After his White House speech, Netanyahu said Israel will never withdraw from Gaza and promised to resume the genocide if Hamas does not disarm.
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Three weeks after Israel attempted to assassinate Hamas’s lead negotiators in a series of airstrikes on the group’s offices in Doha, Qatar, President Donald Trump hailed the public announcement of his 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza as “potentially one of the great days ever in civilization.” The framework was drafted in coordination with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top adviser, Ron Dermer, and spearheaded by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Several Arab and Muslim states also contributed. No Palestinian officials from Hamas or any other faction, including the internationally-recognized Palestinian Authority, were consulted in crafting the plan.
The proposal, which Netanyahu agreed to after meeting with Trump at the White House on Monday, links the delivery of food and other life essentials and the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the demilitarization of Gaza and includes several loopholes that would permit Israel to resume the genocide. It also would impose a foreign-led authority on the demilitarized Gaza Strip, backed by Arab and international troops, and allow the Israeli army to indefinitely encircle the enclave by maintaining positions inside Gaza’s territory. The plan requires Hamas to release all Israeli captives held in Gaza before any Palestinians would be freed. While the proposal includes a series of apparent concessions to Arab and Muslim countries in return for their endorsement, it makes no mention of how Israel would be prevented from violating the agreement. The plan also includes a nebulous mention of possible future Palestinian “self-determination and statehood” after Gaza “re-development advances” and the Palestinian Authority is reformed.
“If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end,” the framework’s text, released on Monday, states. “Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release. During this time, all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal.”
In his White House remarks, Netanyahu affirmed his acceptance of the framework, but made clear Israel stands poised to resume the genocide. “If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr. President, or if they supposedly accept it and then basically do everything to counter it—then Israel will finish the job by itself,” he declared. “This can be done the easy way or it can be done the hard way, but it will be done. We prefer the easy way, but it has to be done.”
Trump also underscored this point. “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas,” he said. “But I hope that we’re going to have a deal for peace, and if Hamas rejects the deal… Bibi you’d have our full backing to do what you would have to do. Everyone understands that the ultimate result must be the elimination of any danger posed in the region. And the danger is caused by Hamas.”
On Tuesday, Trump reiterated this and said he would give Hamas “about three or four days” to respond. “We’re just waiting for Hamas, and Hamas is either going to be doing it or not, and if it’s not, it’s going to be a very sad end,” he said, adding that if Hamas rejects the deal, “I would let [Israel] go and do what they have to do.”
Hamas was not given any details on the proposal prior to Trump and Netanyahu unveiling it at the White House, a senior leader told Al Jazeera Mubasher. “Not a single Palestinian has reviewed this plan, and what was recounted … represents a tilt toward the Israeli vision—an approach close to what Netanyahu insisted on and pleaded for—to continue the war and the annihilation. Nothing more, nothing less,” said senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Mardawi immediately following the Trump–Netanyahu press conference. “To negotiate an end to this criminal war in exchange for ending the Palestinian people’s right to their state and their rights to their land, homeland, and holy sites—no Palestinian will accept that.”
Mardawi said that Hamas and other Palestinian factions would need to study the proposal, adding that, “the official position must be issued after reading the proposal and then stating our position and making amendments that conform with our right to self-determination.” The last time Hamas leaders gathered to discuss a U.S. proposal, on September 9, Israel attempted to assassinate its negotiators.
Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said Tuesday that Egypt and Qatar had delivered the plan to Hamas and, along with Turkish officials, would be holding a “consultative meeting.” Al-Ansari added, “We are optimistic that Trump’s plan is comprehensive, and the Hamas delegation is studying it responsibly, and we continue to consult with them.”
While Trump praised his own plan as a landmark opportunity for “eternal peace in the Middle East,” the exclusion of all Palestinians from the process is an extension of decades of Western colonial dominance of decision-making surrounding the future of Palestine. At the heart of Trump’s plan is a thinly-veiled ultimatum to Palestinians: bend the knee to Israel, renounce the right of armed resistance, and agree to indefinite subjugation by foreign actors.
“This plan is a malicious attempt to achieve through politics what the war of extermination could not achieve on the ground,” said Sami Al-Arian, a prominent Palestinian academic and activist and the director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University. “This includes ending the resistance, withdrawing weapons, releasing [Israeli] captives without a complete withdrawal, maintaining security, political, and economic control over Gaza, and imposing international tutelage.” He said the Trump framework is aimed at “perpetuating the Israeli narrative that the challenge is a security one related to Israeli security needs, not to ending a military occupation, Israeli genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and ongoing aggression.”
