A House Built On Sand: The Fault Lines In Trump’s 20 Point Gaza Peace Plan

The prisoner-hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas has been completed successfully, and many are calling it a major victory for peace. Twenty Israeli hostages returned home in exchange for about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, aid started flowing back into Gaza, and guns fell silent after months of devastating conflict. But anyone familiar with Middle Eastern peace processes knows that swapping prisoners is the easy part. The real test of whether this ceasefire can transform into lasting peace has only just begun, and history suggests we should not be too optimistic.

The current peace plan is structured in three phases. The first phase, which we have just witnessed, involved the hostage exchange and a temporary halt to fighting. The second phase demands something far more difficult—the complete disarming of Hamas, including verified destruction of weapons, closure of underground tunnels, and constant international inspections. The third phase envisions rebuilding Gaza’s governance structure under international supervision, eventually paving the way for a Palestinian state. On paper, it sounds reasonable. In practice, it faces obstacles that have destroyed every previous peace attempt in this region.

Phase 1 succeeded for straightforward reasons. Both sides had done prisoner exchanges before, so the process was familiar and relatively simple to execute. Israel wanted its hostages back and needed to show the world it supported peace efforts. Hamas wanted its prisoners released and humanitarian aid restored without appearing to have surrendered. The entire process was transparent, with Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey acting as mediators, the United States providing guarantees, and international organizations like the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs managing the logistics. When both parties get what they want through a well-understood mechanism, success becomes much more likely.

But everything changes when we move beyond exchanges to actual disarmament and governance. Hamas has already made clear it has no intention of surrendering its weapons. For Hamas, those weapons represent survival as an organization and proof that armed resistance forced Israel to negotiate. Asking Hamas to disarm completely is like asking it to commit organizational suicide. Why would any group voluntarily give up the very thing that gives it power and relevance, especially when it believes those weapons are the only reason Israel came to the negotiating table?

The disarmament phase also requires an intrusive verification system that Gaza has never successfully implemented. Inspectors would need to check warehouses daily, monitor tunnel entrances, audit government purchases, and ensure that construction materials like cement and steel pipes are not diverted to rebuild military infrastructure. Israel’s experience with dual-use restrictions—items that can serve both civilian and military purposes—shows how complicated and controversial this becomes. Every bag of cement becomes a potential security threat. Every water pipe could be turned into a rocket. This level of scrutiny inevitably slows reconstruction, frustrates ordinary Palestinians trying to rebuild their lives, and creates resentment about foreign powers controlling every detail of Gaza’s economy.

The governance challenge in Phase 3 is equally daunting. The plan calls for Gaza to be managed temporarily by technocrats—experts chosen and approved by international powers—under something called the Board of Peace. The European Union wants to join this board, but fundamental questions remain unanswered. Who exactly will these technocrats be? What authority will they really have? How will they collect taxes, pay salaries, or enforce laws if Hamas still controls neighbourhoods through fear and parallel governing structures? The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, has a troubled relationship with Gaza and limited credibility there. Creating a functioning government from scratch, in a place where Hamas has ruled for years and still has weapons and loyal supporters, is an almost impossible task.

Three powerful forces have both the ability and the motivation to sabotage this peace process before it reaches completion. First, Hamas itself benefits from keeping things unstable. Even if it publicly agrees to cooperate, it can maintain shadow networks—secret salary payments to loyalists, control over smuggling tunnels, illegal taxes at border crossings, and hidden weapon stockpiles. Hamas does not need to launch a major attack to undermine peace. Small provocations, occasional rocket fire, or planting bombs to test boundaries can be enough to trigger Israeli military responses, which then give Hamas an excuse to abandon the peace process while blaming Israel for aggression.

