By | Oct 13, 2025
Screengrab via Youtube
The twenty Israeli hostages will by now have been released by Hamas (but not the bodies of the 28 hostages Hamas murdered) , and the 1750 Palestinian prisoners, including 195 who were serving life sentences for multiple murders, have simultaneously been freed by Israel. Now comes Phase 2 of the Trump Plan, which looks almost impossible to fulfill, given Hamas’ intransigence. This phase of the plan requires Hamas to disarm completely, otherwise Israel will not proceed with further troop withdrawals. More on the unbridgeable gap between Israel and Hamas on Phase 2 are discussed here: “The Ghost of Gaza: How Hamas Survived,” by Gregg Roman, Middle East Forum, October 10, 2025:
…President Trump’s 20-point plan announced September 29 represents ambitious diplomacy addressing multiple dimensions simultaneously—hostage release, humanitarian relief, governance transition, regional security cooperation, and long-term economic development. The document’s sophistication is apparent; its implementability is not. The plan mandates that Hamas cannot have any role—direct, indirect, or in any form—in Gaza’s future governance while simultaneously requiring Hamas to release hostages, coordinate withdrawals, and accept technocratic replacement. This circular logic assumes Hamas will facilitate its own dissolution.
Israel’s cabinet, facing unprecedented pressure from President Donald Trump and internal political crisis, approved a framework that represents everything warned against in previous strategic analyses: negotiating with terrorists from a position of incomplete victory.
Consider the disarmament provisions. Trump’s framework demands complete demilitarization, with all military infrastructure destroyed under international supervision and weapons placed permanently beyond use. Hamas’s October 3 response accepted hostage release and governance transition, but made no mention of disarmament. Senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk stated explicitly: “We will hand over [our] weapons to the future Palestinian state, and whoever governs Gaza will have weapons in his hand.” When challenged that Israel had already destroyed most Hamas capabilities, Abu Marzouk responded: “If they destroyed 90% of Hamas’s military capabilities and killed most of Qassam’s fighters, as President Trump says, whose weapons are you going to disarm?”
This rhetorical question exposes the agreement’s central contradiction. If Hamas has been militarily defeated to the extent claimed, then disarmament becomes either redundant or impossible—redundant if capabilities no longer exist, impossible if weapons are buried under rubble or distributed among decentralized cells. If Hamas retains significant military capability, then it possesses leverage to resist disarmament and will use the ceasefire period to reconstitute. Either way, the disarmament provision exists on paper without enforcement mechanisms beyond resumed military operations, which would merely return both parties to the pre-ceasefire status quo.
The governance transition presents similar problems. Hamas was asked to step aside for a “technocratic Palestinian committee of qualified Palestinians and international experts” overseen by a “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump and including former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair. Hamas immediately rejected this structure. Abu Marzouk declared: “We will never accept anyone who is not Palestinian to control the Palestinians,” specifically objecting to Blair given his role in the 2003 Iraq War. The Palestinian Authority, supposedly positioned to assume control pending reforms, remains weak, corrupt, and deeply unpopular. President Abbas, 89 years old and serving the twentieth year of his four-year term, called Hamas members “sons of dogs” while lacking capacity to govern the territory they control.
How likely is it that Hamas would ever agree to be replaced as the ruler in Gaza by the Palestinian Authority, its mortal enemy? And how could the PA, so “weak, corrupt, and deeply unpopular,” ever hope to take command in Gaza?
The sequencing of Israeli withdrawal amplifies these contradictions. Netanyahu emphasized repeatedly in his October 5 interview that “Israel makes a tactical withdrawal, stays in Gaza.” Yet Hamas head Khalil al-Hayya demands complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip with “real guarantees” that the war ends permanently. The Trump plan states withdrawal will be “based on agreed standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization”—language that resolves nothing since demilitarization itself remains disputed. Israel will not fully withdraw until Hamas disarms; Hamas will not disarm until Israel fully withdraws. This is not a negotiable difference but an existential contradiction that no amount of diplomatic language can resolve.
Since Hamas now says it will refuse to disarm, the IDF will not pull back further in Gaza, much less withdraw from the Strip altogether. How does Trump, so self-congratulatory over the success of Phase 1, by far the easiest part of his plan to fulfill, hope to bridge that gap?
It won’t be easy to resolve the differences. The reasons are multifold:
Israel will not fully withdraw if the danger of Hamas or other terror organizations persists.
Hamas will not disarm if they think they can by hook or by crook keep them. Until they are fully defeated, they will fight to keep them and as said in other articles, they would rather die before giving them up.