Can Trump’s Middle East peace plan succeed?

WASHINGTON—On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump warned he would only give the terrorist group Hamas “three or four days” to respond to the ceasefire plan he’d announced at the beginning of the week. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved Trump’s 20-point peace plan, an outline for ending the Gaza war. Now it’s up to Hamas to respond before Trump’s self-declared deadline runs out.

“Hamas is either going to be doing it or it’s not, and if it’s not, it’s going to be a sad end,” Trump told reporters.

The governments of Qatar, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates have issued statements supporting the peace plan. And foreign policy experts have praised it as the most thorough seen in decades. But peace could still be a long way off, if attainable at all.

“After two years of failed attempts to end the war, it’s very hard to be optimistic,” Washington Institute senior fellow Ghaith al-Omari told me. “However, I would say that of all of the initiatives that we’ve had since the beginning of the war, this is the most likely one to make any progress.”

The framework requires an immediate ceasefire, followed by the return of living and dead Israeli hostages in Hamas custody within 72 hours. Then Israel would release roughly 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences, along with 1,700 detained Gazans, including women and children. Hamas members would be required to surrender their weapons and cede all control, but they would receive amnesty and be allowed to remain in Gaza or have safe passage out. Then a transitional government overseen by an international stabilization force would replace Hamas governance. Eventually, a Board of Peace—chaired by Trump—would train and launch a functioning government, with potential involvement from the Palestinian Authority.

Unlike past ceasefire proposals, the Trump plan gets specific about guarantees for both Israel and neighboring Arab and Muslim nations, including Qatar and Turkey. These are notable signatories, al-Omari said, because they are the traditional backers for the Hamas terrorist organization. Without such allies, Hamas has no support to continue its war against Israel. Al-Omari, a senior adviser to the Palestinian Authority’s negotiating team during 1999-2001 talks, said any peace deal must be open to changes down the road. Such a deal needs international buy-in and must take into consideration the politics of all parties involved, he said, adding that Trump’s plan meets the metrics.

“Previous attempts to end the war in Gaza really were limited to dealing with the two variables: ending the war and the hostage deal,” al-Omari said. “This new initiative is also mentioning what’s going to happen the day after and starts giving a nod towards how we relaunch a political process for getting peace down the road. So this is not a peace plan as such. This is a Gaza plan that is situated in the context of larger peace efforts in the region.”

If the plan is adopted, Israel would also swallow some tough pills. While Netanyahu still publicly opposes a two-state solution, the plan opens the door to independent governance for Gaza. Netanyahu would slowly phase out the Israel Defense Forces to a perimeter, leaving Gaza’s governance up to the transitional government. In a Monday news conference with Trump, Netanyahu reiterated that a rehabilitated Gaza will be run by neither Israel nor Hamas. Those elements, along with the offer of amnesty to Hamas members who surrender, make the plan ambitious but unlikely to succeed, according to Hoover Institution senior fellow Peter Berkowitz.

“Count me among those who think that the prospects of fully implementing the plan are low,” Berkowitz told me. “I nevertheless applaud the Trump administration for putting out the plan, and I applaud Israel for agreeing to it because it’s a last opportunity to end the conflict without further military action.”

If the Palestinian Authority makes an array of reforms Trump first laid out in 2020, it can return to governance. The PA was created in 1993 as a result of the Oslo Accords and a drawn-out negotiation between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. But rebuilding Gaza governance with Palestinians not involved with either Hamas or the current Palestinian Authority could be difficult. According to the Trump administration’s 2020 plan, a key reform for the PA is to recognize Israel as the Jewish state.

“From the Israeli point of view, it’s just about as good as they could hope for,” Berkowitz said. “But finding Palestinians who are technocrats, professionals, bureaucrats with minimal connection to Hamas or the Palestinian Authority is going to be extremely difficult. Where are those people? How would they have survived in either the West Bank or in Gaza if they did not maintain some kind of relationship to the ruling powers?”

That’s where the international community must come in, according to al-Omari. A May poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, along with the Netherlands Representative Office, found that around 81% of Palestinian respondents in the West Bank and Gaza want current PA President Mahmoud Abbas to resign. Roughly 15% percent said they would vote for a Hamas candidate in an election, and around 50% support a Palestinian Legislative Council member, Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in Israel. Barghouti supports a two-state solution but was convicted in a disputed trial of involvement in deadly attacks against Israel in 2002.

Trump’s proposed Board of Peace would have a formidable challenge: Finding and training a cadre of new Palestinian leaders to helm a proposed democracy with support from Gaza Strip residents.

“That’s a lot of hard work for which there’s little precedent in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. … Every aspect of the plan faces tremendous hurdles” Berkowitz said. “Having said that, I don’t see how the United States could have come up with a much better plan at this juncture. This reflects just how tragic and intractable the situation is in Gaza.”

Al-Omari said the support and involvement of Arab and Muslim countries will be essential, but the governance plan will need to be simplified.

“You cannot have so many actors, so many countries, so many players involved with this,” he said. “This is a recipe for paralysis. I suspect we will end up with American leadership but a heavy Arab participation, and this will be the bulk of the mechanism.”

While not written into the plan, Trump gave Netanyahu his blessing for Israel to ramp up attacks on Hamas if the terrorist organization does not agree to the terms. He also urged Arab nations to take a leading role in tackling Hamas through sanctions or military action.

“Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas,” Trump said. “But I hope that we’re going to have a deal for peace, and if Hamas rejects the deal, which is always possible … you would have our full backing to do what you have to do.”