Al-Arian told Drop Site, “There is no negotiation here. There is an American plan. It was modified by some Israeli points and possibly some Arab points. And it’s given to the resistance as a ‘Take it or leave it’ thing.”
In the lead-up to the announcement, the Trump administration pushed a familiar narrative to friendly media outlets that he pressured a resistant Netanyahu into the agreement. In reality, Israeli officials were deeply involved with crafting the proposal right up to the moment the White House released the text.
In a video address in Hebrew following his event with Trump, Netanyahu portrayed the plan as a coup for Israel’s agenda, saying it effectively placed an Arab and international stamp of legitimacy on his genocidal plans. “This is a historic visit. Instead of Hamas isolating us, we turned the tables and isolated Hamas. Now the entire world, including the Arab and Muslim world, is pressuring Hamas to accept the terms we set together with President Trump: to release all our hostages, both living and deceased, while the IDF remains in most of the Strip,” Netanyahu declared. “Who would have believed this? After all, people constantly say, the IDF should withdraw… No way, that’s not happening.”
In previous “ceasefire” negotiations, when Hamas has sought to propose amendments or even to clarify phrasing in draft texts, Israel and the U.S. denounced Hamas, falsely accusing it of rejecting peace, and then Israel intensified the military assault on Gaza. Israel, meanwhile, has offered the public perception it agrees to draft deals, while at the same time securing “side letters” from Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, authorizing Israel to resume the war if it determines the agreement is no longer in its interests.
“There is no negotiation here. There is an American plan. It was modified by some Israeli points and possibly some Arab points. And it’s given to the resistance as a ‘Take it or leave it’ thing.”
And after it signed the January 2025 ceasefire agreement, Israel repeatedly violated it, regularly striking Gaza and ultimately blowing up the agreement entirely after the first of what was supposed to be a three-phase deal. Netanyahu has made clear that he wants not only Hamas’s surrender, but the decimation of all Palestinian resistance in Gaza.
“What was announced at the press conference between Trump and Netanyahu is an American-Israeli agreement, an expression of Israel’s entire position, and a recipe for continued aggression against the Palestinian people,” said Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the secretary general of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second largest armed resistance group in Gaza, in a statement. “Israel is trying to impose, through the United States, what it has been unable to achieve through war. Therefore, we consider the American-Israeli announcement a recipe for igniting the region.”
In crafting this plan, Trump deployed his son-in-law, Kushner, to shore up support from Arab nations ahead of the announcement. Kushner is often touted by Trump as the mastermind of the so-called Abraham Accord “normalization” agreements with Israel. Kushner has extensive business dealings in Gulf countries and his investment firm, Affinity Partners, is backed by billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
Trump boasted that he has the full backing of all major Arab nations. “The level of support that I’ve had from the nations in the Middle East and surrounding Israel and neighbors of Israel has been incredible. Incredible. Every single one of them,” Trump said, highlighting the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. “These are the people that we’ve been dealing with and who’ve been actually very much involved in this negotiation, giving us ideas, things they can live with, things they can’t live with.”
Embedded within the plan are several terms that Arab nations pushed for and which certainly were key to getting their buy-in. “The conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people,” the plan states. Arab and Muslim countries also certainly advocated for including a provision that Israel will cease its military assault and “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza.” No Palestinians, the outline states, “will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.”
An earlier leaked draft of Trump’s plan, as reported in Hebrew media, included a commitment that Israel would not annex the West Bank. That term does not exist in the text distributed Monday by the White House.
Nonetheless, the foreign ministers of Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt issued a statement saying they “welcome President Donald J Trump’s leadership and his sincere efforts to end the war in Gaza, and assert their confidence in his ability to find a path to peace.”
During his appearance on Al Jazeera after the plan was announced, Mardawi repeatedly emphasized the exclusion of Palestinians from the drafting of the Trump plan. “How can an Arab state refuse to allow the Palestinian people, with all their current political forces and over past decades, to participate?” he asked, rejecting the premise. “In everything put forward there is no affirmation of the Palestinian people’s rights.” He added that Hamas “will examine the proposal, discuss it with the factions, amend it, and consult the countries—all the countries that were willing and ready among those that met with Trump—and review their positions.”
Abu Ali Hassan, a member of the General Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine denounced the plan as giving diplomatic cover to a continuation of Israel’s broader agenda. “Trump gave the occupying state sufficient time to achieve its goals to no avail. The plan is a political intervention to achieve the military objectives of the war,” he told the Palestinian Sanad news agency. The plan, he said, “is an expression of a conspiracy involving international and Arab parties to undermine the rights of the Palestinian people and defeat their resistance.”
