A long-awaited ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is finally underway, though tensions are already taking root. An end to the conflict is still up in the air, with all the old obstacles remaining in Trump’s twenty-point roadmap to peace.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday ordered “ immediate, powerful strikes” in the Gaza Strip that killed 104 Palestinians overnight, before announcing that the ceasefire was back on by Wednesday morning. It was the deadliest event there since a truce was brokered between the two fighting sides on October 9.
Netanyahu’s office accused Hamas of a “clear violation” by allegedly faking the recovery of a hostage’s remains in front of the Red Cross, and returning bodies to Israel that were not those of the thirteen remaining hostages in Gaza taken on October 7, 2023. Hamas also reportedly carried out attacks on Israeli troops in the aid corridor city of Rafah, killing a soldier. The Palestinian militant group denied any involvement in the fatal shooting, and in turn accused Israel of “criminal bombardment” for its attacks violating the ceasefire.
U.S. President Donald Trump, whose office has been at the center of negotiations, said that “nothing is going to jeopardize” the truce, while also seemingly encouraging retaliatory violence from Israel, saying that if Israeli soldiers are killed, Israel should “hit back.”
Israel and Hamas have each accused each other of violating the fragile truce before, but both sides had also later recommitted to the deal. Israel said that Hamas fighters killed two of its soldiers in Rafah and launched a series of strikes that killed at least forty-five people earlier this month. Israeli military forces have also killed Palestinians who allegedly crossed onto Israel’s side of a negotiated withdrawal line, which is in the process of being demarcated. Israel also previously accused Hamas of violating terms of the ceasefire when it didn’t return the remains of the last deceased hostages by an October 13 deadline. In response, Israel temporarily restricted the flow of aid into the Gaza Strip that had been negotiated as part of the ceasefire.
The ceasefire is considered the first phase of a twenty-point peace plan drafted by Washington. It initially took effect on October 9, and both parties to the conflict initially moved to meet its terms: Israeli troops withdrew their forces to retain about half of the enclave, while Hamas returned all living hostages and Israel returned nearly two thousand Palestinian prisoners. In the days that followed, officials from more than twenty countries gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt to sign a declaration to inaugurate the full plan, though neither Israel nor Hamas had a representative at the table.
The next steps toward later stages of the peace plan remain unclear, though mediation efforts appear poised to continue. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has an informal role in the negotiations, traveled along with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff to Israel on Monday. Vice President JD Vance visited the region October 22 to urge both sides to hold the ceasefire agreement.
Experts have noted the fragility of the ceasefire and tension points emerged in the days that followed. The new plan has “tough conditions for Hamas and Israel,” CFR Middle East expert Steven Cook wrote. Several points have long been contentious issues between the two. “Whether this leads to an end to the war remains an open question.”
Here’s what the twenty-point peace plan entails.
What have Israel and Hamas agreed to so far?
The warring sides have twice tried and failed to uphold a ceasefire, once in November 2023 and again in March 2025. Both efforts collapsed and experts continue to warn of hurdles, but broad international support for the latest effort has led to greater optimism.
The movement toward this latest peace deal fell on the heels of the two-year anniversary of the war, which broke out on October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked southern Israel from Gaza. Around 1,200 people were killed by Hamas fighters and another 251 were taken hostage. Israel responded with a major military offensive that has killed more than sixty-seven thousand Palestinians, according to data from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
In the first phase of the peace plan, the two sides agreed to a set of parameters that were to go into immediate effect. However, the implementation has had mixed success.
A ceasefire. Israel and Hamas agreed to halt fighting. This initial ceasefire went into effect on October 10 after Israel’s cabinet formally approved the agreement the day before. Trump’s peace plan sketches this out as “all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen.” Israel’s military action in Gaza had reportedly intensified until right up to the ceasefire deadline.
Since the truce, Palestinians have been returning in droves to Gaza City after an Israeli military spokesperson declared it safe to head back to the enclave’s previously most populous city. Hamas reportedly has begun mobilizing thousands of security forces to reassert control over areas of Gaza recently vacated by Israeli troops. A clash between some Hamas members and members of the Dughmush clan in Gaza City broke out over the weekend, and Israel’s military, known as Israel Defense Forces (IDF), have killed Palestinians in multiple separate instances. In one instance, five Palestinians were shot for crossing the line the Israeli military withdrew to, according to the IDF.
