Hamas has a matter of days to decide whether it will agree to President Donald Trump‘s latest effort to end the war in Gaza, a plan that has some support from several Arab nations that want to see the conflict end permanently.
Trump revealed the content of his 20-point peace plan on Monday alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Trump said on Wednesday that his administration stands by his demand that Hamas respond to the peace plan in 3-4 days.
The change in circumstances for Hamas has been rapid. Just last month, multiple countries lined up to recognize an independent Palestinian state in conjunction with the United Nations General Assembly, and diplomats walked out of Netanyahu’s speech.
However, a week later, and all of a sudden, Hamas appears to be on its own, with Arab countries, including Qatar, backing Trump’s peace plan. On top of that, Hamas has been greatly weakened after two years of fighting, while its allies in the region, Iran and Hezbollah, have suffered devastating losses thanks to Israeli and American attacks.
The deal favors Israel’s demands to end the war, and Netanyahu said it will go into effect regardless of Hamas’s cooperation or resistance.
“This can be done the easy way, or it can be done the hard way, but it will be done,” Netanyahu said alongside Trump at the White House on Monday. “We prefer the easy way, but it has to be done.”
The hard way includes a continuation of the Israel Defense Forces operations in Gaza City, one of the last remaining areas it does not control.
Aaron David Miller, a retired longtime U.S. diplomat specializing in the Middle East, described the offer as an “ultimatum” to Hamas.
“First of all, it’s not a peace plan. It’s an ultimatum. It will become a negotiated peace plan once you get a response from Hamas because there hasn’t been a U.S. initiative in history, and I participated in many of them, in which you’re going to get a clean yes from anyone,” Miller told the Washington Examiner.
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The United States and Israel worked together on formulating the proposal last week, with Netanyahu in the U.S. for the U.N. General Assembly. However, Netanyahu pushed for changes he wanted, and at one point, Trump warned that the U.S. would walk away from Israel if Netanyahu didn’t agree to the deal, according to Axios.
Trump ultimately agreed to some of the changes Netanyahu requested, which angered Arab leaders who had already been briefed on the contours of the deal.
“Netanyahu has had his ‘yes, but’ and the Americans have accommodated him, not surprisingly,” said Miller, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “We’ll wait for a Hamas response. If it’s a reasonable ‘yes, but,’ the Arabs [will] try to sell it to Trump as a reasonable ‘yes, but,’ and then there may be a further round between Trump and Bibi and another round between the Arabs, Hamas, and the Americans. If Trump defines the ‘yes, but’ on the part of Hamas as a ‘no,’ then it’s over.”
The current deal would have Hamas relinquish all 48 of its remaining hostages, living and not, within days, and Israel would in turn release 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in Israeli prisons and another 1,700 Palestinians who have been detained since the war began, according to the proposal outlined by the White House.
Hamas militants would have to “commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons” in exchange for amnesty and would be given safe passage out of Gaza if they want to leave the enclave, according to the plan.
Trump would oversee a new international transitional body, identified as the “Board of Peace,” alongside former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Senior diplomats from Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt released a joint statement saying they “welcome the announcement by President Trump,” and “affirm their readiness to engage positively and constructively with the United States and the parties toward finalizing the agreement and ensuring its implementation.”
In their joint statement, the Arab leaders notably said the deal should include the “full Israeli withdrawal” from the Gaza Strip, which is not a part of Trump’s proposal. The current proposal says Israeli forces will recede closer to the border but not withdraw all their forces.
The proposal does not specify a time frame for when the Israeli military would pull back, which has long been one of the most difficult components of the negotiations.
The Arab leaders also want the deal to create a “path for a just peace on the basis of the two-state solution,” though Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have vehemently opposed Palestinian statehood.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani acknowledged the slight differences, telling Al Jazeera that there are “practical and implementation challenges.”
“Everyone agreed on stopping the war, preventing displacement, and the full withdrawal of the Israeli army. These are the three main, pivotal matters,” he said. “And the direct responsible party for managing Gaza are the Palestinian people themselves.”
Miller said the statement is “hardly an endorsement” of Trump’s plan and blamed it on Netanyahu’s adjustments that Trump backed.
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Qatar and Egypt have acted as mediators, along with the U.S., over the course of the war, and have focused on communicating with Hamas leadership.
Qatari leaders were angered after Israel’s military targeted Hamas leaders in Qatar in early September, which upset Trump as well. Netanyahu “expressed regret” for the strike in a call on Monday with Trump and the Qatari prime minister.
