States.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi, founder and chairman of Israel’s Defense and Security Forum, gave the plan an emphatically positive reading, saying it achieves almost every war objective Israel has pursued.
“All the goals of the war are reached with this agreement. I think this a total victory for Israel,” Avivi told JNS, echoing Netanyahu, who told Trump at the press conference, “I support your plan to end the war in Gaza, which achieves our war aims.”
Avivi argued the plan would secure the hostages’ return, strip Hamas of its weapons and power, and create a demilitarized Gaza Strip in which Israel effectively controls key areas, including Rafah, northern Gaza and the Philadelphi Corridor, which runs along the Gaza-Egypt border.
Avivi emphasized that Hamas is dependent on Qatar and that Doha’s cooperation is therefore decisive. He said Hamas will accept the agreement, given that Qatar has signed onto it.
‘The heart or the wisdom to do so’
Jonathan Conricus, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the former international spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (2017-2021), offered a far more dubious assessment. In fact, he didn’t think that the plan would get off the ground at all, as he doubted Hamas would accept it.
“I hope that Hamas will accept the proposal and that we will get our hostages back. I doubt that Hamas will have the heart or the wisdom to do so,” he told JNS. “I think that the order of the day for the IDF will be eventually to continue and to enhance pressure on Hamas in Gaza—to fight above and below ground, hopefully, to get our hostages out.”
A major shortcoming of the proposal is the degree of naiveté of its planners in their expectation that Hamas will lay down its arms, he said. First, because it’s totally contrary to their “jihadi creed,” and second, because it would be suicidal for them to do so. Gazans blame Hamas for the destruction that rained down on them following the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel and would take vengeance on Hamas the moment that it disarmed.
Conricus flagged other concerns. He questioned who the Arab technocrats would be to run Gaza, and which countries would send troops to help them govern. Trump mentioned Pakistan and Turkey as enthusiastic backers of his plan. Both countries have been outspoken advocates of Hamas, and both have had faltering relations with Israel.
Conricus also said that deradicalization would never come about if the Strip’s education system wasn’t overhauled, which would require the removal of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Trump mentioned UNRWA in passing during the press conference, though he didn’t explicitly say it would have no role in post-war Gaza.
On the plus side, Conricus said the plan was a diplomatic milestone since, for the first time, it marshaled regional and international pressure against Hamas. He noted the unusually broad regional buy-in that the White House said it has secured.
The plan also meets most of Israel’s security concerns. “It falls short of the total victory that the prime minister has been campaigning on … but it does include a few quite significant achievements,” he said.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), and former head of the Research Division at the Israel Defense Forces’ Intelligence Corps, told JNS that if implemented, the deal is “an achievement for Israel.”
There is still the question of whether Hamas will accept the deal, however.
The real issue for Hamas is not simply disarmament, but the narrative implications of laying down its arms, Kuperwasser said. Agreeing would mean acknowledging that their Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel was a major mistake, as it led to loss of control over their territory—sealing the verdict of how the attack will be viewed and judged in Arab and Muslim history.
“On the other hand, what alternative do they have?” Kuperwasser asked. Rejecting the deal means Hamas will be forcibly removed from power, this time with international, Arab and Muslim support. It marks a turning point: if Hamas refuses, Israel will gain global legitimacy to intensify its military campaign without international constraints, he said.
Kuperwasser admits to having many concerns about the plan. While Israel will control Gaza’s perimeter, including the crucial Philadelphi Corridor, the plan calls for Israel to hand over security control within Gaza to an international force.
“If someone starts producing weapons within Gaza, who’s responsible for stopping that? We’re expecting a Palestinian force to take care of it. We need mechanisms in place to guarantee things like that would not happen,” he said.
A positive aspect of the deal is that implementation is performance-based, with each step forward dependent on clear proof the previous stage has been completed, he said.
“In the past, instead of performance-based progress, it was time-based, which was a huge mistake,” Kuperwasser said.
Missing the crucial point
Amihood Amir, chairman of Professors for a Strong Israel, who teaches computer science at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, offered the bleakest assessment. He said the plan left him feeling “dejected, disappointed” and very nearly depressed.
Amir said Trump’s plan misses the crucial point—that the so-called Palestinian nation is united by one single thread: a hatred of the Jewish State and a desire to destroy it. “There’s nothing constructive that defines the Palestinian nation, only a destructive thing, and that is ‘from the river to the sea’ there should be a Palestine. This is, of course, what Hamas says, and what every single Palestinian group says—that Israel has no right to exist,” Amir said.
This belief is rooted in a 1,400-year-old tradition within the Muslim world that rejects the existence of non-Muslim entities in what is considered Dar al-Islam (“the House of Islam”). It’s stronger than money or even life itself, he said.
“Mothers throw parties when their sons get blown up and blow the enemy up,” Amir said. “It is the most powerful feeling in the entire Arab world. And nothing in this plan even makes a dent in it.”
Trump’s failure is in thinking that the Arabs want what he wants, Amir said, such as good real estate, a seaside view, and a good life. “They want to destroy Israel. If what’s left in its place is a poor, rotten, insect-infested country, they’ll be happy as long as there are no Jews there,” he said.
