Trump launches 'incredible' peace plan that Hamas must accept or face consequences

Blair and Trump to head transitional authority but 20-point proposal unlikely to find Palestinian support

- Bel Trew

A plan is underway for “eternal peace in the Middle East” with officials “very, very close” to a ceasefire deal in Gaza, a beaming Donald Trump declared during a White House press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday.

The reason? His new “extremely fair” 20-point peace proposal.

A plan so great, he claimed, that European leaders have been on the phone heralding it as “the most incredible thing we’ve heard”.

“Some think it’s the biggest thing they’ve ever heard. They called just to find out: was it just a rumour or is it actually done?” he added.

Certainly the leaders of Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt released a joint statement immediately afterwards “welcoming” Trump’s “sincere efforts to end the war in Gaza”.

But after reading the 20-point proposal and listening to Netanyahu’s interpretation of it, I’m not sure that either Hamas - the militant group Israel has been fighting for two years - or the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority based in the occupied West Bank will agree to it.

It was also presented, not in a mediated negotiation process between two sides of a conflict, but as something already negotiated that Hamas must accept or face the consequences. The plan itself is scant on details and absent of most timelines.

There also appears to be some daylight between what the White House has written down and how Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen to interpret the words publicly. Speaking at the press conference (which Palestinians were not invited to), Netanyahu made it very clear that Trump’s plan is entirely “consistent with the five principles” his government has already set out for the “day after”. Principles which have already been rejected by the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a boots-on-the-ground occupation of Gaza, and that Hamas has said would be a “surrender” that would prolong genocide.