Privatizing and Colonizing Gaza
The Trump plan is riddled with ambiguities, loopholes, and proposals that leave a multitude of paths for Israel to resume its genocidal assault on Gaza.
Within 72 hours of an agreement, the plan says, Hamas must release all Israeli captives held in Gaza. There are believed to be 20 living Israelis and the bodies of 28 deceased remaining in the Strip. In return, Israel would subsequently release 250 Palestinians sentenced to life and 1,700 Palestinians from Gaza taken captive after October 7, 2023, including all women and children. The bodies of 15 Palestinians, according to the plan, would be returned for the remains of each deceased Israeli held in Gaza.
The plan states that deliveries of food and other life essentials to Gaza will resume in quantities consistent with the January 2025 ceasefire agreement that Israel unilaterally abandoned. “Entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party,” it says, adding that this will include “rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.” The plan also pledges that the Rafah crossing along the border with Egypt—what was once Gaza’s only gateway to the world beyond Israeli control—would be opened in both directions under the rules established in the January ceasefire deal. But a map of the proposed Israeli withdrawals would allow Israeli forces to remain deployed across southern Gaza, including along the Philadelphi corridor that runs along the border with Egypt, until an international force met standards approved by Trump.
The maps for a proposed phased Israeli withdrawal are consistent with those proposed by Israel in July—and rejected by Hamas—with the added term that any Israeli troop withdrawals will be linked to the verified disarmament of Palestinian resistance groups. The plan says that Israeli forces would “progressively hand over the Gaza territory it occupies” to an international security force, but that Israeli troops would maintain “a security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.”
“The resumption of the aid is extremely important in light of the fact that there is starvation and famine taking place,” said Al-Arian. “But I think the thorniest of issues would be the disarmament and the [Israeli] withdrawal. These could be the two issues that can make this whole deal unravel.”
The Trump framework also states that if Hamas “delays or rejects this proposal,” aid distribution will only proceed in areas under Israeli control or those handed over to the international force after disarmament of Palestinians in the area.
The plan also contains terms that Hamas has explicitly defined as “red lines,” namely a demand to strip Palestinians of their right to armed resistance against Israeli occupation. “All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt,” it states. “There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning, and supported by an internationally funded buy back and reintegration program all verified by the independent monitors.”
Mardawi, the Hamas official, said the U.S. and Israel were engaged in a propaganda campaign to rebrand the Palestinian right to self defense as a justification for Israel’s genocidal war. “To confiscate these weapons without a horizon, without a roadmap, without steps that lead to the establishment of the Palestinian state that the world recognizes is an attempt to bury the international consensus—except for America and the rogue Israel—on recognizing the Palestinian people’s right to establish their state,” he told Al Jazeera. “This international diplomatic and political momentum—especially from Europe, which used to support, back, and provide all forms of assistance to the state of the occupation—this recognition and this shift toward affirming the Palestinian people’s right to establish their state on their homeland is being undermined.”
The Trump plan says that the U.S. will work with Arab and international partners to create “a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) to immediately deploy in Gaza” to establish “control and stability.” In addition to providing security in Gaza, the plan says the ISF would also “work with Israel and Egypt to help secure border areas, along with newly trained Palestinian police forces.” The concept outlined in the plan is that as the ISF takes control of areas occupied by Israel, Israeli forces would withdraw. But the entire plan is predicated on the disarmament of Palestinian factions in areas the Israeli military would agree to withdraw from. It states that Israeli withdrawal would be “based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization… with the objective of a secure Gaza that no longer poses a threat to Israel, Egypt, or its citizens.”
“I think there will be huge reservations from all Palestinian factions, that they will not surrender their weapons,” Al-Arian said. “People have the right to defend themselves, particularly when dealing with an enemy that does not respect any law, any international law, any humanitarian law whatsoever.”
At the White House on Monday, Trump claimed he had secured commitments from Arab and Muslim countries “to demilitarize Gaza, and that’s quickly. Decommission the military capabilities of Hamas and all other terror organizations. Do that immediately. We’re relying on the countries that I named and others to deal with Hamas.”
Al-Arian said he was skeptical Israel would actually agree to the deployment of a foreign force, particularly an Arab one. But even if it did happen, he said it would not be capable of achieving the stated aim of disarming Palestinian resistance factions. “They’re not going to bring Arab and international troops to go and fight the resistance. The resistance will not voluntarily give up its arms,” said Al-Arian. “Which makes the Israelis say, ‘If that doesn’t happen, we’re not withdrawing.’ So you end up with a frozen conflict that could actually unravel and return back to genocide. But this time the Americans will say, ‘We tried, we failed.’ And then the Israelis have a free hand to resume their genocide.”
