Trump’s pro-Israel Gaza plan seen as unlikely to win over Hamas

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump’s

new plan to end the Gaza war

is, in essence, an ultimatum to Hamas to release hostages, give up arms and surrender – or face the full force of the Israeli military with the US’ explicit blessing.

Mr Trump said Israel would have his “full backing to finish the job” if Hamas rejects the offer, and

Israeli troops and tanks are now in the heart of Gaza City

, from which 800,000 Palestinians have fled.

In that sense, the offer is familiar – and it is one that Hamas has repeatedly rejected over the course of the war.

Israel has said for most of the past two years that the war could “end tomorrow” if Hamas returned the hostages, disarmed and went into exile. The new approach also makes no meaningful, immediate offer of Palestinian statehood, a goal much of the world supports.

Mr Trump’s 20-point plan, announced at a joint news conference at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, does have new elements, including an offer of amnesty to any Hamas operative who hands over his weapon and commits to co-existence.

It also backs away from Mr Trump’s earlier notion of driving Gazans into exile, promises a vast increase in aid and global involvement to rebuild the devastated coastal enclave.

But the key question is whether the leaders of Hamas feel sufficiently defeated and pressured to finally accept an offer they have long rejected.

Hamas, which the US and European Union call a terrorist group, considers itself a resistance movement dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi told Al Jazeera after Mr Trump spoke that the group has not received the plan yet, and would study it with other political factions once it had.

But Dr Annelle Sheline, a research fellow at the Quincy Institute who resigned from the US State Department in protest over its Gaza policy, said the US can “expect a ‘no’ from Hamas”, which, she added, will then be used to “portray the Palestinians as standing in the way of peace”.

Many advocates for the Palestinians dismissed the plan as a sop to Israel.

“It’s an attempt to create American sponsored political cover for the continuation of genocide in Gaza, at a time where the entire world is rejecting that,” said Mr Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine-Israel programme at the Arab Centre in Washington.

However, Mr Jonathan Panikoff of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Program said one new aspect of the current proposal is Mr Trump saying Qatar and Turkey – traditional allies to Hamas – have apparently signed on to the plan, along with other countries in the region.

“What’s fundamentally different now is Hamas is going to face a level of pressure from a united, not just Arab, but Muslim world leadership that wants to see the war end and has signed on broadly to this outline of points,” Mr Panikoff said.

At the same time, Mr Netanyahu will have his own political challenges with this plan, which could lead to the collapse of his own government and force early elections, which are currently not due for another year.

Coalition ministers to his right want to annex both Gaza and the West Bank, which the plan spurns.

The plan also says that if the Palestinian Authority, which administers part of the West Bank, reforms itself sufficiently in coming years, it could lead to “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognise as the aspiration of the Palestinian people”.

While the vague assurance of an eventual pathway to statehood is unlikely to win over supporters of a Palestinian state, any reference at all to Palestinian sovereignty could kill the deal among Israelis who view it as rewarding the Oct 7 attack.

Statehood language is particularly anathema to the increasingly powerful settler movement in Israel, which is heavily represented in the current government.

There are also no timelines in the plan specified for Israeli military redeployment, nor for the reform of the Palestinian Authority, which could allow Israel to drag things out.

The war in Gaza began almost two years ago when thousands of Hamas operatives swarmed into Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 250.

The Israeli counteroffensive has killed 66,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. 

“This is an opening,” said Mr Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute and adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in the early 2000s.

“A lot of the devil is in the details, but this is the most pressure I have seen”, to bring the war to an end. BLOOMBERG