October 03, 2025
Donald Trump’s Gaza Plan Skips Step One
This article was originally published in The National Interest.
This Monday, President Donald Trump unveiled a 20-point plan to end the war in the Gaza Strip. The plan addresses many key issues perpetuating the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, but it may be too ambitious for its own good. A successful post-war plan for Gaza must prioritize crisis management, security, and interim governance before addressing longer-term challenges, such as economic recovery and reconstruction.
Negotiators should first focus their efforts on securing a deal that ends the war in Gaza, ensures a coordinated Israeli withdrawal from the enclave, sets up an interim governing body, and addresses the immediate humanitarian needs of Gazan civilians. While any plan for post-war Gaza is better than no plan at all, negotiations must prioritize policies that can first “stem the bleeding” before looking to longer-term initiatives like investment and real estate development.
The White House proposal attempts to solve too many distinct issues all at once, without enough input from Palestinians.
The plan released by the White House following Trump’s meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu received positive responses from many countries across the Arab world, including Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, as well as important non-Arab Muslim states such as Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia. If Israel and Hamas agree to the proposal, the war would end immediately, and all remaining hostages—living and deceased—would be freed over a span of 72 hours in exchange for 1,950 Palestinian prisoners. Hamas would disarm, and a “technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” would govern in the short term, advised and overseen by a “Board of Peace.”
The plan adopts a creative approach to addressing both humanitarian concerns and security challenges within the same overarching framework. For example, it notes that aid would immediately begin flowing into Gaza once again, at a rate commensurate with the daily number of trucks that entered the enclave during the January 2025 ceasefire. The plan also highlights the need to reconstruct critical infrastructure—like water treatment plants, hospitals, and community kitchens—and makes sure to specify that “no one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return.”
Read the full article in The National Interest.
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