Hamas has repeatedly said that it would relinquish governing authority in Gaza to an independent technocratic committee of Palestinians. On several occasions, Hamas proposed including the term in previous ceasefire proposals and the U.S., and Israel removed it. The Trump plan states, “Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form.” It does not clarify which factions this would include.
While the Trump plan states that “Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee,” it requires that it be overseen by another newly created entity that would be headed by Trump and reportedly managed by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The document references the potential future involvement of the Palestinian Authority, but offers no timeline.
Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, denounced the involvement of Blair, an unrepentant war monger who has spent his years since leaving office cashing in by peddling his influence to dictators and despots. “I could call him ‘the devil’s brother’—that’s Tony Blair. He has brought no good to the Palestinian cause, to the Arabs, or to the Muslims. His criminal and destructive role since the war on Iraq, in which he had a central role both theoretically and in practical participation, is well known,” Badran told Al Jazeera Mubasher on Sunday. “Tony Blair is not a welcome figure in the Palestinian cause, and therefore any plan associated with this person is an ill omen for the Palestinian people.” After resigning as British Prime Minister, Blair served as the official Middle East envoy for the Quartet—consisting of the U.S., the UN, the EU, and Russia—from 2007 to 2015 and was widely criticized for achieving little.
Al-Arian said that while Hamas has agreed that it would not be a part of an interim governing body for Gaza, Israel and Trump seem to be trying to preemptively strip Palestinians of the right to choose their leaders democratically. “Eventually there will have to be some sort of a democratic transition, democratic elections in which Gazans have the right to rule themselves,” he said. “I don’t think any Palestinian would agree to have a foreign power governing them. That imperialist, colonialist mentality is not acceptable to any Palestinian.”
The Trump plan calls for the establishment of an “economic development plan” that would be managed by a “panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East.” The language is consistent with the praise Trump heaped on the rulers of Gulf nations when he visited Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE in May. While Trump made no mention of his oft-repeated threat to turn Gaza into a U.S.-run “Middle East Riviera,” the plan indicates he sees massive private investment opportunities in the rubble of Gaza.
During the Monday press conference, Trump addressed Dermer—Netanyahu’s chief strategist—in the front row with a rambling digression referring to Gaza as the most beautiful real estate in the region and offered a staggeringly false history of Israel “giving it” to the Palestinians in 2005. “They [Israel] said, ‘You take it. This is our contribution to peace.’ But that didn’t work out. That didn’t work out. It was the opposite of peace,” Trump said. “They pulled away, they let them have it. And I never forgot that because I said, ‘That doesn’t sound like a good deal to me as a real estate person.’ They gave up the ocean, right? Ron, they gave up the ocean. They said, ‘Who would do this deal?’And it still didn’t work out. They were very generous, actually. And they gave up the most magnificent piece of land in many ways in the Middle East. And they said, ‘All we want to do now is have peace.’ That request was not honored.”
“Every move on Trump’s part, he gets someone in the back door, whether it’s his children, his son in law, or friends, to take a piece of the act,” said Al-Arian. “So he sees big dollar signs coming in and that’s why he got in Tony Blair, because that is the medium by which he’s going to be able to control the money and control what’s happening in Gaza.”
While Trump and Netanyahu can forge ahead with their attempt to impose this plan on Gaza, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad still hold nearly 50 Israeli captives, living and dead. Hamas knows this is the only leverage it holds in any negotiation. “The only thing that Hamas can reject really is the hand over the captives,” said Al-Arian. “Hamas doesn’t want to be stripped of this card and then end up with another war in which they have zero leverage after that.” Should Netanyahu and Trump attempt to entirely circumvent Hamas and recover the captives through military force, it is certain that many, if not all of them, would be killed. Hamas’s armed wing, Qassam Brigades, has issued several warnings to Israel against such plans.
The Trump plan states that, “Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.” This clause portrays Hamas as akin to a small group of foreign fighters, rather than a political movement that has won democratic elections, governed Gaza for two decades, and which still enjoys a sizable amount of support in public polls across Palestine.
While the Trump proposal contains some elements that the Palestinian resistance has long demanded, including the resumption of life essentials and humanitarian aid, the exchange of captives and a framework, albeit deeply skewed toward Israel, for withdrawal of occupation forces. But Al-Arian said these terms do not outweigh the traps embedded within the plan’s text.
