Natan Sachs
After two terrible years — beginning on the horrific morning of October 7, 2023 — there is now a chance this war could end, at least temporarily. Hostages could return home, aid could flow into Gaza, reconstruction efforts could start to take shape, and lives and societies could start to mend.
This chance exists not because the 20-point proposal released by the United States on September 29, 2025, is a model of diplomatic detail or nuance. It exists because its patron, President Donald Trump, appears determined not to take “no” for an answer — meaning he is willing to interpret almost any answer as a “yes,” regardless of its content or intent. If, in the past, negotiators crafted vague bridging proposals to allow both sides to say “yes,” now the parties are crafting vague “yes, but” responses to allow the US administration to claim, and perhaps even produce, a success: a partial, messy, disingenuous one, yet nonetheless vital end to this historic round of violence.
Constructive ambiguity has long had pride of place in Middle East diplomacy. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, for example — the “land for peace” resolution after the 1967 war — was designed to let each side read its own meaning into the text. It demanded that Arab states accept Israel’s right to “live in peace,” with “respect for [...] the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of every State,” and called on Israel to withdraw from territory it had occupied. Yet while the English version required withdrawal “from territories occupied in the recent conflict,” the French version said “des territoires” (“from the territories”). Each side could thus decide for itself whether the resolution meant full withdrawal, as the Arab states held, or a one of negotiated scope, as Israel insisted.
The Trump administration’s plan to end the Israel-Hamas war flips that formula. Its 20 points are sweeping and bold: all Israeli hostages, living and deceased, are to be released “within 72 hours,” along with 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences for murder. “Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty,” while others will be allowed to leave the Gaza Strip. Aid will flow freely to address the humanitarian crisis. An international authority and security force will govern and rebuild Gaza as Israel withdraws. “Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone…” and so on.
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