Alexandra Sharp
Foreign Policy / September 29, 2025
Hamas is likely to contest several points of the proposal.
U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his latest peace proposal to end the Israel-Hamas war on Monday, standing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The plan laid out a series of demands that Hamas has publicly rejected in the past, making experts sceptical that this latest iteration will make substantial headway to end the conflict.
Under Trump’s proposal, Israel and Hamas would immediately cease all fighting in Gaza. Hamas would return all of its hostages within 72 hours of the deal’s passage, and in exchange, Israel would release 250 life-sentence prisoners as well as 1,700 Gazans who were detained after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The deal makes no mention of Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza, a key Hamas demand, though it does leave the door open for a pathway to Palestinian statehood, which several nations historically close to Israel have recently recognized.
The plan would establish an international transitional body, known as the Board of Peace, that Trump would personally oversee; this body would provide oversight and supervision to a committee made up of Palestinians and international experts. The board would also include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has put forward his own peace plan to end the war in Gaza.
Unlike Blair’s proposal, which would hinge on a United Nations-mandated administration, Trump’s plan would pave the way for a new civilian-led government to oversee Gaza. This would not include Hamas or the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs parts of the occupied West Bank.
However, Trump and Netanyahu agreed that the PA could become involved in governance once it completed a reform program that Netanyahu described on Monday as a “radical and complete transformation.” Such a requirement directly contradicts the New York Declaration, another peace proposal backed by 142 nations in September that calls for PA governance in Gaza.
Among the other points of Trump’s deal, Israel would be required to allow aid to enter Gaza unimpeded, a Trump economic development plan would go into effect to “rebuild and energize Gaza,” and displaced Palestinians would be encouraged to return to their homes. This appears to be an about-face for Trump, who in February called for the removal of all Palestinians in Gaza to pursue a “Riviera of the Middle East” real estate scheme.
If Hamas rejects the U.S.-led proposal, though, “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas,” Trump said on Monday, with Netanyahu adding that “this can be done the easy way or the hard way.” Hamas was notably not involved in the latest round of talks.
Alexandra Sharp is the World Brief writer at Foreign Policy