A military drawdown. The IDF agreed to withdraw their troops up to a line that leaves it in control of 53 percent of the enclave. The White House released a map of the Gaza Strip that shows this would be the first of three stages of Israel’s withdrawal.
The White House plan indicates future withdrawals to around 40 percent and 15 percent of Gaza territory. The final stage keeps a security perimeter until Gaza is “secure” from any “resurgent terror threat.” On October 10, U.S. Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff confirmed in a social media post that Israeli troops had finished the first phase of the withdrawal. The Israeli military began cementing the line with concrete markers every two hundred meters, clearly delineating the point at which it would fire if Palestinians crossed behind it. More than two weeks into the ceasefire, roughly twenty Palestinians are killed every day, many for being too close to the line, the Guardian reported.
A hostage and prisoner release. Hamas agreed to return the last twenty living and twenty-eight deceased hostages from those it had taken in October 2023 within seventy-two hours of the IDF withdrawal. In exchange, Israel agreed to release 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences, 1,700 other Gazan detainees, and the bodies of fifteen Palestinians for each deceased hostage it received. Several high-profile political figures at the top of Hamas’s release list were not included in the prisoner swap.
The twenty living hostages were released back to Israel on Monday morning. The remains of fifteen hostages have also been returned. Hamas missed an October 13 deadline to return the last of the deceased hostages, which has been a point of contention for the Israeli military, although several NGOs, including the Red Cross, have acknowledged that their whereabouts will take time to track down amid the rubble.
The Israeli military has said that some of the remains of bodies Hamas had returned are not the hostages, and released drone footage of what it claimed was Hamas staging a discovery of a hostage body in front of the Red Cross. In response, Hamas announced October 26 that it would postpone the handover of a hostage’s body scheduled that day due to Israel’s “violations of the ceasefire by the occupation.” The Red Cross issued a condemnation over Hamas’s falsified hostage recovery.
Troop deployment. Israel stationed troops at the Rafah crossing with Egypt, where aid trucks were entering again after months of aid being constricted at the corridor. The United States has also sent two hundred troops to Israel to monitor the ceasefire and help with aid delivery. No U.S. troops will be deployed directly inside Gaza, officials say. The European Union said on Wednesday that it was ready to deploy a long-standing humanitarian mission at the Rafah crossing “as soon as conditions allow.”
During Vance’s visit, the United States unveiled a Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel, which will be run by American diplomats and the military officers already stationed in the area. The center will monitor the ceasefire and “facilitate the flow of humanitarian, logistical, and security assistance” by international partners into Gaza, the U.S. military said in a statement. Vance also said during his visit that a global security force will be established to focus on disarming Hamas.
Aid delivery increases. The White House’s original plan says that “full aid” will be sent to Gaza “without interference,” which Trump has specified means six hundred trucks carrying aid per day. This includes “rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.”
Aid groups have warned that the enclave has faced a growing humanitarian crisis as the conflict has continued. The UN-backed global hunger monitor has said there is an “entirely man-made” famine in Gaza and emphasized the need for the resurgence of aid. Israel claims that Hamas has undermined aid efforts and has forcefully denied the famine determination, which it says is based on Hamas data and a manipulated process.
Aid delivery fluctuated in the first week of the ceasefire. The United Nations reported on October 12 that progress on aid was “well underway” in the strip, though officials said that it still fell short of what was needed to address a widespread humanitarian crisis. On October 14, Israel announced it had closed the Rafah crossing and would cut the flow of aid in half, citing Hamas’s inability to deliver the rest of the deceased hostages by an October 13 deadline. No fuel or gas would be allowed into Gaza, it added. After a two-day break, however, aid began flowing in on October 15 at a limited, 400-truck capacity.
What happens next?
As the tenuous ceasefire holds amid the hostage delay, the temporary closure of the Rafah crossing and reduced aid levels, and some spurts of violence, the next steps to negotiate the governance and reconstruction of Gaza are unclear.
In the wake of the Egypt conference, no public timeline has been announced to negotiate the next phases of the White House’s peace plan, which include most of the thornier issues between Israel and Hamas. Back in Washington on Tuesday, Trump repeated his call for Hamas to return the deceased hostages and to disarm, saying that “if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them.”
The United Nations set aside another $11 million in aid for Gaza over the next few months at the Egypt meeting, while Trump said that “numerous” wealthy countries were ready to commit to helping rebuild Gaza, without saying who those countries were.
