Doha was set to host a meeting on Tuesday between Egyptian and Qatari mediators who are trying to work out a way to arrive at a ceasefire, temporary as it might be, in the almost two-year Israeli genocidal war on Gaza.
According to sources, the Egyptian and Qatari mediators will be consulting with some of the top Hamas leaders who are still in Doha, following the Israeli military strikes that aimed to eliminate them on 9 September.
Subsequent meetings and consultations, sources say, are also scheduled to take place in Cairo with US and Israeli officials who will be working from the set of ideas that US President Donald Trump proposed as his latest plan to end the Gaza war on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on 23 September in a meeting with the heads of several Arab and Muslim delegations and subsequently presented at the White House on Monday.
The sources say that the Trump plan contains “points” or “elements” that have already been discussed in essence with Israel. However, they added that a final draft of the plan to be handed over to both sides is only expected to come out of the inter-Arab consultations, including the talks with Hamas, and the Monday meeting at the White House between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Prior to this meeting, Netanyahu sounded willing “to play the game” in press statements, as one of the sources put it. “Netanyahu is under a lot of pressure from inside Israel over the fate of the Israeli hostages, and he is likely to come under pressure from Trump, who wants an end to the war even if just for a few weeks or a few months before it erupts again,” the source said.
He argued that to accommodate the pressure, Netanyahu might say that he is willing to work with the Trump plan and then leave it to Hamas to decline it, given that the proposal does not grant “in any concrete language” a permanent end to the Israeli war on Gaza, a full, even if gradual, Israeli withdrawal from the Strip, or a serious commitment to allow prompt and sufficient humanitarian aid to enter it.
Following the meeting, in a joint press conference with Trump, Netanyahu reiterated his positions: no Palestinian state; no role for the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza; and no commitment on any timeframe for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Worse still, Netanyahu said that if Hamas does not accept the deal, “Israel will finish the job.”
The Gaza Strip has been officially declared by UN and humanitarian organisations to be suffering from starvation and declining health services.
According to the text of the plan that was put out by the White House on Monday, Gaza will have to “de-radicalise and be terror free” and be “developed for the interest of its people.”
Hamas will have to hand over all the living hostages and the bodies of the dead hostages within 72 hours of the suspension of the war. In return, it will gain the release of a few hundred Palestinian detainees but will have to leave the Gaza Strip.
Gaza will then be administered by an international board of “qualified Palestinians and international experts” that will be headed by Trump with a key role given to former UK prime minister Tony Blair, according to the text of the plan released by the White House on Monday, at the end of the Trump-Netanyahu meeting.
A security guarantee to Israel will be provided by international and regional partners that will compose an International Security Force (ISF).
The plan also stipulates that Gazans will not be forced to leave and could return to the Strip if they wish after leaving, the Israeli army will hand over territories it withdraws from to the new security body, and the US will work on a political dialogue for peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians.
According to the New York-based Arab diplomat, the proposal “has elements that we could work with.”
“This is why several Arab leaders who took part in the meeting of [23 September] said they find the offer promising.” However, the source admitted that the language of the proposal is “too general in some ways”.
The point relating to dropping the displacement of the Gazan population is “particularly so,” he said, because it talks about avoiding “forced” displacement as opposed to the right of Palestinians who wish to leave to do so.
The source agreed that there is much that requires to be clarified about points related to the end of war, the entry of humanitarian aid, the introduction of an international security force, and the formulation of a temporary and transitional government, especially in view of the rejection by Israel of the inclusion of the PA in the management of Gaza and the rejection by Gazan tribal leaders of an Israeli proposal on managing Gaza.
The source declined to say which Arab, Muslim, and other countries had in principle agreed to join the proposed security plan.
On the proposed role of Blair, he said that the former UK prime minister has been consulting with several Arab capitals on ideas to manage the Palestinian-Israeli struggle, and he has worked closely with these capitals along with Washington on “some draft,” he said.
“Obviously, he has his own channels with Israel and so does [Trump’s son-in-law Jared] Kushner.”
The issue, the source said, is not necessarily about where the plan is coming from, but rather where it could go and what it could lead to. He argued that the consultations underway could help in drafting something that is “worth working with.”
But the reality on the ground, he argued, is “simply disastrous,” with Gazans being caught in a warzone with no food, no medicine, and nowhere to go. “We have to try to get something done,” he said.
A week after Trump’s 23 September meeting with Arab and Muslim leaders, Hamas said it still has not received a final proposal to look at but that it was willing to consider a serious proposal. However, a source close to Hamas said that at first glance there are “big problems” with the Trump proposal.
“This very long plan with all its vague language boils down to just one thing: Hamas is to hand over the hostages, disarm, and leave Gaza,” he said. “The rest of it is just promises that nobody could guarantee.”
He argued that if this plan is presented to Hamas the way it has been presented, even with some amendments, it would be very hard for Hamas to accept it, “even with guarantees from Arab and Muslim countries on matters like providing asylum for Hamas leaders who would be granted exit out of Gaza.”
The source agreed that Hamas is exhausted and that it wants “at least a chance for people to breathe”. However, he added that Hamas would not return the hostages in return for vague promises, especially in view of Netanyahu’s “record and ability to violate everything he has committed to and get away with it”.
In his Monday press conference with Trump, Netanyahu said that “I support your plan to end the war in Gaza, which achieves our war aims.”
However, according to Israeli press reports, Netanyahu’s calculations might not favour a deal to end the war, despite the pressure that Trump might put on him.
Netanyahu cannot act independently of the far-right members of his coalition government, who are openly saying that the war must go on and that the Palestinians must be “eradicated,” not just in Gaza but also in the West Bank, despite the statement made by Trump that he “would not allow” Israel to annex the West Bank.
On Sunday, Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich said they are opposed to the plan.
Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi also said in an interview on the Israeli Knesset Channel that “the Israeli interest is that there wouldn’t be any Arabs here,” referring to the West Bank.
Vaturi, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, added that “if we could expel everyone, we would have done it.”
On Monday ahead of leaving for Washington Netanyahu was scheduled to meet with representatives of the Yesha Council, a group calling for the annexation of the West Bank. The council had expressed dismay over Trump’s public promise to ban Israel from annexing the West Bank.
A source with an international organisation working on the ground both in Gaza and the West Bank said that what counts is not what is being said in press conferences but what is happening on the ground.
“On the ground, Israel is doing everything it can to force the Palestinians to leave, especially in Gaza, but also in the West Bank,” he said.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 October, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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