Marty Levine
October 18, 2025
The agreement that stopped the killing in Gaza was described as much more than just a pause in the killing. “The Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity” declares that it marks the beginning of “a new chapter for the region, defined by hope, security, and a shared vision for peace and prosperity…that ensures peace, security, stability, and opportunity for all peoples of the region, including both Palestinians and Israelis.” ABC News reported the same tone as President Trump came to the area to formally sign this Declaration.
“After so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a Holy Land that is finally at peace, a land and a region that will live, God willing, in peace for all eternity,” Trump said in a speech on Monday to the Israeli parliament.
Trump added, “This is not only the end of a war, this is the end of an age of terror and death and the beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God. It’s the start of a grand concord of lasting harmony for Israel and all the nations of what will soon be a magnificent region.”
We are asked to believe that we are truly at an inflection point where a generations-old conflict between the aspirations of two peoples for a homeland is on its way to being solved. But it feels like this agreement is just a way to quiet the growing international and domestic challenges to Israeli hegemony and its efforts to create a larger and Palestinian-free Israel.
Beyond the cease-fire, President Trump’s 20-point plan leaves so much undone with no clear path forward.
Trump’s plan calls for Hamas to put itself out of business as both a military organization and as a political entity. In its place, there will be “a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza. This committee will be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts…” To supervise this interim government, we will see the creation of a “new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of state to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair. This body will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza…” These “temporary arrangements” will require that “Arab and international partners…develop a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) to immediately deploy in Gaza. The ISF will train and provide support to vetted Palestinian police forces in Gaza and will consult with Jordan and Egypt who have extensive experience in this field. This force will be the long-term internal security solution.”
Israel and Hamas only agreed to the first part of the Trump Plan: a ceasefire, the exchange of the hostages still held by Hamas (and the bodies of those who died in captivity) for prisoners and detainees held by Israel, and an increase in the amount of supplies that enter Gaza. The Palestinian Authority was not even invited to the table.
As I write this, so much remains incomplete. No nation has committed to sending troops to be part of the ISF. While there have been expressions of interest in serving on the “Board of Peace” from several individuals and countries, the only announced members remain Trump and Blair. A 15-member group of Palestinian technocrats, acceptable to local Palestinian leaders, is reported to be in place, but details of who they are and when they will take control have not yet been revealed. Hamas and the Israeli government said they were ready to begin negotiating the rest of Trump’s proposal in the coming days; a final agreement still needs to be agreed to, leaving the functioning of these new mechanisms hanging in limbo and a political vacuum on the ground.
The good news is that Israel has, for the momen,t reduced or stopped bombing, shelling, and destroying what remains of Gaza. Gazans have begun to flow back to whatever little remains of their homes. Hamas has not repatriated the remains of all of the dead hostages, citing the difficulty of finding bodies under the rubble that Gaza is; in response, Israel said it has limited the flow of supplies into Gaza. In the absence of the ISF, Hamas, apparently with President Trump’s blessing, began to reassert itself as the party responsible for maintaining local order, leading to battles between its forces and local militias.
Are these just minor bumps in the road that will lead to the promised peace? Or are they signs that this agreement will be like those that preceded it, an agreement that will stop the bombs and bullets but will not find a solution for the cause of the fighting and just push the issue down the road until another moment of violence breaks through?
I hope that, as much as I detest Donald Trump, he has pulled the rabbit out of his hat and has done what no one else has been able to do before.
On October 8, 1993 the United States presented to the United Nations a sdimilar peace agreeemnt, the Oslo accord, brokered by President Bill Clinton, that resonates with the same lofty hope as does the Trump plan.
The Government of the State of Israel and the PLO team (in the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation to the Middle East Peace Conference) (the “Palestinian Delegation”), representing the Palestinian people, agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process.
Permanent status negotiations will commence as soon as possible, but not later than the beginning of the third year of the interim period, between the Government of Israel and the Palestinian people’s representatives.
It is understood that these negotiations shall cover remaining issues, including: Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, borders, relations and cooperation with other neighbors, and other issues of common interest.
Here’s what President Clinton said as the agreement was being signed.
Today, the leadership of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization will sign a Declaration of Principles on Interim Palestinian Self-Government. It charts a course toward reconciliation between two peoples who have both known the bitterness of exile. Now both pledge to put old sorrows and antagonisms behind them and to work for a shared future, shaped by the values of the Torah, the Koran and the Bible…
…we must realize the prophecy of Isaiah, that the cry of violence shall no more be heard in your land, nor rack nor ruin within your borders. The children of Abraham, the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael, have embarked together on a bold journey. Together, today, with all our hearts and all our souls, we bid them shalom, Salaam, Peace.
In 2000, President Clinton brought Israeli and Palestinian leadership together at Camp David to finalize this dream. These meetings failed with both sides accusing the other of not being willing to accept the other’s self-described generous offers.
In the quarter of a century since these leaders went home without an agreement, I think the situation has just gotten worse.
