There is finally light at the end of the tunnel.
Israel’s two-year war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, sparked by Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, appears to have belatedly drawn to a close thanks to a 20-point peace plan devised by U.S. President Donald Trump and his aides.
Trump and Hamas’ chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, have each declared that the protracted war in Gaza, Israel’s longest, is over. Hayya said that the United States had provided guarantees that it would not resume.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar confirmed that. He told Fox News, “We don’t have any intention to renew the war.”
The winding down of the war represents a signal achievement for Trump, who may yet win next year’s Nobel Prize for Peace, an honor that eluded him after he brokered the 2020 Abraham Accords.
Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, tried but failed to land a truce. Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, visited Israel more than a dozen times in a bid to stop the war, but lacked the leverage to do so.
Trump, determined to end it, pressured Israel and Hamas to abide by his plan, which was supported by key Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan and two major Muslim states, Indonesia and Pakistan.
Even Iran, Israel’s deadliest enemy, endorsed it.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet voted in favor of the first phase of the plan on October 9, thereby activating the ceasefire, which will be monitored by a force of 200 U.S. troops.
Shortly afterward, Israel withdrew from nearly 50 percent of Gaza, which Hamas will rule.
As per the agreement, humanitarian aid began flowing into Gaza.
In the days leading up to Israel’s decision, the Israeli army continued military operations in Gaza, albeit on a significantly reduced level.
An Israeli soldier, Michael Mordechai Nachmani, 26, was killed by a sniper in Gaza City before Israel made its first withdrawal. He was the 472nd soldier to die in Gaza since 2023.
Sixty seven thousand Palestinians, including about 22,000 Hamas and Islamic Jihad combatants, have been killed since October 7, the darkest single day in Israel’s history.
The Israeli death toll, counting civilians and soldiers who were killed from October 7 onward, has nearly reached the 1,700 mark.
With a truce now in place, the release of the remaining 48 living and deceased Israeli hostages is supposed to take place within 72 hours. Trump said they will be released next Monday or Tuesday. Israelis are looking forward to their return with great anticipation.
One hundred and forty eight hostages were released during ceasefires in the autumn of 2023 and the winter of 2025. Eight were rescued by Israeli commandos. Three were mistakenly killed by Israeli troops during an escape attempt. The corpses of 51 were incrementally recovered.
Nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom are serving life sentences, also will be set free.
Trump will fly to Egypt to sign the agreement, which was fleshed in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh by negotiators from Israel, the United States, Hamas, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey. U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law and former advisor, Jared Kushner, attended the talks.
In a grand finale, Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech in the Knesset and expected to meet hostages and their families. This will be his second trip to Israel since 2017.
The most difficult unsettled issues between Israel and Hamas will be addressed once the hostages and the prisoners have been reunited with their families.
The plan calls for Hamas’ disarmament, the demilitarization of Gaza and the removal of Hamas from governance in postwar Gaza. Its place will be taken by a transitional government of Palestinian technocrats who have yet to be named. They will report to a committee headed by Trump.
Hamas has demanded a full Israeli pullout, but it remains to be seen whether Israel will abide by this demand. At the very least, Israel will insist on maintaining a military presence in a narrow buffer zone around Gaza and points along the Philadelphi corridor opposite the border with Egypt to deter the smuggling of weapons and munitions into Gaza
Trump, who has cast himself as a peacemaker, had been calling for an end to the war for several months now. “The president wants this to be finished,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said almost a month ago.
A few days ago, Rubio said, “The president had some extraordinary phone calls and meetings that required a high degree of intensity and commitment and made this happen.”
Trump got the ball rolling late last month, nearly three weeks after Israel attempted to kill Hamas’ chief hostage negotiators in Qatar, a close U.S. ally.
Israel’s botched air strike on September 9 infuriated Qatar and angered Trump, who promised that such an attack would not recur and who pressured Netanyahu to issue an apology. More importantly, Trump issued an executive order instructing the U.S. government to view an attack on Qatar as “a threat to the peace and security of the United States.”
Trump, in consultation with several Arab countries and Turkey, decided that the Gaza war had run its course and should be ended.
On October 3, following Israel’s unofficial acceptance of his plan and Hamas’ acceptance of portions of it, Trump announced that Hamas was “ready for a lasting peace.
In a sharp comment that must have jolted Netanyahu, he added that Israel “must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza so that we can get the hostages out safely and quickly.”
Trump’s confidence that a truce was imminent was not initially shared by Rubio. On September 15, he expressed doubt that Hamas was prepared for a truce. As he put it, “Hamas is a terrorist group, a barbaric group whose stated mission is the destruction of the Jewish state. So we’re not counting on that happening.”
On October 4, Netanyahu said that Israel was on “the brink of a great achievement that could lead to the release of the hostages, and that Israel was preparing for the “immediate implementation” of phase one of Trump’s plan.
Netanyahu claimed that Hamas had been forced to bite the bullet due to Israeli and U.S. political and military pressure.
Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza City, one of Hamas’ last remaining strongholds, on September 16. Israel said it would operate with “unprecedented force” and would evacuate its one million inhabitants to keep them out of harm’s way.
Trump told a different story, suggesting he had compelled Netanyahu, whose nickname is Bibi, to endorse his plan. As he told the news site Axios, “I said, ‘Bibi, this is your chance for victory. He was fine with it. He’s going to be fine with it. He has no choice. With me, you got to be fine.”
Nahum Barnea, a well-known Israel newspaper columnist, said that Netanyahu was strong-armed into accepting the plan. “Trump doesn’t threaten Netanyahu, he orders him,” he said.
Trump denied that he had pressured Netanyahu, or that he had told him to stop being so “fucking negative.”
This tense episode notwithstanding, the impeding release of the hostages has probably revitalized their relationship and concentrated minds in Israel and abroad.
“They are coming home, and for that the world rejoices,” writes Gregg Roman, the executive director of Middle East Forum. “But until Hamas is eliminated as a military and political force, we are merely pausing between tragedies.”
Israel, he goes on to say, must “finish what October 7 started — not with negotiations, but with victory. Anything less guarantees that today’s joy will become tomorrow’s grief.”
These are the paramount issues that Israel will face once the hostages have been safely brought back home.
The international consensus is that Hamas must be disarmed and never be allowed to govern Gaza again. The unanswered question now is whether Trump, in due course, will insist on these conditions.
For Israel, they are of the utmost importance.