By Kavita Mistry 
U.S. President Donald Trump, while speaking from the White House on Monday (September 29, 2025) along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, hailed it a “historic day for peace’. The 20-point peace plan for Gaza, which the White House released after the President’s meeting with the Israeli leader, has won “incredible support” from the countries in West Asia and neighbouring Israel, claimed the U.S. leader. Mr. Netanyahu, who earlier in the day apologised to Qatar for the September 9 strike in Doha, welcomed the Trump plan, saying it sits with Israel’s war goals. Leaders across the world, from Arab and Islamic Foreign Ministers to Prime Ministers of Pakistan and India, have welcomed the Trump plan, expressing hope that it would lead to peace in West Asia. What does the Trump plan say?
The 20-point plan promises an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and resumption of increased humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave devastated by Israel’s two years of attacks, provided Hamas accepts the proposal. Mr. Trump and his ally Mr. Netanyahu have issued an ultimatum to Hamas to accept the plan. If Hamas doesn’t accept the plan, Israel will continue the war “to finish the job”. Mr. Trump said Israel will have his full support to continue the war. According to the proposal, which envisages Gaza as “a deradicalised terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbours”, Hamas should release all hostages, alive and dead, within 72 hours, and Israel forces will withdraw to an agreed upon line within the territory. Once the hostages are released, Israel will free 250 Palestinian prisoners, who have been sentenced to life, and some 1,700 Gazans who were detained after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack.
Core questions
The plan seeks to address the three critical questions that held up Gaza peace talks until now — the future of Hamas, the ‘day after’ for Gaza and Israel’s military presence in the strip. After two years of war, Israel has failed to defeat Hamas militarily, though the militancy’s capabilities have been diminished. Arab and other stakeholders wanted the Palestinian Authority, based in Ramallah in the West Bank, to play an administrative role in Gaza post war, a suggestion Israel has always found unacceptable. And Mr. Netanyahu has rejected full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Regarding Hamas, the Trump plan says the group will have no role in the post-war administration of Gaza. It wants Hamas to decommission itself and Hamas’s offensive capabilities, including weapons production facilities and tunnels, to be destroyed. If Hamas leaders agree to the terms, they will be provided amnesty and provided safe passage out of Gaza if they wish to leave the enclave. The plan also seeks to establish a temporary transitional governance committee to run day-today affairs of Gaza. The oversight of the committee will rest with a ‘Board of Peace’, an international body which will be chaired by Mr. Trump and will have members, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of the authors of the Gaza plan. Regarding Israeli troops’ presence, the plan says Israel will gradually withdraw from Gaza, but Mr. Netanyahu has made it clear that the IDF will keep a buffer zone inside the enclave, ruling out a full withdrawal.
International force
The U.S. will work with Arab and other “international partners” to develop a temporary International Stabilisation Force (ISF) to immediately deploy in Gaza. The ISF (the details of which are not immediately known) will provide security and train Palestinian police officers, in consultation with Jordan and Egypt. “This force will be the long-term internal security solution,” according to the plan. It says Palestinians will not be forced to leave Gaza and that Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza. While the proposal doesn’t provide any time line, Gaza will remain under the control of the Board of Peace until the Palestinian Authority’s “reform programme is faithfully carried out”— it doesn’t say who will implement reforms and who will oversee them.
It offers no clear path or plan for a Palestinian state, but merely says once the plan is implemented, “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”.
Remaining questions
While Mr. Trump presented his 20-point proposal as a major peace breakthrough and has garnered the support of both Mr. Netanyahu and the Arab world for the same, it offers little real hope for Palestinians beyond a temporary respite from daily Israeli violence. If Hamas rejects the proposal, Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu can conveniently blame the Islamist militant group and continue the war — Israel has already killed over 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza in less than two years. Messrs Trump, Netanyahu and Blair can continue with their plan even if the war continues by establishing their international temporary governance in “terror-free” areas.
If Hamas, under pressure from all sides, accepts the proposal, the group will be forced to demobilise and hand over Gaza to a foreign-controlled body. Israeli troops will continue to remain on the ground, in what the Trump plan calls “a security perimeter”, “until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat”. The Palestinian Authority will have no meaningful role in governing Gaza, and Israel will retain the unilateral right to resume the war at any time. Crucially, the proposal says nothing about the West Bank, where Israeli settlements and settle violence continue to expand, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians. Rather than a genuine roadmap to peace, the Trump plan appears to be an internationally convenient arrangement to place Gaza under external control and remove Hamas from the scene — an objective Israel failed to achieve militarily — without addressing the core political questions at the heart of the conflict.