The diplomatic hype that came with the plan proposed by US President Donald Trump on 29 September to end the war in Gaza has started a movement that could bring about a ceasefire, at least for a while, and the handover of the living Israeli hostages and the entry of humanitarian aid into the starved and heavily devastated Strip.
However, in the assessment of all sources, both Egyptian and foreign, who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly this week, what comes after this ceasefire is still unknown.
From the beginning, the 20-point Trump plan that was announced after an Oval Office meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was subject to concerns from several Arab and Muslim countries whose leaders had met with Trump in New York a few days earlier.
According to off-the-record statements, these countries found the final text of the Trump plan subject to changes they had not been informed of and did not approve of.
However, they still welcomed “Trump’s efforts to end the war in Gaza.” Three of these countries, namely Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, went further and convinced hesitant Hamas leaders to issue a qualified acceptance of the plan to avoid giving Netanyahu the chance to say that Hamas does not want to move towards ending the war.
According to informed sources, Cairo, Doha, and Ankara helped Hamas leaders formulate their conditional approval, which was announced on Friday, to make it positive enough for Trump to welcome it without consulting Netanyahu.
This, they say, came as an unpleasant surprise to Netanyahu, who, according to the Israeli press, told the US president in a telephone call that there was nothing positive about what Hamas had said in its response to the plan.
However, the Israeli press also reported that at the end of the day Netanyahu had no choice but to send a negotiating delegation to join the talks that Egypt opened on 6 October in Sharm El-Sheikh.
But Netanyahu did not send the top negotiators that were present at the signing of previous ceasefire deals in November 2023 and January 2025. He withdrew a plan to dispatch Ron Dermer, the Israeli minister of Strategic Affairs, or his top security aides.
He also secured the approval of Washington to delay and then limit the direct participation of US Senior Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who is said to be responsible for helping draft the Trump plan to make it compatible with Israel’s wish list.
“This is indicative for sure, for as long as these three men are not sitting at the negotiating table, we cannot say that Netanyahu is seriously negotiating a deal,” said an informed Arab diplomat.
He spoke on Tuesday afternoon against the backdrop of statements about the “positive atmosphere” at the indirect Hamas-Israeli negotiations that opened in Sharm El-Sheikh on Monday and were resumed on Tuesday morning.
He added that “if we reach the point where these three, especially Dermer, sit at the table, then we could say we are getting close to having something at hand.” But he explained that this should not be expected to cover all the points included in the Trump plan.
“Again, we are not talking exactly about the text of the Trump plan; we are talking about the key elements in the plan that would be put in a format that is subject to negotiations,” he noted.
PRE-DECIDED: In essence, the Trump plan is designed to promise some concrete short-term objectives and some long term and not so concrete objectives.
The concrete and short term ones are about the handover of the remaining Israeli hostages that have been in captivity in Gaza since the operation that Hamas conducted against Israel on 7 October 2023.
Originally, the number of the hostages taken in the resistance operation numbered 251. In the course of the past two years, Hamas has released more than half of them, and it also released five dual nationals in a separate deal that was encouraged by Russia during the travel of Hamas leaders to Moscow last year.
Today, the assessment is that there are 20 hostages who are still alive. There are also the bodies of over 30 other hostages who have died in the course of the two-year war, either during Israeli strikes or due to a lack of food and medicine that is affecting all of Gaza due to the Israeli siege.
Netanyahu has repeatedly said that he will not accept anything short of the handover of all the living hostages and all the dead ones. This request is clearly stipulated in the Trump plan. According to informed sources, finding a compromise on this matter is something that the mediators are working on.
By Tuesday, this seemed to be the only thing that could be promised to come out of the talks. Other elements of the plan were much more difficult to secure a deal on and include the administration of Gaza by an international Board of Peace that will be headed, at least nominally, by Trump himself and administered by former UK prime minister Tony Blair, whose name is closely linked with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and whose private business is closely associated with the Israeli army.
There is also the securitisation of Gaza by an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza upon the disarmament of Hamas and the eviction of its leaders from Gaza, a reconstruction scheme, and the right of Gazans to stay in the Strip or to be able to leave if they so wish.
According to the positions of Hamas, which include a statement from leader Abou Marzouk, the movement will only hand over its arms to a Palestinian force that will rule Gaza. The issue of a foreign administration of Gaza is not something it can work with, and it wants the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza to be decided according to a specific timeline, with guarantees for its implementation from Trump and the mediators.
The surviving military leaders of Hamas do not wish to leave Gaza. Hamas does not want the Gazans to be forced to leave, and it wants people to be able to regain their land and homes.
It is on board with abandoning power in Gaza, but it refuses to allow the northern part of the Strip to be turned over to tourism.
Israeli officials have been upfront in their talks with Egyptian and other counterparts in saying that Israeli troops will not “start to relocate” in Gaza unless the ISF is in charge. It has clear specifications about the composition and mandate of the ISF, which include things that even the mediators cannot approve, including the Israeli demand for the ISF to be in charge of deterring and dealing with any possible “terror threat” against Israeli targets.
“Nobody should be expecting us to do the dirty work of Israel. We are not going to be shooting at Palestinians if Israel thinks they will attack Israeli troops on the ground in Gaza,” said an Egyptian source who asked for his identity to be withheld.
He added that this is not just the position of Egypt but of all the Arab and Muslim countries “that are likely to end up being the ones to send troops to Gaza because it is highly unlikely that the Western countries will be sending troops to protect Israel in Gaza.”
Moreover, Israel, according to the talks of Israeli officials with Egyptian and other interlocutors, is not planning “anytime soon” to allow Palestinians who have left the north of Gaza for the south to regain their land and homes. They told interlocutors that this remains a significant security threat from the point of view of Israeli security and that Israel would do “everything in its power to prevent another 7 October 2023” attack.
