Two years since Hamas’s deadly terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, President Trump’s push for peace in the Gaza Strip appears within reach.
Israeli and Hamas officials started indirect negotiations in earnest on Monday in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm El Sheikh on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
The president is exercising enormous pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and relying on Arab and Muslim leaders to apply leverage on Hamas to commit to a ceasefire and release hostages. There’s overwhelming international demand for a halt to the war.
For Netanyahu, Trump’s plan provides the best chance to quickly free 20 living hostages, and recover the bodies of 28 others by retreating from a massive military campaign that has sharply divided Israeli society.
Hamas’s goals are not entirely clear. Much of its senior leadership is decimated, and Trump has offered amnesty or exile in exchange for agreeing to his 20-point plan for peace.
Trump said he expected the negotiations to conclude within days, with his senior officials saying the talks are meant to hammer out details of a ceasefire, hostage release, and Palestinian prisoner exchange.
The president said Netanyahu was “very positive on the deal” while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon, adding that Hamas has been “fine” during negotiations.
“I hope it’s going to continue that way. I think it will,” he said. “I really think we’re going to have a deal. We have a really good chance of making a deal. And it will be a lasting deal.”
‘I’m feeling hopeful’
Establishing a ceasefire would mark the first major pause in fighting since March. The truce at that time broke down over accusations of violations by both Israel and Hamas and failure to move to a second stage of talks over a pathway to end the war.
“An Israeli is very reluctant to admit to optimism, it’s always better to hedge your bets,” Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, said Monday during a panel discussion hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“But I realized today that this is the first time, maybe since Oct. 7 that when I think of the situation, I’m breathing. Literally, breathing. I suppose that’s the answer, that I’m feeling hopeful.”
Trump gave Netanyahu little choice but to enter into negotiations with Hamas, telling Israel to “stop” bombing Gaza following Hamas’s response to the president’s 20-point peace proposal on Friday. Trump earlier pressured the Israeli leader to accept his peace plan for ending the war during a White House meeting on Sept. 29.
“What is different is the level of American commitment and the readiness of this president, President Trump, to apply leverage not just to Hamas but clearly to Bibi [Netanyahu] as well,” said Dennis Ross, counselor and fellow at the Washington Institute and veteran Israeli-Palestinian negotiator.
“What that does for me is create a sense that there is some momentum that there has not been before.”
Dana Stroul, who served as deputy assistant Defense secretary for the Middle East in the Biden administration, said Trump’s inclusion of Turkey — which is a patron of Hamas — alongside Qatar and Egypt has helped pressure the armed group to come to the table.
“The longtime hosts, and those who have engaged with Hamas over the years, are all aligned in pressuring Hamas,” Stroul, now a senior fellow with the Washington Institute, said during the panel. “So it’s an outside-in negotiation.”
Trump spoke to that pressure campaign during his remarks in the Oval Office on Monday.
“I spoke to President [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan of Turkey, he’s been pushing very, very hard to get this deal done. And Hamas has a lot of respect for him, they have a lot of respect for Qatar, they have a lot of respect for UAE and Saudi Arabia. Everybody is on our side to get this deal done.”
‘Same old sticking points’
While Trump welcomed Hamas’s response as “ready for a lasting PEACE,” veteran diplomats see Hamas employing a standard playbook to draw out negotiations to preserve their own survival.
“It looks like the sticking points are back to the future, same old sticking points for Hamas,” Stroul said, “where there’s a conditional ‘yes,’ but it’s always about the implementation details.”
Hamas, in its initial acceptance to Trump, did not explicitly agree to hand over its weapons and give up political participation in a future Palestinian government.
“They’re fighting for survival, and that means that they don’t, for example, want to lay down their arms. They don’t want to give up more territory, they don’t want to give up a place in Palestinian politics,” said Elliott Abrams, Iran policy director for the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and former U.S. special representative for Iran.
But a major carrot for Hamas coming to the table is getting Israel to cease its military bombardment. Trump’s plan also promises to secure the release of 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in Israeli jails, plus 1,700 arrested after Oct. 7. Trump is also offering to get Israel to transfer to Hamas the remains of 15 Palestinians for every one body of an Israeli hostage.
“Hamas is very keen to reach an agreement to end the war and immediately begin the prisoner exchange process in accordance with the field conditions,” a senior Hamas official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Israel scaled back its military operations in the strip after Trump’s directive, and negotiators in Egypt are tasked with defining the minutiae of the ceasefire — including when the fighting will stop, where Israeli troops will withdraw from in Gaza, whether Hamas will deliver all the hostages, the names of the Palestinian prisoners to be released and how a surge in humanitarian support will be handled.
The White House on Monday held back from issuing a hard deadline for a deal. Trump had previously given Hamas until Sunday to decide whether to accept his 20-point proposal, or face “HELL” at the hands of Israel’s military.
Much ‘remains to be seen’
Securing a commitment to a first phase of a ceasefire and hostage release deal would be an enormous achievement, but it would only be the first step in what is viewed as one of the most challenging diplomatic negotiations to resolve.
“The fear that I have is that Hamas will reign, but not directly rule,” Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, head of the Realign For Palestine project at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., told CNN.
Alkhatib warned that Hamas may try to retain small arms to exert control over pockets of Gaza and seek to influence any technocratic governing structure meant to reconstruct the enclave and pave the way for self-governance.
“We could be looking at the spread of militias and a very low-intensity civil war in which Hamas, the clans, this new government, if it ever has any executive force, are vying for control of the territory,” he said.
Another open question is how engaged Trump will remain in overseeing his 20-point peace plan, having named himself chair of a “Board of Peace.” The plan envisions an “International Stabilization Force” to replace Israeli troops in Gaza, the dismantling of Hamas’s tunnels and weapons manufacturing, and a reconstruction of the enclave under a governing body that Gaza’s residents will respect as legitimate.
“Whether Trump has the will and skill to navigate the post Oct. 7 Middle East is highly improbable but remains to be seen,” wrote Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and Israel, in an article for Foreign Policy.
“He doesn’t seem to have the patience to negotiate in the Middle East souk [market]. He has little leverage over Hamas. And he may not have the political will to come down hard on Netanyahu if the Israelis balk in carrying out their part of the plan.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a close Trump ally and hawkish supporter of Israel, initially condemned Hamas’s response as a “rejection,” but then changed his tune after the president told Israel to scale back its bombing of Gaza.
“This is spot on. Hostages released first, then negotiate the remainder of the 20 point plan,” Graham posted on the social platform X.
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