Long term, Trump’s twenty-point plan stipulates that no Palestinians will be militarily forced to leave Gaza, and that Israel will agree not to occupy or annex the Gaza Strip. The enclave will “be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough,” the plan reads. At the same time, Gaza must be “a deradicalized terror-free zone” that “does not pose a threat to its neighbors.”
The twenty-point plan encompassed a range of different efforts that negotiators may hope to work toward in the next stages:
Stabilization. The United States and Arab and other international partners will join forces to form an International Stabilization Force (ISF) to immediately deploy in Gaza for security as it undergoes the transition from war to peaceful governance. The ISF will also train and support vetted Palestinian police forces. The plan aims for the IDF to progressively hand over the occupied Gazan territory to the ISF as the Israeli military withdraws its forces.
Governance. At the same time, Gaza will transition to “temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” which will operate under an international board headed by Trump. The only other member of the board who has been publicly announced so far is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who will have a central, but still undefined, role. The “Board of Peace,” as Trump calls it, aims to set the framework and monitor funding for Gaza’s redevelopment. The Palestinian Authority (PA), the governing body of the West Bank, will simultaneously undergo a reform program to prepare for governance of the strip.
Demilitarization. An independent monitor group will oversee the “demilitarization” of Gaza, including placing weapons “permanently beyond use” and an internationally funded “buy-back” program. All “military, terror, and offensive infrastructure” will be destroyed, a condition that Hamas has previously refused and is expected to resist.
Economic reform. A panel of experts will convene and come out with an economic development plan to “rebuild and energize Gaza.” They also hope to establish a special economic zone with preferred tariff and access rates (to be negotiated with participating countries). The peace plan didn’t address the amounts or sources for funding for reconstruction of the battered enclave head-on, but the World Bank estimated earlier this year that it would cost more than $50 billion. The plan cites “thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas” to “create jobs, opportunity, and hope” for Gaza, without elaborating on what those are.
Trump has said that the peace process has progressed to phases “three and four,” and later walked it back to “ two” without expanding on what each stage entailed. Negotiations over the next sets of details will come as observers watch to see whether the first phase holds.
“The first stage of this peace plan is the easy part,” CFR Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies Elliott Abrams told CFR. “As world attention turns away when the fighting stops, these intractable issues will be no less difficult to solve than they have in the past decades.”
What is the plan’s vision for Gaza’s long-term future?
If the ceasefire progresses to later stages, the plan calls for the PA to take over governing the Gaza Strip after it has been reformed, the White House says. The plan claims that “regional partners” will “guarantee” that Hamas and its factions will comply with the details of the plan and won’t pose a threat to the region, though it does not provide further details of how this will work. The final point in the peace plan is for the United States to “establish a dialogue” between Israel and the Palestinian territories to agree on a political horizon “for peaceful and prosperous coexistence.”
Hamas will not have a future role in governing, according to the plan, but its members will be offered amnesty if they agree to peaceful coexistence or are provided safe passage out of the area. The group, which has governed Gaza since 2007, has steadfastly opposed the proposals of laying down weapons for good or giving up power. Israel, meanwhile, has long demanded these terms.
Importantly, the plan does not guarantee the establishment of a Palestinian state, a longtime goal of the PA and the PLO, or Palestine Liberation Organization. Hamas has previously said it would not disarm until Palestinian statehood is recognized. The plan does acknowledge the possibility, saying only after reform to the PA and Gaza reconstruction will there be “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognise as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.”
Though Israel has agreed to the plan in full, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resisted having the PA play a role in governing Gaza. Several of the hardline members in his cabinet are also likely to oppose some of the provisions in the later phases, experts believe, with some already condemning them. A vote passed in the Knesset on October 22 in favor of annexing the West Bank—a measure that the Trump administration opposes. Vance called it a “stunt,” while Netanyahu’s office also condemned it, saying it was a “deliberate political provocation” by the opposition.
“There is no appetite for a two-state solution among Israelis who have concluded after October 7 that Palestinians do not want to live side-by-side in peace with them,” Cook said. Indeed, the latest local polling shows that a growing majority of Israeli Jewish and Arab respondents oppose a two-state solution. At the same time, a majority of Israelis—66 percent, up thirteen points from last year—believe it is time for the war to end.