Second, Israel’s far-right political groups strongly oppose any plan that could lead to an independent Palestinian state. These groups represent a significant portion of Israel’s governing coalition, and they use multiple tactics to block progress. They pressure the government to avoid making concessions, push for new settlement construction in disputed areas, pass laws that prevent land transfers, and organize provocative actions designed to bring Israeli security forces back into places they had withdrawn from. They also run sophisticated media campaigns portraying international peace monitors as foreign meddlers interfering in Israel’s sovereign decisions. When enough Israelis believe that UN inspectors or European observers are biased against their country, it becomes politically impossible for Israeli leaders to cooperate fully with international verification systems.

Third, Iran has strategic interests in keeping Israel distracted and weakened without spending much of its own resources. It does this by supporting proxy groups—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthi rebels in Yemen, militias in Syria and Iraq—and by funnelling money and weapons into Gaza through smuggling networks that are extremely difficult to completely shut down. Iran does not need Hamas to launch a major war. It just needs enough instability to justify its own regional influence and prevent the kind of Israeli-Arab normalization that would isolate Iran diplomatically. Even under international inspections, Iran has proven skilled at smuggling weapons components that can be assembled later or hiding dual-use materials that pass through checks but get repurposed for military use.

These three actors have different goals and use different methods, but the result is the same—they create chaos that makes the ambitious governance plans of Phase 3 look naive and unworkable. None of them wants the peace process to fully succeed, and all of them have tools to prevent it.

So what would it actually take for this peace plan to work? First, weapons verification cannot be a one-time event but must become a permanent system with daily inspections, real-time monitoring of border crossings, and financial audits that track every major purchase. Funds for reconstruction should be released gradually, only after verified progress, and held in escrow accounts where international auditors can prevent diversion to militant groups. Biometric payroll systems, where government salaries are verified through fingerprints or facial recognition, can help ensure money goes to actual civil servants rather than Hamas operatives pretending to be bureaucrats.

Second, there must be real consequences for violations. If Hamas fires rockets or refuses to allow tunnel inspections, aid must stop immediately and mediating countries must apply unified diplomatic pressure. If Israeli settlers provoke violence or the government blocks peace monitors from doing their work, there must be clear penalties, not just expressions of concern. The reason Phase 1 succeeded was that both sides feared losing what they wanted—hostages or prisoners. The same fear of immediate, certain consequences must apply throughout the remaining phases.

Third, the international community must accept that this process will take years, not months, and requires sustained attention even when Gaza is not making headlines. Peace processes fail most often not from dramatic betrayals but from gradual erosion—rules get bent slightly, violations get overlooked to keep talks moving, monitoring becomes less strict over time, and eventually the whole structure collapses. Preventing this requires the kind of long-term, boring, bureaucratic persistence that international attention rarely sustains.

We need to be honest about what kind of peace is actually possible here. If peace simply means no large-scale fighting between Israel and Hamas for a while, then that goal has been temporarily achieved. But this is fragile, conditional peace that depends entirely on both sides continuing to see benefit in restraint. It could evaporate with one major provocation from either side.

If peace means a Gaza without armed militant groups, governed by responsible civilian authorities who can collect taxes, maintain law and order, and rebuild infrastructure safely, then we are very far from success. That kind of peace requires not just signatures on documents but years of verified disarmament, construction of new governing institutions, and gradual building of trust between communities that have been killing each other for generations.

The prisoner exchange was designed to succeed, and it did. But the next phases were not designed with the same realistic understanding of what motivates the key players or what makes compliance more attractive than violation. Unless the international community applies the same transparency, clear incentives, unified pressure, and constant verification that made Phase 1 work, the peace plan will likely join the long list of Middle Eastern peace agreements that briefly raised hopes before collapsing into renewed violence.

The path to lasting peace exists, but it is extremely narrow. It requires strict enforcement, immediate punishment of violations, years of patient international supervision, and willingness to acknowledge that some powerful groups on both sides do not want this peace to succeed. The question is not whether peace is possible but whether the international community has the discipline and persistence to actually achieve it. (IPA Service)