Making peace is trickier than war in fractured Middle East

So, we have a peace plan - or do we? Since President Donald Trump announced that both Hamas and Israel had accepted his proposed plan for both ending the conflict and reconstructing Gaza under new management, there have been conflicting views about its significance. Anything that stops the killing and returns the

- JOHN JENKINS

Israeli hostages - alive and dead - to their families is a great thing. But we have been here before. Those who have negotiated an end to every conflict in Gaza and indeed the West Bank over the last 25 years have sought to do so by promising a resolution of the underlying issues. But that has never happened.

The fundamental issue is, of course, Palestinian self-government - the phrase used in the Oslo Accords. Many people assume this means a Palestinian state with full sovereignty. But no Israeli prime minister - not even Yitzhak Rabin - ever promised that. Israel has always wanted to maintain security control over at least the Jordan Valley and the heights of the West Bank - and since their 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip, also both the land and sea borders of Gaza. And given what happened on 7 October 2023, you can see why.

Conversely, Palestinians think that such an arrangement would deprive them of the single thing they want more than anything else: the right to rule themselves in dignity and freedom.