This is not a peace plan — it's a temporary ceasefire.
The bombing will hopefully stop and, three days later, Israeli hostages will be handed to the Red Cross and taken out of Gaza, ending 738 days in captivity.
Aid is supposed to surge into the strip, finally allowing Palestinians more food, clean water, medicine and shelter.
The Israeli military will withdraw outside Gaza's ruined cities, not outside the strip, nor to its borders.
This is being described as "phase one" of a deal that was supposed to be comprehensive.
Given no-one is really sticking to the proposed "20-point plan", the deal is far less detailed than the January ceasefire, which the US puzzlingly allowed Israel to abandon after the first phase, with many hostages still in Gaza.
fter claiming credit for that agreement, US President Donald Trump then appeared to lose interest and his administration subsequently allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to turn down or alter new ceasefire proposals, after Hamas had accepted them.
Now, the key differences are that this deal will leave no hostages in Gaza and that Trump has belatedly demonstrated he is willing to lean hard on Mr Netanyahu.
Mr Netanyahu's hubris may have caused this.
After Israel smashed longtime foes Iran and Hezbollah, the decision to strike Hamas negotiators in Qatar was a clear case of overreach, a miscalculation that ended America's forbearance.
Israel's failed assassination attempt in Doha shocked the Middle East and sparked strident protests to the White House from allies like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Türkiye, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
When the US realised the extent of the damage, Mr Trump finally got tough with Mr Netanyahu, forcing him to apologise to the Qatari government (ensuring the apology was highly publicised) and promise not to attack again.
Hamas says the US has now guaranteed that this is the end of the war.
The militant group accepted the deal after White House peace envoy Steve Witkoff and Mr Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom had strong business links to Qatar, arrived at the negotiations and provided assurances the US would enforce conditions on Israel.
They then flew to Israel and attended a cabinet meeting, an extraordinary step to no doubt emphasise that this was a done deal.
After all, Mr Trump promised the plan would bring "eternal peace" to the region.
Hamas is trusting Mr Trump to keep the peace, a major gamble if he is not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and loses interest again.
The militant group is also accepting the deal without major concessions from Israel.
High-profile prisoners like popular political leader Marwan Barghouti will remain in Israeli custody, as will the bodies of Hamas leaders Yahya and Mohammad Sinwar.
Israel is not withdrawing fully from Gaza, as Hamas has always demanded.
The group, under blockade and pressure from its remaining allies, will have few options to rebuild.
With the hostages back home, Israel's government should have less of a justification to resume its onslaught and even less support from an exhausted and traumatised public.
Some unpopular elements of the 20-point plan seem to have been quietly sidelined, such as the proposed leadership of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the strange, investor-friendly, techno-centric Gaza of the future that his foundation envisioned.
The ceasefire seems to have been accepted on the basis that everything else — future governance of Gaza, security, Palestinian self-determination — can be worked out later.
That means all the elements that led to this conflict remain, with Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza now living in far worse conditions than before.
Hamas's only victory out of this devastation was to put the fate of Palestinians at the centre of the world's consciousness.
After the ceasefire, if there is no meaningful political settlement between Israel and Palestine and Palestinian self-determination is blocked, people will be left with even more reasons to feel hopeless.
Stopping the bombs and starvation is a vital step, but it's just the first, and if the world, particularly the US, looks away, things could easily go backwards.
[Source: ABC News]
Original Story Link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-10/analysis-trump-eternal-peace-in-gaza-turns-into-shaky-ceasefire/105874742?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web
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