Judging by the public statements have been making several times a day since the release of his 20-point plan last week, US President Donald Trump seems more serious than ever about fulfilling his pledge to end Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The war, which crossed the two-year mark on Tuesday, has left over 67,000 Palestinians killed, nearly half of them women and children, with an additional 10,000 missing, and over 200,000 injured.
According to the estimates of the UN and other credible organisations, more than 90 per cent of Gaza has been levelled to the ground, leaving more than 2.2 million people displaced and in miserable, inhumane conditions, living in tents in less than 10 per cent of the Strip’s tiny 360 square km surface area, with many suffering from starvation.
There is no question that – following the shocking attack by Hamas against Israeli military posts and nearby communities along the border with Gaza on 7 October, 2023 which left 1,200 Israelis killed – Israel felt humiliated. Its advanced technology was defeated. Yet Trump is finally joining the world consensus that the right-wing, extremist government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone too far in its response, committing war crimes, genocide, deliberate starvation, and disregarding international law in a way that jeopardises regional and international peace and security, leading to Israel’s isolation worldwide.
Sceptics can always point to repeated statements by both the former and the present US administration that a deal to stop the war in Gaza was “close, very close,” as former US president Joe Biden once said while licking an ice cream cone in early 2024. Trump and his personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, inaugurated the US president’s comeback on 20 January with a ceasefire deal that led to the release of more than two dozen Israeli captives held by Hamas and a vow to continue talks until Israel permanently ended the war and fully withdrew from Gaza.
Yet, after the Israelis were released as agreed, Netanyahu breached the Trump-mediated deal on 18 March, resuming his relentless shelling of Palestinians and also imposing a strict siege on Gaza to prevent the entry of food, fuel and medicine in a determined effort to use those basic human needs as weapons of war.
US officials, including Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, tolerated this staggering violation of the agreement and even defended Israel’s practices as legitimate tactics to put pressure on Hamas to release all Israeli captives while offering no serious commitments to end the war or the occupation of Gaza. And, while the world appealed to Netanyahu to refrain from his bloody plan to destroy Gaza City and displace its one million residents, the Trump administration gave him the green light to do so, backing up his illusion that military pressure alone will lead to their release.
Analysts will differ regarding what led to Trump’s change of heart as he appears to be putting public pressure on Netanyahu to end the war this time. Some will point to Israel’s reckless attack on Qatar on 9 September, a failed attempt to assassinate top Hamas officials meeting in Doha to discuss a new proposal made by Trump. Targeting Qatar, a close US ally that hosts its largest military base in the region which, along with Egypt, has been playing a key role in mediating an agreement to end the war and allow the entry of much needed humanitarian aid over the past two years, led to worldwide outrage, as well as fury among key Arab and Muslim US allies.
Egypt, along with Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia, whose leaders met with Trump on the fringe of the UN General Assembly meeting in late September, delivered a united message that Netanyahu and his stubborn refusal to end the war risked the future of their close relationship and trust in the US as a positive partner whose aim was to maintain stability and peace in the region.
Those same countries were also responsible enough to take US concerns into account, agreeing to guarantee that after the war Gaza would not be governed by Hamas, but by an independent, technocratic body that would pave the way to handing over governance to the Palestinian Authority as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Since that meeting in New York, Trump has not only forced Netanyahu to make a phone call to apologise to Qatar’s prime minister, releasing a photo of him reading that apology at the Oval Office, he has also ordered the Israeli premier to stop bombing Gaza in order to provide necessary conditions for the exchange of prisoners between Israel and Hamas.
Negotiations that took off in Sharm El-Sheikh on Monday among top delegates from Israel and Hamas besides Egypt, Qatar and the United States were not likely to be easy as the gaps of trust between the two sides remain huge. However, if successful in agreeing on the details of the prisoner exchange, including the names of Palestinians to be released from Israeli jails, and the initial withdrawal of Israeli troops from parts of Gaza, that would pave the way to the more difficult negotiations about the remaining principles outlined in Trump’s 20-point plan.
Indeed, priority must be given to ending the bloodbath and daily war crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians, but the Arab and Muslim countries that agreed to work closely with the United States still have to work on a long list of issues beyond the release of 20 living and 28 dead Israeli hostages, all while preventing Netanyahu from restarting his merciless killing machine on the most ridiculous pretexts while negotiations continue to take place.
Trump’s recent change of heart and willingness to pressure Netanyahu mark a real opportunity to achieve a comprehensive and sustainable ceasefire, and to address the critical humanitarian conditions facing people in the Gaza Strip.
Arab and Muslim countries known as close US allies have all confirmed their joint commitment to supporting efforts to implement the Trump proposal, and welcomed his pledge that Gazans will not be forcibly displaced and that Israel will withdraw from Gaza. What counts is Trump’s commitment to continue to be involved in the difficult negotiations in the coming months, acknowledging the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and establishing their own independent state as the vast majority of the world has already done.
Such permanent and lasting peace in the Middle East based on justice and respect of equal Palestinian rights is what would make the US president a true candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize, and not just the release of Israeli captives held by Hamas.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 October, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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