Trump’s Gaza Plan Shows Signs of Unraveling

Israeli shootings, Hamas Foot Dagging, Gaza Gangs Threaten Peace Deal

(Sky News)

It‘s been only four days since President Trump promised a gathering of Arab and Muslim leaders in Egypt that his new 20-point peace plan for the Middle East would lead to an “historic new dawn” of peace for the war-torn region. But already a bitter dispute between Israelis and Hamas over the missing remains of dead hostages is threatening that vision, with the growing possibility of renewed warfare.

Meanwhile, fighting between Hamas and rival Gaza clans and continued Israeli fire on Palestinians who approach their new defense line are also undermining the ceasefire.

Under the first phase of Trump’s plan — a ceasefire agreement that halted the two-year Gaza war — Hamas on Monday returned 20 living Israelis hostages, while Israel released nearly 2,000 Palestinians, withdrew its forces to a defensive line inside the Gaza Strip and allowed a surge of humanitarian aid into the devastated enclave of some 2 million starving Palestinians.

The agreement also called for Hamas to return the remains of 28 Israeli hostages who had died in captivity, but the Islamist Palestinian militants sent back the remains of only four.

Hamas officials say they need more time to locate the others amid Gaza’s widespread destruction, rubble and unexploded ordnance, but Israel isn’t buying that explanation. The issue is deeply emotional for the families of the dead hostages, creating additional pressure on already distrustful officials of Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu’s hardline government, who suspect Hamas of holding back the remains of the others to extract further concessions. In response, Netanyahu has slowed the delivery of humanitarian aid entering Gaza, saying they will reduce all aid by half.

“Any delay or deliberate backsliding will be deemed a blatant violation of the deal and will be answered accordingly,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned on X.

Since then, Hamas has located and returned the remains of six more hostages, but the group says additional searches so far have come up empty. Moreover, Israeli forensic officials said Tuesday that one of those returned was a Palestinian who worked with the Israel Defense Forces, not an IDF soldier.

Some U.S. officials are downplaying the threat that the delay poses to Trump’s peace plan. But with tensions rising, Turkey has offered to send an 80-member team of earthquake responders that specializes in body retrieval. And U.S. officials now say they will offer rewards to Gazans who locate bodies.

The Hamas unit working to maintain order in Gaza. (Hadi Daoud/APA images)

But as long as the bodies of the 18 dead Israelis remain unrepatriated, Israeli anger continues to build as its patience ebbs. The most extreme members of Netanyahu’s coalition — who never wanted a ceasefire in the first place — are now pressuring the prime minister to renew the war and destroy whatever remains of Hamas. Trump also has weighed in, telling CNN that if Hamas fails to honor its commitments under the ceasefire agreement, he will allow Israeli forces to resume the war “as soon as I give the word.”

Dragged to the Table

The mounting tension over the missing hostage bodies is just one of the developments that could relegate Trump’s ambitious peace plan to the nearly 80-year roster of failed Middle East peace efforts.

Knowledgeable U.S. sources tell SpyTalk that Israel’s foreign, domestic and military intelligence agencies — the Mossad, the Shin Bet and Aman — believe that despite Hamas’ agreement to a ceasefire, the militant Islamist group is not done fighting. And they say Iran, which has financed and armed Hamas for decades, also has not stopped its support for the group despite the beating it took from Israel during the 12-day war in June.

The sources confirmed these details, which first appeared in a recent Foreign Affairs article by Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert with extensive field experience in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories and whose writing about Hamas draws on both Israeli intelligence sources and declassified CIA, FBI and Homeland Security Department reports.

Citing Israeli officials who briefed him last month, Levitt wrote that “Iran has already put in motion a plan to resupply Hamas with weapons, stockpiling them in Sudan for future smuggling into Gaza.” Meanwhile, he added, Iran “continues efforts to smuggle weapons to terrorists in the West Bank, including Hamas. A week before the ceasefire, Israeli officials said a combined IDF -Shin Bet operation seized a large shipment of Iranian weapons smuggled into the West Bank, including mines, anti-tank rockets, grenades, drones, assault rifles and ammunition, according to The Jerusalem Post

Farewell to Arms?