“We may get the first phase of the plan. What happens to the rest of the plan is going to depend pretty much on other dynamics, but more importantly on the Trump administration, which is Zionist to the core. So I don’t have much hope that this is going to be carried out,” Al-Arian said. “And what comes after that is going to be a renewed effort to establish Greater Israel, which will also precipitate greater effort to resist this. That means that the whole region will stay unstable.”
Killing Negotiations
Some terms of the plan appear to be rooted in the terms of a 13-point U.S.-Israeli-drafted plan that Hamas agreed to on August 18. Israel never formally responded to Hamas’s acceptance of the so-called Witkoff framework, which the U.S. publicly characterized as the deal that would end the war. By that point, Israel was finalizing preparations for a sustained ground invasion of Gaza City aimed at expelling one million Palestinians. On August 20, two days after Hamas made major concessions and accepted the Witkoff plan, Israel forged ahead with its invasion of Gaza City.
As Israel intensified its air strikes and ground operations against Gaza, Trump bombastically announced on September 3 that he was making a final offer to Hamas. Ignoring the fact that Hamas had already conceded to what Trump had also called the last chance for a deal, the U.S. delivered to Hamas via Qatari mediators a 100-word document that called for the unconditional release of all Israeli captives, living and dead, in Gaza in return for a 60-day ceasefire and an opaque commitment to end the war. As the U.S. initiated backdoor communications with Hamas, claiming to want to make a deal, Israeli army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir publicly threatened to assassinate Hamas leaders outside of Gaza if the group did not surrender.
As Hamas officials convened in Doha on September 9 to discuss how to respond to the paragraph-long document from Trump and messages it received through intermediaries, Israel carried out what it called Operation Day of Judgement, bombing Hamas’s offices and the Qatar residence of its chief political leader and negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya. While the strike failed to kill any Hamas leaders, Israel’s missiles took the lives of Al-Hayya’s son and four Hamas administrative staff as well as a Qatari security guard. The attack also wounded Al-Hayya’s wife, daughter-in-law, and some of his grandchildren.
Qatar is the home of U.S. Central Command, the premiere American strategic military facility in the region. Israel was able to conduct its attacks without encountering any apparent resistance from the U.S.-provided air defense systems in Qatar, raising serious questions about the extent of U.S. involvement in the strike. While the Trump administration claimed it was only alerted by Israel soon before the Israeli air strikes and tried to warn Qatar’s leader, the contention defies common sense. No country in the world has a more extensive military and intelligence apparatus in the region than that operated by the U.S.
Whether by Israeli design or the product of a U.S.-Israeli plot, the series of events—most prominently the U.S.-enabled sabotage of yet another ceasefire agreement—paved the way for weeks of wanton killing, forced displacement and mass destruction in northern Gaza.
Arab leaders gathered in Doha for an emergency summit on September 15 to discuss Israel’s bombing of Qatar. In the end, they issued only a strongly worded statement and declined to engage in any military response to Israel’s attack. Trump claimed he was not happy with the Israeli bombing of Qatar and claimed it would not happen again. But two Arab diplomatic sources told Drop Site that on his recent visit to Qatar, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told officials in Doha that the U.S. could make no such guarantee as long as Hamas was allowed to operate in Qatar. A State Department spokesperson declined to confirm or deny what the sources told Drop Site.
During his meeting with Trump on Monday, Netanyahu offered an apology to the emir of Qatar on a phone call made from inside the White House and promised not to violate Qatari sovereignty again. But the apology was narrowly focused on the killing of the Qatari security guard and not for bombing the Hamas office in an effort to kill its negotiating team in the midst of negotiations which Qatar was mediating at the request of the U.S.
On Monday, Qatar’s foreign ministry released a statement acknowledging Netanyahu’s apology and stated that it would resume its mediation efforts in support of Trump’s plan. Since Israel’s attempt to assassinate Hamas’s external leadership, several of the group’s senior leaders have been held in safe houses in Qatar with limited access to communications. While this has created challenges for the group to maintain contact with commanders on the ground in Gaza, sources have told Drop Site they have developed alternative methods.
As Hamas and other Palestinian groups debate their response to the Trump plan, the final word will lie not with those in Doha, but inside Gaza.
“That proposal will come to the leaders in exile. They will look at it, they will make some decisions. These decisions would also be consulted with the people in the field in Gaza. They will have to be heard at the end. They are the ones who control the [Israeli] captives,” Al-Arian said. “It doesn’t even matter what the people say outside. It’s only going to be an opinion and they hope that that opinion would be accepted by the people inside [Gaza]. But the people who are leading in the field in Gaza will have to make that decision. But I believe, all in all, that Hamas and the resistance have shown that they have tremendous discipline, that they are capable of communicating and having a unified position.”
