President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for ending the war in Gaza reads more like a joint U.S.-Israeli diktat to Hamas. Almost every provision involving Israel, other than mutual prisoner releases, is left to that country’s judgment and discretion. The plan even calls for Westerners to rule Gaza, perhaps for many years, with little to no genuine Palestinian input. Yet chances are strong that Hamas will accept this proposal, perhaps with a caveat to clarify some points.
Israel’s stake in the proposal is clear. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure coming from multiple directions: His military is overstretched, his public wants him to bring the hostages home, and his ally in Washington wants to end the war. At his joint press conference with Trump, Netanyahu crowed that the plan was particularly welcome because “it meets all of our war aims.” Israel has already largely accomplished these on the ground anyway: Hamas’s government structure, Gaza’s leadership, and any semblance of command and control have been smashed, literally to rubble.
The calculus that the proposal presents to Hamas is far more complicated. The group may no longer command a political structure, but it has mounted an insurgency in which small cells of fighters use, among other weapons, unexploded Israeli ordnances that litter the Gaza Strip and can be fashioned into improvised explosive devices. Recent history in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq suggests that insurgencies can wear down regular armies over time. But what Hamas ultimately wants may not be to keep fighting in Gaza. The U.S.-Israeli proposal, for all its poison pills, could offer ordinary Palestinians some immediate relief from war and famine—and Hamas the chance to fight another day, but as a political player in the West Bank.
The U.S.-Israeli proposal steps on some of the prime concerns of the Palestinians, whose representatives were excluded from its design. Key Gulf Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, have indicated that a framework for establishing a Palestinian state is indispensable to any peace plan; this one alludes to Palestinian statehood only vaguely, as an “aspiration,” and envisages a mere “dialogue” about “peaceful and prosperous coexistence.”
The content of such a dialogue is hard to imagine. This Israeli government has voiced its determination to annex most or all of the occupied West Bank. Trump has reportedly nixed that idea, at least for now. But the current plan, which holds no real promise of Palestinian statehood, also contains no suggestion of granting the more than 2 million stateless Palestinians who live in the West Bank Israeli citizenship.
Independent statehood for the occupied territories is a project of the secular Palestinian political party Fatah, not of Hamas, but most Palestinians would rejoice at it. If the current plan had committed Israel to acknowledging a Palestinian right to a state, or if it even had nodded in that direction, Hamas could have claimed to have achieved something of great national significance in a war that has cost more than 60,000 Palestinian lives. But as the text reads, no Palestinian living under occupation will feel reassured that citizenship of any state will be available to them in the foreseeable future.
The question of statehood is not the biggest sticking point in this plan for Hamas. The proposal calls on the group to fully disarm and stipulates that Israel maintain a large military presence, indefinitely, in a significant portion of Gaza. These terms would both normally be nonstarters for Hamas, which has long insisted that it will not disarm, even though it claims to be willing to step back from power in favor of an alternative Palestinian civic administration. Hamas has also said that Israel must agree to completely end the war and remove all of its forces from Gaza.
Finally, the agreement carries a strong whiff of colonialism that is anathema to many Palestinians. It would place Gaza under the control of a committee headed by Trump and give executive power to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Most Palestinians hold that the creation of Israel and the supplanting of their own plausible claims to independence were the products of British colonial rule—and that the United States has been Israel’s indispensable supporter and defender, particularly since 1967. The idea of British and American control of Gaza is therefore perfectly primed to raise deep suspicions.
Yet for all of the ways the proposal clashes with Hamas’s interests and Palestinian sensibilities, it also contains too much promise to ignore. Under its terms, ordinary Palestinians would be protected from displacement—and, on paper at least, the plan offers Gaza a bright future of large-scale investment and reconstruction. This could herald an end not just to the acute suffering under this war, but also to the misery that has prevailed in the Strip, especially since 2007, when Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade in response to Hamas’s violent takeover of the territory.
For this reason, Hamas will likely feel enormous pressure from many Palestinians in Gaza, and probably those everywhere else, to accept the agreement and end the war. The group’s remaining international sponsors, Turkey and Qatar, both welcomed the initiative; together with Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf Arab countries, they will also likely push Hamas to agree.
Ultimately, Hamas may have strategic reasons for signing on to the deal. Renouncing its ambitions in Gaza could allow the group to focus on long-term efforts to advance its presence, influence, and leverage in the West Bank. Power in the Palestinian national movement truly resides in Ramallah and East Jerusalem, after all. There, Hamas’s rivals, the secular nationalists in Fatah, retain a firm grip on the Palestinian Authority, which rules the self-controlled areas in the West Bank, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which speaks for Palestinians on the world stage. The PLO’s international standing has been significantly strengthened by the recent diplomatic recognition of Palestinian statehood by Western countries, including Britain, France, Australia, Canada, Portugal, and others—a major breakthrough for Palestinian diplomacy.
Hamas’s founding goal was to wrest control of the Palestinian national movement from its secular rivals and transform it into an Islamist cause. This cannot be accomplished without infiltrating and taking over the PLO, something Hamas has never managed to do. Ruling an isolated, ruined, and besieged Gaza Strip will not get Hamas closer to this objective—but building up a strong political presence in the West Bank could, and accepting the latest proposal could free Hamas to do this.
Given how much of the 20-point ultimatum would seem to be completely unacceptable to Hamas, Netanyahu is probably relying on the group to torpedo the entire thing, which would unleash him to, as Trump puts it, “finish the job” in Gaza, whatever that means. And Hamas may well come back with a simple no.
However, Hamas could put the Israelis in a more difficult position if it says either yes—or, more probable, “yes, but.” That’s to say that Hamas could demand greater clarity and negotiation on points left vague in the current plan. Whether Hamas chooses this route will likely depend on whether its political leaders, mostly in Turkey and Qatar, hold sway over its fighters on the ground.
If Hamas does say “yes, but,” regional leaders will likely be greatly relieved; they may even wonder if the group might be becoming more reasonable. The Trump administration may be inclined to engage with a “yes, but.” So, yes, as unworkable as this plan might seem for the Palestinian group, a Hamas assent is entirely plausible.
