Israel's approval is awaited
According to the draft, the militant nationalist movement that has ruled Gaza since the 2006 elections may not be part of a government formed after the end of the war. At the same time, Trump's plan calls on the Palestinian Authority, as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, to undertake fundamental reforms.
“After the return of the hostages, members of Hamas who commit to peaceful coexistence will be granted amnesty, while members who wish to leave the Gaza Strip will be granted safe passage to host countries,” Trump's plan proposes.
This is a radical shift in American policy. After the meeting, representatives from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey expressed optimism.
Negotiations at the White House
On Monday, a meeting between Trump and Netanyahu is expected, during which the US president will try to convince his “strategic ally” to agree to the plan.
Trump told Reuters news agency on Sunday that he had received very positive reactions to his peace proposal for the Gaza Strip and the Middle East as a whole from both the Israeli and Arab sides. “Everyone wants to make a deal,” he emphasized. At the meeting with Netanyahu in the White House, he wants to finalize this agreement.
At the UN summit, however, Netanyahu took a hard line against the heads of state who had recently recognized Palestinian statehood. He described this move by France, Britain, Canada, and Australia as “pure madness” and “a gift to the terrorists.”
"Giving the Palestinians a state one mile from Jerusalem after October 7, 2023, is like giving Al Qaeda a state one mile from New York after September 11 [2001]. That is pure madness. It's crazy, and we won't do it,“ he told the General Assembly, adding that Israel ”will not allow you to impose a terrorist state on us."
According to TOI, Hamas has not yet been informed of the full scope of Trump's plan. However, during the last round of negotiations with Tel Aviv in February, it had already expressed its willingness to step down from the government in the name of a ceasefire.
The movement, which emerged as the Palestinian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has agreed to relinquish political and administrative power in the Gaza Strip in favor of a “Palestinian government of national unity,” as former Gaza Health Minister Bassim Naim explained to NBC News.
Netanyahu risks the fall of his government, Trump aims for the Nobel Prize
If this “good intention” of the Hamas politburo continues to hold, it would mean that the end of the war and the return of the Israelis kidnapped from the Supernova Festival would depend on the decision of the Israeli government.
It is therefore questionable whether Netanyahu will allow this to happen, as he risks the collapse of his government, into which he has incorporated parties such as Tkuma [Religious Zionism, editor's note] and Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit) following the November 2022 elections. The first party includes radical Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, while the second is led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
Ben Gvir left the government in January because he disagreed with the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, leaving Netanyahu's cabinet with only minority support for a time. When the Israeli army resumed fighting, he returned to the government. He regularly provokes his own security forces by violating the ban on Jewish prayers on the Temple Mount.
It is therefore likely that the extremists in the government will take the same step once the fighting ends, which, together with the establishment of Palestine, will halt efforts to settle Jewish settlements.
The government of the multiple prime minister was extremely unpopular before October 7, and there were increasing protests against corruption and abuse of power, especially in relation to the judiciary.
If people like Ben Gvir or Smotrich were to leave the cabinet for good, Netanyahu might not be able to form a new government after the next elections – and he would end up in the opposition.
For him and his associates, this would mark the beginning of several years of court proceedings for multiple corruption cases, including money smuggling from Qatar to support Hamas. The judicial reform would also end in failure for Netanyahu.
Netanyahu himself presents himself as a “right-wing extremist” politician and has long rejected a Palestinian state. Since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip, demonstrators have accused him of being willing to forget about the hostages – for whom the IDF originally invaded the Gaza Strip – in the name of “liquidating Hamas.”
Trump, on the other hand, is reaffirming his image as a “president and peacemaker,” after whom several peace projects are named. Following the peace agreement in the Caucasus between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the “Trump” economic zone in southern Lebanon, and the end of the shootings between India and Pakistan and Thailand and Cambodia, Gaza could now become another trump card in his collection.
French President Emmanuel Macron declared before the General Assembly, which he hosted, that Trump would only deserve the Nobel Peace Prize if he ended the Israeli-Arab conflict. He was alluding to the fact that the White House chief is openly striving to do so.
Trump has already been nominated for the prize by representatives of Cambodia, Rwanda, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Israel. In addition to the conflicts mentioned, he has also settled the fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where Rwanda supported the rebels against the government.
This leaves the Republican with only Gaza and Ukraine. And while the US is at odds with a major power in the latter case, the Middle East could be decisive in winning the Nobel Prize.