Another major sticking point in Trump’s plan is its requirement for Hamas to give up its weapons, as well as any role in the future governance of the Gaza strip. While Hamas has said it will relinquish its political role in Gaza, the group has insisted on its right to continue its armed resistance against Israel’s 58-year-long occupation, adding it will disarm only once a sovereign Palestinian state has been established—a development Israel has vowed to prevent.

The plan also calls for Hamas to hand over Gaza’s governance to a transitional foreign-led body headed by Trump, which would be succeeded by a reformed Palestinian Authority. Hamas says it won’t accept foreign guardianship, insisting Palestinian elections must determine who governs Gaza. Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government adamantly opposes any role for the Palestinian Authority, as well as any steps that could lead to an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, regarding such a state as an existential threat to Israel.

The details and date for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip — yet another component of Trump’s plan — also remain to be worked out. Those details include which countries will contribute troops to a so-called International Stabilization Force, which the plan envisions to provide security in Gaza after Israel’s withdrawal.

But while these details remain unresolved, Hamas has wasted no time posting its armed fighters on Gaza’s streets, where they’ve been reasserting the group’s dominance and settling scores with rival clans, some of which have worked with Israeli forces against Hamas rule. In clashes last weekend, Hamas fighters killed around two dozen members of the Doghmush clan, one of the largest and best armed clans in Gaza.

“They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “... They did take them out and they killed a number of gang members. And that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you.”

Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported Thursday that Israeli troops have killed 20 Palestinians since the ceasefire took effect. Israeli officials say their troops are using gunfire to dissuade any Gazans from drawing too close to the IDF’s new defense line inside the Strip.

To the Tables

Some critics say the Trump plan amounts to little more than what President Biden had in place, and that Netanyahu , determined to achieve what he called “total victory” against Hamas on the battlefield, successfully managed to dodge it with no real diplomatic consequences. But Trump’s blueprint has one important detail that distinguishes it from previous U.S. and United Nations-led peace efforts, giving it a better chance for success, some analysts say: He first won buy-in from the most important players in the region.

In all of those past attempts, the Arab and Muslim world consistently refused to make peace with the Jewish state, even when some of its own members — Egypt in 1979, the PLO in 1993, Jordan in 1994, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan in 2020 — signed peace treaties with Israel. This time, however, Trump huddled last month in New York with the leaders and senior representatives of the most important Arab and Muslim countries on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, where they hammered out and eventually agreed on the 20-point plan. Most of those leaders joined Trump at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this week to stand beside Trump and publicly endorse the peace plan.

But much to Trump’s embarrassment, two of the most consequential Arab leaders — UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — failed to attend the gathering. More than any other countries, Trump is counting on the oil-rich Saudis and Emiratis to finance the reconstruction of Gaza, which was virtually leveled by Israeli bombs over the past two years. Development experts say the costs of rebuilding the Gaza Strip’s cities and towns for its displaced 2 million Palestinians could exceed $120 billion and require 10 to 15 years to complete.

While Saudi and Emirati officials participated in the New York meetings, it’s not clear why the leaders of these two countries didn’t attend the gathering in Sharm el-Sheikh. But Arab diplomatic sources say the Saudis and Emiratis wanted to condition their participation in Gaza’s reconstruction on Hamas’ complete military and political dissolution. While Trump’s plan requires Hamas to disarm and play no role in governing Gaza, it allows the group to survive as a political movement and take part in future elections — concessions the two Gulf states reject.

Unless this disagreement can be resolved, it could affect the willingness of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and possibly other countries to finance Gaza’s reconstruction. While the leaders of 20 Arab and Muslim countries attended the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, only Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the United States signed Trump’s much-ballyhooed Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity.

It now remains to be seen which countries will attend a Gaza donors conference, set for next month in Egypt, and how much each will pledge.

But for now, more than any differences over Gaza’s reconstruction, Hamas’ disarmament and its future role there, the success of that conference, along with Trump’s entire peace plan, hinges upon the timely return to Israel of the remains of those 18 missing hostages.