Several informed sources explained that as far as Israel is concerned there will be no Palestinians coming back to live anywhere near Israel’s borders. Israel, they say, is determined to re-work the composition of the population in Gaza, and it has the approval of the US to do so.
Most of all, Israel will not accept handing over Gaza to any Palestinian government, including the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), which is officially at peace and coordinates on security with Israel.
COMPROMISES: According to Egyptian officials, “the whole point” of the Egypt-hosted talks and indirect negotiations is to try to bridge the gap “as much as possible” on some of the key points and produce something that could offer the Gazans a less horrific tomorrow.
Hamas is coming to Sharm El-Sheikh with the clear understanding that it is at a disadvantage, not just due to the losses it has sustained on the ground in Gaza, including the elimination of its military leaders and some of its political leaders, diplomatic sources, both Egyptian and foreign, agree.
However, the same sources also agree that Hamas is coming to look for “a respite of sorts” and not to declare defeat or surrender.
Israel, the sources argue, is coming to Sharm El-Sheikh with the awareness that it has failed to eliminate Hamas as a movement and that while it can try to exile its leaders it cannot deny the fact that on the ground Hamas is gaining new recruits. These are not necessarily ideologically in line with the Islamist resistance movement, but they have joined it in pursuit of liberation from the Israeli occupation that has launched one of its harshest anti-Palestinian wars since the 1948 Nakba.
“We are telling [the Israelis] that you cannot eradicate a political current by force and that you need to accept the Palestinian right for statehood and freedom. But they are not getting the message,” said a European diplomat.
Speaking on Monday afternoon as the talks in Sharm El-Sheikh were being launched, she said that it would take political change in Israel for the pursuit of peace to be resumed, but until then the reality on the ground for the Palestinians, especially in Gaza, is not going to be easy.
Egyptian sources agree, but they say that the current diplomatic movement is trying to make it “better rather than worse” for the Palestinians. While acknowledging that it will be time before there could be any serious talk about a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the sources say that there are ways in the medium term to make Gaza more livable.
This work includes the construction of temporary residential spaces for Gazans in the parts of the Strip where they would be living. It also includes providing these areas with a steady flow of health services, clean water, and educational facilities.
“Currently, people are barely surviving in tents south of the Gaza Valley. What we are hoping to do is to give them some sort of roof over their heads where they can have privacy, water, and some food,” said one of the sources close to a UAE-funded project.
He added that the expansion of these zones depends “on the location and relocation of the Israeli troops.” The Arab Gulf countries are not “making investments in reconstructing parts that could be again subject to destruction in the case of renewed fighting.”
“This is why these countries are on board with the call for Hamas to put down its arms and to pursue political and diplomatic resistance rather than militant resistance,” the same source said.
Meanwhile, Egyptian sources say that there are “consultations” underway on how to manage the issue of the arms held by Hamas. A well-informed source said that Hamas has already lost “a significant part of its military capacity,” and “it has also lost many of the smart military brains that had been able to maximise the use of limited military resources.”
He said that Iran, one of the key suppliers of Hamas’ military capacity, is now in a situation “where it cannot prioritise” helping Hamas. The question, he added, is how to find a way to “neutralise” Hamas’ military capacity without expecting the movement to do things it cannot do, like abandoning its arms and leaving Gaza.
“We are not going to ask Hamas to give its arms to an international body. Our thinking is finding a way whereby these arms will be under the observation of an Arab body that would be helping with the stabilisation of Gaza,” he said.
The relation of this body and the Trump-proposed ISF is a question that needs time to be resolved, he argued, adding that this also applies to Board of Peace.
TOMORROW: “But these are not the questions of today or tomorrow or even after tomorrow. There are other things that have to start happening before we reach that point, like the handover of the Israeli hostages and the release of Palestinian prisoners,” the source said.
Speaking on Monday, he said that the complexities related to this issue go beyond whether Hamas will be handing over all the surviving Israeli hostages in one go in a way compatible with the Israeli conditions, including the prevention of staging the handover by Hamas operatives.
There is also the question of whether Hamas and Israel will agree on the list of names, he said.
According to the Trump plan, once the hostages are released, Israel should release 250 Palestinian prisoners on death row from Israeli jails, and it should also release 1,700 other Palestinians.
In every previous ceasefire deal, Israel has never immediately approved the names that Hamas has sent.
This time round, as in the past two ceasefires that Hamas and Israel have agreed on, the PA has shared its views with Israel on some names. But Hamas and the PA do not have the same priorities on who should come out of Israeli jails first.
The source said that even if the list were finalised on the Palestinian side, there is the question of where the released prisoners would go. Israel, he said, wants all the 250 death-sentence prisoners to be expelled from the Occupied Palestinian Territories and not just out of Gaza.
“We will see how things develop, but I think it is safe to expect that maybe we can reach an agreement on the release of the hostages and prisoners, the entry of humanitarian aid, and the transfer of some critically ill and wounded Palestinians for treatment overseas,” the source said.
What comes after this is “really anybody’s guess.”
Progress will depend on whether Trump is willing to keep pushing Netanyahu towards de-escalation, especially if he is not granted the Nobel Peace Prize that he wants.
Diplomatic sources argue that even if Trump is not given the Prize, he might still wish to push for détente in Gaza to allow a chance for the reactivation and expansion of the so-called “Abraham Accords,” especially with Saudi Arabia.
In a speech delivered on 29 September, the same day of the announcement of his plan to end the war in Gaza, Trump said that he sees potential for the expansion of the Abraham Accords to include Iran.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 October, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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