If Israeli leaders who once gave at least lip-service to the idea of a 2-state solution that recognized the Palestinian need for self-determination, of Israel existing alongside a Palestinian nation, no longer do. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has spoken on the record repeatedly of his opposition to a Palestinian state. Polls in Israel report that a strong majority of Israel’s Jewish citizens no longer support a 2-state outcome. As the number of Israeli settlers encroaching on the West Bank lands that were to be part of that Palestinian state has grown toward 1 million, and the conditions of life under Israeli occupation have worsened. Palestinian public opinion has also turned against the idea of a two-state solution. Cooperation with Israel and internal corruption has delegitimized the Palestinian Authority in the eyes of the Palestinian people.
Since Camp David fell apart Israeli leadership has taken step after step toward realizing an Israel that encompasses all of the land from the River to Sea in which any remaining Palestinians are unwanted residents doomed to live, at best, as second class citizens. Over those years, Israel has earned the title of an apartheid state based on how it has structured its control of Palestinian land and people.
What is missing from this moment is a recognition of the land’s history and of the wounds that have yet remained unhealed. What is missing is a recognition of two people’s aspirations for a return to their homeland that happens to fall on one small piece of land. What is missing is a recognition of the pain that was caused by the killings on October 7th and the pain that was caused by the two years of vicious bombardment of Gaza. What is missing is a recognition that this struggle did not begin two years ago. What is missing is a recognition of both the holocaust and the Nakba and the wounds those events left behind.
Outside of Israel, the brutality of Israel’s assault on Gaza and its intensified takeover of the West Bank were hard to ignore. It has resulted in many who had previously accepted Israel’s perspective as reality to recognize the complications of the situation and to recognize the reality of Palestinian lives and dreams. This recognition translated into increased public pressure on Israel to stop the war. Even some who still consider themselves Zionists raised their voices for the first time in support of Palestinian lives. It allowed for a deeper understanding of the depth and complications of the situation and the challenge of reconciling two competing truths. In many ways it brought on a moment similar to the impact of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the 1619 Project on many Americans who began to see our nation’s history as more complicated than they had before.
My fear is that the lofty words announcing peace have not emerged from a deep recognition of the reality of Israeli Jewish and Palestinian histories and aspirations. The same difficult issues that existed decades ago remain, and perhaps are even worse because of what has transpired over those years. My fear is that those who were confronted with unpleasant truths because of the brutality of the war will now slip back into what I would call their blissful ignorance. They will see only one part of this complicated multipart story and choose sides again. The pressure on Israel’s government will ease, and they will keep doing what they have been doing hoping the next eruption of Palestinian violence is years away and that other priorities will move people’s minds to other concerns.
Most worrying is that Palestinian voices are absent from the Trump Plan . Writing for the New Yorker, Mohammed R. Mhawish discusses what this bodes for the future.
Strip away the framing, and the design is clear. Gaza is to be managed from the outside, without a locally elected government. The P.A. is told to make reforms—anti-corruption and fiscal-transparency measures, increased judicial independence, a path to elections—before it can even be considered for a role in Gaza’s governance. Hamas is removed from political life by decree. Core questions—borders, sovereignty, refugees—are deferred. In this architecture, Gaza becomes a security-first regime, where aid, reconstruction, and “transition” are subordinated to Israeli security metrics under the oversight of the U.S. and its partners. Palestinians are offered administration without authority. The occupation is dressed in managerial language. The danger is that this “temporary” system becomes permanent, sustained by donors, monitors, and memoranda…
Saja al-Hana, a law student and political researcher in Gaza, sees three plausible tracks for Gaza’s postwar transition. The first, “a limited success,” would allow enough stability for reconstruction to start and elections to be prepared. The second is failure: an interim authority that can’t meet basic needs, “triggering popular and factional resistance” and pulling Gaza back into a downward spiral of violence. The third, and perhaps the most dangerous, in her eyes, would be “a ‘transitional’ phase that hardens into a long-term occupation—international management that delays our right to decide our own fate.” When a transition begins, Hana argued, it will be a double test: whether Palestinians can protect sovereignty and self-determination while rebuilding, and whether an international system that speaks of justice can resist imposing complete control. “The right to speak for Gaza belongs to Gazans,” she said. “Any project that bypasses them only reproduces the trusteeship we’ve already lived through.”
Reconstruction that restores roads but not representation will only re-create dependency. The next phase of Gaza’s life must be shaped by those who have lived through its collapse. If the world tries to govern Gaza from abroad, Palestinians must insist on governing themselves from within. The rubble is already being cleared for a new administration. The question is whether Palestinians can transform the ruins of a political order into the foundation of another that belongs to them.
A positive outcome will require those with power to see Palestinians as people, not as others. It will require those with power to see Palestinians as people who do not have to earn their human rights. It will require those with power to give up the need for Palestinians to prove their worthiness and humanity.
This is where Israel’s leadership has failed before. Will they fail again? Will we stand by and allow them to contineu down this brutal path? Will all those who saw Gaza for what it was, genocide, ignore it once again?
I fear the answer is yes.
