Andrew Roth
For Donald Trump, a peace deal – or even a durable ceasefire between Israel and Hamas – could be the biggest diplomatic achievement of his presidency.
The details and sequencing of a deal to end Israel’s war in Gaza remain murky but the statement of purpose by both Israel and Hamas is meaningful. In agreeing to a deal with political backing from Arab states and other regional powers, this is the best chance for an end to the war since a ceasefire broke down in March, returning Gaza to a grinding war that has left nearly 68,000 people dead, most of them civilians.
Since March there have been rumblings of a deal but nothing that has come this close. The first phase of the peace plan, as Trump called it in a Truth Social post on Wednesday, is straightforward: the return of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for a limited withdrawal by the Israeli military. But finding all the hostages, and managing an Israeli withdrawal, could be complicated.
In keeping with the tone of Trump’s presidency, hopes are expressed in hyperbole, with the president saying: “ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace. All Parties will be treated fairly!”
There is so much left to be discussed. The 20-point peace plan proposed by the administration attempts to thread the needle between creating the conditions for a ceasefire and negotiating a lasting end to the war; the hard questions of Hamas’s future and whether the militant group will disarm, along with Israel’s vision for the future of Gaza, remain to be hammered out.
And we have been here before: the Trump administration was in a hurry to negotiate an end to the Gaza war even before the inauguration, and a hastily organised ceasefire in January broke down over the sequencing of the release of the hostages still held in Gaza.
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